Harmonica man calls; show closed on account of lightning.
Tom broadcasts from the great outdoors and literally shares the stage with his audience in his home town of Milwaukee.
|
||||
|
The post below was added before I had heard. I’m a strong believer in coincidences… coincidences and nothing more. The fact that I’ve been posting old Tom Snyder interviews here for the past couple of weeks is a coincidence, and whether it is a sad coincidence or a happy coincidence, they’re here and will continue to be posted here because – even though he hasn’t been on the air for a while – I’ve never stopped listening to my buddy Tom. Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax and listen to the sounds I’ve posted here… or watch the pictures I’ve posted to YouTube… now, as they fly through the air. Life was a little bit less terrible when we had Tom Snyder around. He was the real deal. I’ve always believed that his work on radio was every bit as good as his best work on TV. We miss you, Tommie.
Anybody else think that the new name is awful and meaningless, especially when compared to the older appellations? It’s like we had “The Museum of Ketchup,” changed it to “The Museum of Tomatoes, Sugar and Spices,” and finally got to “The Heinz Center for Redness Enclosed by Glass.” Who’s responsible for the latest name change? We’ll never know their names. From the New York Times:
Don’t you love that they called Pat “the Museum’s president” in a quote where she knocks the word “museum”? I guess we should be grateful that they maintained some small level of control over the process, because “The William S. Paley Center for Free Beer” would have been equally uninformative and misleading, and it would have tested off the charts. On the plus side, they’re changing their policies about releasing footage from their seminars – check this page for a list of recent ones and a link to full-length DVD’s with the creators and casts of Lost, Boston Legal, and Desperate Housewives, or this link to see a clip from a Conan O’Brien seminar. I only hope they release a DVD of an event they hosted quite a few years ago about NYC kid’s TV that reunited Chuck McCann, Soupy Sales, Captain Jack McCarthy and others with their grownup audience. But all of this is neither here nor there.
But I will never forget Bradbury’s response to the final question. “What advice would you give to the people in this audience,” someone shouted out. And a split-second later, Bradbury gave his four-word answer. “Don’t watch local news.” It got a laugh; it got applause, but Ray was 100% sincere. And when Bradbury speaks, I listen: I have not watched local news since. He left it to the audience to figure out why local news is a brain-sucking waste of time. You won’t hear Ray offer that advice in either of the Tom Snyder interviews below, perhaps because Tom was a local TV news anchor for a portion of his career, although Ray does say a few things from which one could reasonably deduce his belief about the valuelessness of local TV news. He might as well have said TV in general, however, because the 1996 CNBC TV interview with Snyder (joined in progress) is, at times, an amazing word-for-word recreation of the conversation they had four years earlier on ABC radio. I guess Bradbury perfects his stories for interviews as carefully as he does his stories for print. Four years apart, promoting two different books, yet some of the same topics are spoken about in the same words. (I wonder if Tom and/or Ray have changed any political opinions since these two programs were broadcast?) Tom Snyder / Ray Bradbury Radio Show 1992
The hour with Jay Leno (33m) is especially entertaining – mostly stories from Jay’s youth and his days as a struggling comedian. This show was recorded at the time when Jay was “permanent guest host” for The Tonight Show on Monday nights. I remember at the time – and this is sacrilege, I know – avidly looking forward to the Monday night shows, because Carson had been coasting and Jay Leno was actually funny.
[2021 update: The Cook clip might or might not be the exact one Don chose.]
The interview includes clips from the special, including one that would have been much more funny had Freberg simply performed it without introduction. Instead, fearing that his audience had no familiarity with Stephen Foster song titles, he carefully and painfully sets up the sketch with background material the audience ‘needs’ to get the jokes. Not only is this condescending – it’s annoying. This is my gripe with later Freberg material – he started talking down to his audience, became more concerned with his ‘message’ (usually quite obvious) and lost track of what was funny. It’s almost as if he came to believe than anything he said was funny, so long as he said it with a sneer and dragged the pronunciation out. The interview is far more fun than the NPR Special (59m) itself. Imagine if Stan’s great record, “Wun’erful, Wun’erful!” [Side Uh-1 (4m), Side Uh-2 (3m)] had started with a detailed explanation of who Lawrence Welk was, what kinds of music he featured on his show, that he always thanked his audience for the cards and letters they sent, and the manner in which Welk created the sound of a champagne cork popping by using a finger in his cheek.
|
||||
|
For the record: We don't believe life is terrible. We believe that isntlifeterrible is a memorable website domain name. |
||||
