Nothing Smells As Good As The Radio

Parfum de Radio, cardboard toy radio with fragrance. I'm betting it smelled like CBS; all the crazies preferred CBS.

Remember When From 1959

Because I've been digging through & scanning old issues of The Saturday Evening Post, be prepared for a number of scans from them. Up now, Remember When? Pictures With A Past.


Text reads:

Recognize the smiling lad at right? Frank Sinatra was just one of a New Jersey quartet, the Hoboken Four, when he got his start on the amateur hour of Major Bowes (center) in 1936. From radio Frank turned to singing for the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands, then to films. He proved he could act as well as sing. Now past his forty-first birthday, he's still going strong.

Calvert Gostle

Text reads:

Here is a grim idea aborning: That planes could attack as well as scout. These Army officers fired a Lewis machine gun from the air in 1912. I made this photo before the take-off. The tests, at 500 rounds a minute, succeeded. The plance did not shake apart. Even so, early World War I air battles were fought with revolvers.

C. J. Mac Cartee

Text reads:

This stirring scene points a moral, as did almost everything in 1921. It was: Women can master the motorcar. Left, how to caress a radiator cap and get shocked by the ignition. Right. a familiar scene of the day--how to inflate a pneumatic tiree and patch a punctured tube. This was habit-forming.

Ezra Quincy

You Gotta Laugh When You're The Joke

We're sorry we missed SIXX:A.M. on Cult of Gracie Radio, because it apparently was a "campy-train-wreck" of a show. And we love those.

Highlights of this show include DJ's late arrival ~ not due to, as James said, the chronic tardiness of guitarists, but DJ's Internet stalking of yours truly (visits to Peek-A-Boob and Sex-Kitten ~ who can blame him then for being late?), and the continual mockery of the musicians for being underage for the show (complete with a crazy phone call from Captain Planet aka Jill B. of SWOP-East).

OK, so those weren't the highlights of the show...

We might have been tempted to believe Gracie's comments were the self-deprecating mutterings of a woman who knows that "You gotta laugh when you're the joke"; but then we read the following from SIXX:A.M. fans as DJ Ashba's "Ashbaland Forum":

listen carefully for my favorite parts of that interview, in not much of a particular order:

dj whining defensively, "man! i was 2 minutes late!" you can hear him smile. too cute.

the lady calling to dispute their ages. did she REALLY say shed never been a member of a cult before? i keep meaning to listen to that part again, but its just not THAT important. when i heard it i got a vision in my head of some lady sitting next to her radio believing that she was being initiated into a real cult and that if she just passed this preliminary test, shed score her place in line waiting for the pitcher of kool aid to be passed around. the post show notes credit her with being a host to another show, but when i was listening i had no idea who she was and it was just funny.

How on earth did we miss this?

*side note* now that i think about it, i wonder why it wasnt promoted a bit more. weve all seen 2 minutes interview clips that get boatloads of hype and press. here was a 48 minute call in show that id never even heard of till a couple of days after the fact. as it turned out, maybe it was alot more fun just listening to them sorta hanging out than it mighta been to hear other people calling in with questions that have been answered in 45873 other interviews...this one was entertaining cuz it was unique if nothing else lol.

We are so ready to listen now.

Life is, indeed, beautiful.

What Do The Insane Prefer On The Radio?

Here, from a 1938 Radio Guide, we have a pre-Nielsen cross-section of American listeners: the inhabitants of insane asylums.

In first place is, of course, Burns and Allen -- and I don't think you had to be crazy to find them hilarious, but it helped. In second place, H. V. Kaltenborn, the respected radiojournalist, whose commentary show apparently spoke to those who are usually only spoken to by people in their own heads. Bringing up the rear, Guy Lombardo and his orchestra, their dance-hall tunes soothing the savage breast.

I doubt, if I were a radio personality, I'd ever want a radio magazine to explain my popularity as having anything to do with insanity. Granted, at the time things like homosexuality, sexually-liberated women, and writing inflammatory pamphlets would get you tossed into the booby-hatch, so you can't count the listeners as all giant-rabbit-channelers.

A critical eye will note that each of these entries hails from the CBS studios, and the notes describing the 'winners' is rather average advertising copy. Why CBS would entertain the notion of promoting their shows in the guise of 'sanitariums love us!', I can't say -- although there's the possiblity that a competitor, when approached for such a thing, said, "hey, we'll pay you double if you put CBS shows in there."