Mike Marino – Pissed Off, Billy Joel, and The 5,000 Dollar Computer Heart Attack!

This is a compost pile of radio refuse that has filled the landfill landscape of my trek across the continent of radio from California to Maine and every FM bordello in between. In no particular order this is more of a shotgun approach than that of a marksman.

General Managers of radio stations are fun to fuck with because, number one, they’re easy targets and you come out unscathed if you have the ratings. They know better than to bite the hand that feeds them… revenue.

I discovered a long time ago they are called “General” Managers because they lack “specific” knowledge of what radio is…a few exceptions to the rule of course.

Frank Gutch Jr. Explains Mike Marino

Editor’s Note – A Short Gift from a Dear Friend

A lovely surprise for Monday, finding this on Mike Marino’s Timeline. Frank’s best friend and historian, Michael recieved copious amounts of correspondence from Frank, and whenever he finds an unpublished piece I will publish it here.

He may be gone, and he is deeply missed, but for the moment, this Gentle Lover of Great Music and Artists is still with us, and will remain with us through his words and passion for a long time to come.

…and this is why and how Mike became part of the DBAWIS Family.

Many thanks to Mike Marino, Frank’s sister, and the Man himself. – Bob

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.

Mike Marino – The Ghost of Lenny Bruce

The city of Detroit, especially the radio community was duking it for the Heavy Weight Title of who would sponsor the George Carlin Concert at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan. George coming to college..the ultimate seven dirty words substitute teacher and class was in session. CJOM, WABX, WRIF and W-4  were all co-sponsors of the event being treated as the one in line with the big bang theory..however was more in line with Darwin’s Theory of Social Comic Evolution.

Mike Marino – A Chimpanzee and Jerry Mathers as The Beaver!

 

Radio was also a garden of interviews with the famous, infamous and not so famous or infamous to a crazed chimpanzee that was a last minute Bay Area fill in for a no show Jerry Mathers as the Beaver. Quite honestly the Chimp was more exciting. I have all these taped and in my possession and when I need a reality check and humility fix..I put them on and enjoy the flubs, bloopers and operator error fuck ups.

Mike Marino – CJOM, Tim Buckley, The Rock and Roll Farm, and The Grande Old Dame

The 70’s in Detroit! Live local bands, rock and roll venues were everywhere! Beer was cheap at the clubs and it was a Rock and Roll solar system as were most large cities with local live music!

I’ve written many pieces about radio..mostly major highlights I experienced, but there were also those little pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that gave life to that career and not just a few laughs so I will explore my cranial caverns of memory to let them fall to the digital page, that is if they agree to….

Mike Marino Asks:.. “When A Canadian Rock Station and a Hash Pipe Meet In a Head On Collision – Free Concerts in a Biker Park?”

1973…Dee-troit radio was a mixture of formats and talent. The Drake-Chenault Big Boss Jocks to Casey Kasem Top 40 shmaltz. The AM airwaves were a congested freeway of screaming Pukers as we refer to the “old school” of over enunciation and pseudo-hip chatter that not only came from somewhere deep in the cave of ego, dark and forbidding, but was delivered faster than bullets from a machine gunning killer of the old Detroit Purple Gang during prohibition.

Mike Marino – The Secret Tapes of Mike Marino and Frank Gutch, Jr. By Arthur Burns

(These taped interviews I will be transcribing are a result of a three day weekend sit down with two hack writers who should be writing for pulp magazines that appeal to lurid fantasies of the libido rather than respectable publications.

The interviews took place over a three day period in a Tangier bordello/opium den that specialized in Algerian hashish and Ethiopian hookers of mixed blood.)

Frank’s Last Review and Introducing Mike Marino

Received this lovely note and a review Frank had written but didn’t have time to get to me. Life…finds a way.

Hi Bob, I just learned that Frank Gutch Jr passed away and am so saddened by it. He recently did a review for our daughters’ latest album (released May 1), and I sent him an email this past week to see when he would be posting the review…now I know why he never responded. Fortunately, he had sent the review to us for our Kansas Bluegrass Association newsletter. Is there any way we could share this with you on your/his blog? He seemed to really enjoy the girls’ music and this was his third album review that he’d done for the girls. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks so much, Bob. We really appreciate you sharing this. So sorry for your loss. – Debbie Vogts

…and when you are finished with Frank’s review…keep scrolling, and meet Mike Marino.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Radio Chronicles: Nightmare @ 20,000 Watts (A Mindblower); Mike Marino: The AM Radio Dream; and Jim Peters: Tulsa and KAKC = Valhalla; Plus Two Measly Notes (Would That Make One of Them a Half-Note?)

I must listen to hundreds of albums a year— at least sample that many— and there are few which really floor me. I try to write about the ones which do, though even then the words sometimes escape me and those reviews remain unwritten. It isn’t easy, writing reviews on a constant basis, so when an album comes along which I not only love but wish I could have been part of— or at least been privy to some of the creative process— it is rare.