by Anotherwpgguy » Wed Nov 20, 2013 1:21 pm
What an absolute delight to be able to hop into our radio equivalent of an H. G. Wells inspired Time Machine and go back to the days when I worked at "The Funnest" radio station of my career .... 14, CFUN.
To hear the voices of such good friends and ultra-professional colleagues once again was a real treat. It put me right back in the Master Control Room as if I were about to pull one more on-air shift.
People like General Manager Ron Carrabine who was excellent at providing steady fair but firm leadership, and assuring we had the financial resources and technical tools required to do our work. Being considerbly older than us "Young Turks" who were always pulling some kind of antic or another, he must have spent many a time with his face in his hands wondering "what in the world are they going to do next?"
Then Jack Casey ..... always good for us to have a laugh together and he developed into a great CFUN on-air persona under the well-heeded advice and mentoring from Chuck McCoy.
Hearing the voice of Darryl B .... what can I say about him that half the world doesn't already know? Well ..... at one phase of my life, I was an "op" at The Big 8, CKLW and that was my real learning process .... my first exposure to a huge, huge radio station where everything and everyone was dedicated to perfection. One night while I'm working the all-night shift, "the new jock" shows up, and (you'll get a kick out of this) I received a memo from PD Paul Drew indicating that I'm supposed to "carry him" through the shift so he can see how the format, time clock, music rotation, etc worked before he went to daytime. That "new guy" was Darryl B, having arrived from western Canada. It may be hard to imagine Darryl being humbled, nervous, and really uncomfortable, but he was super-intimidated by being on-air at North America's 5th largest rated station. He was grateful for my "breaking him in" and giving him confidence (yeah right.) Darryl and I got along famously when he came to CFUN and we had the common bond of having worked at CKLW. So maybe that's a story that might not be well known about the great on-air talent, Darryl B. I spoke with Darryl in Winnipeg several times as his health was failing, and it wasn't until that time that I found he was also an airplane nut. Too bad he passed away so young.
Good old buddy old pal Tom Jeffries .... good on you Tom .... we had our "Seasons In The Sun" didn't we? On my next Vancouver visit, we will really have to grab a coffe and a lunch and regale each other with recollections of the various good and bad decisions we made in life .... LOL.
Now, on to "The Aircheck Guest of Honor," Tom Lucas. We had countless laughs from the time he arrived at CKVN/CFUN and shared quite a few impressive life experiences. I never did get him up in a small airplane to go for a ride over Vancouver, but almost managed it .... got him to the Flight Dispatch office at the Vancouver Flying School, then he had a last second change of heart. Tom proved to be a gracious host and inviting me up to the new CFUN studios for an extended period about 9 years ago when I went to the Vancouver/Abbotsford area during the process of getting trained on a particular type of "water bomber" used in forest fire suppression operations and operated by Conair of Abbotsford.
Thanks for much for posting the link to a high quality aircheck of "The Luker," I sincerely enjoyed it.
CFUN was a wonderful place to work. The collection of talent was universally of a high standard, the staff morale was always operating at the peak of the curve, the senior management were people we trusted to always have our backs and would also do their best to make sure that a person's personal aspirations were fulfilled. In may case, they did everything they possibly could for me to simultaneously entertain my two mistresses .... high quality rock radio, and aviation.
Thanks again Radiofan, and to everyone here who have provided a place for us radio junkies to stay in touch and talk about "the good old days."
Oh, and the Spinners - "I'll Be Around" as the last song was fabulous. It was one of those songs that I'd do a fabulous intro on, making use of the many musical "hit points" for emhasis ending with kissing the vocal every so smoothly and gently, mike off .... then crank the studio monitors to the max and revel in the magic of the whole process, knowing the 50,000 watt signal was pounding across western canada, over the pole, and into Europe.
Cheers folks .... AWG