Mike Marino – Dead Air and Radio Dazed – Joe Walsh’d!

When I say I was Joe Walsh’d, I don’t mean I was so taken with his music that I bought every last piece of vinyl of his from his James Gang days in Cleveland to his soaring Eagle days.

By Walsh’d I mean I was bodily kicked out the backstage door of one of his concerts in Detroit. It was one of those the smoker you drink, the player you get moments in my radio career that went careening out of controlled orbit. Even Major Tom and his legions of space geeks at ground control couldn’t help. HAL the computer had gone berzerkoid, and humanoid and in a Kubrick frenzy, space locked me out in the void of the black hole of the back door of the back alley’s of Detroit by some of the largest Walsh roadies on the road. Big hulking figures, who obeyed their employer as loyal followers to their rock and roll Imhotep.

Ok, I admit it. I deserved it. Once again, the Marino mouth open sesamed larger than Moby Dick crushing a shipload of wailing Bob Marley whalers without Capt Marley wailing.

CJOM radio in Detroit, a Canuck intruder in the Motor City rock and roll scene of the 70’s. The wild child bad boy with no FCC leash to restrain it’s airwaves or content from cross the river and the border..an illegal alien of monster music proportions. (FCC? Say it phonetically and then give me an “F” FCC! What’s that spell? What’s That Spell? Keep saying it, Joe MacDonald will love every moment and syllable)

The radio station was sponsoring the Joe Walsh concert in Detroit that evening in the early 1970’s. (Footnote: in May of 1968 James Gang with Joe played the Grande Ballroome in Detroit as the opening act for Cream)

Warm up act was local band Frijid Pink who painted the house of the rising sun a bright kelly green. I was as usual backstage smoking my favorite weed and consuming Detroit beer. Joe was from Cleveland and I was from Detroit and there was an industrial Midwest link between our two rustbelt hometowns. The old saying goes that Detroit would say to Cleveland..”Send us more steel” and Cleveland would answer, “We will but you send us more beer!”

Frijid Pink rocked and rolled and worked the crowd into a frenzy which in Dee-troit doesnt take much. On the Bob Seger live Bullet album recorded at Cobo Hall (Yes, I was there at that one too back stage drinking with Alice Cooper, (Vince Furnier from Pontiac which is a town north of Detroit named after the car, which was named after the Indian Chief who kicked Brit ass back in the day) Anyway on that album Bob says to the crowd and on record before he breaks into I believe “Nutbush” …”They say Detroit audiences are the best rock and roll audiences in the world..(pause)..”Shit, I’ve known that for 10 years!” Applause, yells, Bic lighters, toot and toke whistles and bang..Nutbush City Limits!!!

Pink had shut down..and the crowd was awaiting the arrival of His Majesty Joe Walsh the First. The guitar god of the Midwest. I was just hanging around talking to Kelly Green briefly and then the announcement back stage..clear the area as Joe is ready to go onstage..clear the area.

Anyway..here comes Joe, and I just stood there as a rather Hulk like creature approached me and said I had to leave and go out into the audience..what? I said our station was sponsoring the concert, why did I have to leave? He replied, “Because Joe doesn’t like people backstage when he was on way to the stage” I mean I wasn’t going to go up to him to kiss the hem of his garment and ask him to turn water into wine or to raise me from the dead..so then it happened..the words came out that got me a one way ticket out the back door. “I looked the roadie in the eye..Joe was now backstage not three feet from me as I said..”when’s the last time Joe had a hit?”

The planets then went out of orbit as I went into orbit into the back alley beer in hand. I was giving Joe an ‘F” as loud as I could but of course was drowned out by the drums and guitars inside that the crowd was enjoying. I calmed down, finished my beer which was flat now and made my way to my car and drove home..sorry as hell I had missed what was one hell of a concert by one hell of guitar player..but to this day in my vinyl collection I have everyone of Joe’s albums..yep vinyl and even have a couple of James Gang vinyl to this day..and every now and then put one one to drift back to the radio daze of dead air and the night I got Joe Walsh’d!

=MM=

Mike Marino has made his “roadhead” bones and enjoy’s nothing better than a greasy, unfolded map on the seat of the car…a bag of beef jerky and smoked fish and a cream soda to wash it all down as the highway and the steel belts play a meloldy of asphalt. Originally a product of the Motor City, Mike has lived in on the streets and on the beach in Hawaii, as well as in Haight Ashbury and the North Beach neighborhoods in San Francisco. Mike is also founder of the Experimental Theater Workshop, The Spare Change Artists Project, adn the Dung Zen Sustainable Living Project. He is primarily though a freelance magazine writer of pop culture, car culture, travel and history for numerous publications and he enjoys Hawaiian shirts, classic cars, Ed Wood Movies, fuzzy dice and hula dashboard ornaments as well as a good Hemmingway cigar, Corona beer, hiking and backpacking and rummaging through flea markets and auto junkyards.