Long Distance Dedication

I've said it for years... There are two occasions where families lose their collective minds and do amazingly stupid things. Funerals and weddings.Not sure why that's the case, but it usually rings pretty true. Perhaps because funerals and weddings are situations where people are forced to be together, and emotions are running high. Also, if it's an open bar at a wedding that usually doesn't help matters.

We've all been hearing about the sad case of nationally syndicated disc-jockey Casey Kasem. He passed away on Father's Day. He was 82 years old, suffering from a form of dementia and relied on others for his care. Trouble enough for any of us. Casey's problems were compounded by the public battle between his wife Jean and his daughter Kerri.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you listen to me on the radio and for that, I thank you. It's also likely that you listen to me while you're doing 16 other things each morning. When you hit a morning that you don't have to get up and do all those things, you probably don't listen to me. That's OK too... I understand.

Casey Kasem however was a different kind of radio announcer. First of all, he was only on once a week. Sweet gig! Secondly, he just seemed to know everything. It didn't sound like he was reading or that he had a staff of researchers and writers, it sounded like he just knew it all. Then there was the musical concept. The top 40 songs from that week's music chart. Just start with number 40 and "the countdown doesn't stop until we get to the top." This was what we today call "appointment radio". When I was a kid in suburban Boston I didn't have to get up early on Sunday morning, but I wanted to so I could catch at least some of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem.

Everything about the show was ground-breaking. No interviews or audio clips. In fact, any kind of fancy production was a rarity. It was just Casey, lots of interesting, well-presented facts about the songs and the stars, and the music. No internet for gathering all these factoids so somebody had to do it all totally old school. Even the show's distribution was next-level for the day. After the first couple of years, the show went from being distributed on big bulky reels of tape to album distribution. Not every radio station had really great tape machines, but they all had turntables and could play a record. They pressed a set of albums each week, and mailed them to hundreds of stations around the globe. The internet makes all of this sound almost quaint and quite obsolete. Yes, that's a picture of the set of albums for one of Casey's shows and yes, I'm geeky enough to have a copy in my office. They're all over the place on e-bay.

I never met the man, but he had a great influence on my life and career. His end of days became an undignified tabloid drama and that's very sad. To para-phrase the Righteous Brothers... If there's a rock and roll heaven, they're about to get a hell of a radio show.

Godspeed Casey, I'll just keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.