Old Time Radio

For the last week I have had a rental car with XM radio. On the drive to Buttonwillow I found that in addition to a pretty good bluegrass channel that they have 24-7 editions of old time radio. The bluegrass channel had a wonderful interview with Rhonda Vincent - who is one of my favorite performers. She played a bunch of stuff off her new album. But as important she did an interview which showed her personality - which seems to be very upbeat. I met her at the California Bluegrass Association annual event last year and she was wonderful when she found that I had one of her songs as my ringtone she thought that was great.

But the radio has also been a revelation. Last night as I was driving back from the ballgame (great until the seventh inning) and not wanting to listen to the recap I heard an edition of something which I think was called "I was a commie for the FBI" - this particular show was done at the height of the McCarthy period. This morning I listened to Frontier Town where the sidekick of the hero was Cherokee O'Bannon who did an amazingly weak imitation of WC Fields - by the time the show aired Fields was dead but he would have had a heck of an intellectual property case if the show had aired in modern times.

Then there is My Best Friend Luigi - a seeming celebration of immigrants. Sure the characters were stereotyped but they evidenced good values.

The last set of shows are the crossovers. Our Miss Brooks is one. My favorite was the Lone Ranger. The radio version did not use Clayton Moore and Jay SIlverheels - who I remember from the TV series. But like many of the other dramas things get complicated and wrapped up in about 30 minutes. When I was young you were either a Hopalong Cassady or a Lone Ranger fan - while I have heard both on XM - I am definately a Lone Ranger fan.

The quality of the shows is variable some lame but some are really excellent. There is a mix of humor and drama. Two things became clear to me on listening to these shows. First, the ability to recreate something in one's mind is powerful with radio. In the California legislative process we have something called a SQUAWK BOX that allows one to listen to a sound version of hearings. I used it for years and actually find the now televised versions of the hearings distracting. My younger colleagues need to see the pictures of what is happening. Second, is the recognition about how long radio lasted as a powerful force in American culture. I tend to think of the decline of radio as equating when we got our first TV set (which was when I was about 6) but radio shows went on for a lot longer than that. Most of the XM programming is from the early fifties (through about 1956) that is much later than most people think radio was a force. Obviously, after that radio had two other periods of resurgence. First, when Rock and Roll became big and second when talk radio began to blossom radio began to surface. These shows give you a good idea of the power of the medium. Since I really remember the dawn of the TV era (I was about five when we got our first TV - the last week has been an interesting digression.