Tag Archives: radio

Top 10 Things I’ll Remember About Casey Kasem

June 15, 2014 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Casey Kasem!

I’m 95% certain I owned every single on this 1984 Top 10 list, even for the one song I hated.

Today’s celebrity passing news: at age 82, legendary radio DJ, animated voice actor, TV host, and professional list caretaker Casey Kasem passed away early this morning after extended illness and an unsightly captivity in unsavory media headlines that I didn’t want to read. Lord willing, it’d be awfully swell to see all that in-fighting between his relatives disappear from our front pages forever.

As previously cited on Midlife Crisis Crossover in an entry about the joys of writing lists: “Casey Kasem’s American Top 40…had a profound impact on my childhood.” Syndicated reruns of that long-running radio show are still airing each week on both commercial and satellite radio if you know where to tune. Here in Indianapolis, they’re on B105.7 Sunday mornings from 8 a.m. to noon, pleasant accompaniment for my early drives.

But that impact went beyond my list-making proclivities…

A Perplexing Day with Commercial Radio, My Longtime Recurring Nemesis

May 24, 2013 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

107.9, Indianapolis radioYou know something’s afoot when you turn on the shower radio at 6:45 a.m. and hear Anne Murray crooning “O Come, All Ye Faithful”. Or maybe it was Julie Andrews.

I spend a minute or so trying to name the singer, ignoring for a moment that the radio was celebrating Christmas in May. The guessing game ends when the mystery diva is succeeded by Wham!’s “Last Christmas”, for which I have no use even in December. Somewhere in Indianapolis, either a DJ is greatly amusing himself, listener requests have taken a bizarre turn in the hands of joyous off-season mob rule, or Skynet is taking over the airwaves as part of a truly twisted master plan and doing a terrible job of acting naturally.

I’m not a morning person and my brain isn’t a morning organ. The confusion sown by my early-morning background noise inspires my brain to awaken more quickly than usual. Now it has a mystery to solve.

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