Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Wolfman Jack Attack

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: Wolfman Jack Attack · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kabooms.
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Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
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Speaker 2: of the old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
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Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
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Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
0:18
Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
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Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Mahler starts right now.
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Speaker 1: In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler,
0:35
Speaker 1: and you. We are reunited in the Magic Audio Dojo,
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Speaker 1: the sweat Shop of Random Talk, otherwise known as the
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Speaker 1: Remote Podcast Studio, on this Friday, the third day of July,
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Speaker 1: the day before the day. But I want you to
0:55
Speaker 1: know that I am fully prepared here on this the
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Speaker 1: one hundred eighty fourth day of the year. There are
1:01
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty one days remaining in the year
1:05
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. I am wrapped in my red, white
1:08
Speaker 1: and blue Amica, Amica. Yeah. Anyway, I have been away
1:15
Speaker 1: from my post. I've been away from my post based
1:18
Speaker 1: on the reaction from the inbox that I got earlier
1:21
Speaker 1: this week, and I briefly popped up a couple of
1:26
Speaker 1: times on social media. It turns out a number of
1:31
Speaker 1: die hard supporters of the radio show The Overnight Show
1:36
Speaker 1: are not real P once they're P two's, P three's,
1:41
Speaker 1: P four's. They don't listen to this podcast because I
1:45
Speaker 1: clearly laid it all out as mentioned with the legend
1:48
Speaker 1: Robbie always available Mariner fan, Thank god for Robbie. Yet again.
1:53
Speaker 1: Last weekend I had for the mail bag, not one,
1:57
Speaker 1: but two two a listener lined up for the mail bag,
2:02
Speaker 1: and when I reached out to them to record said
2:05
Speaker 1: mail bag, neither one of them reached back out to me.
2:10
Speaker 1: So maybe I'll just go with Robbie. I don't know.
2:12
Speaker 1: We don't figure that out. The mailbag people are doing
2:14
Speaker 1: things then available, I don't. I don't have time for
2:17
Speaker 1: the games. If I have to beg you to come
2:20
Speaker 1: on the mail bag, that ain't happening. I' let's do
2:22
Speaker 1: it by myself. So we'll see what happens with that.
2:25
Speaker 1: It's been a little rocky the last couple of weeks
2:27
Speaker 1: trying to line people up, But Robbie was there with
2:29
Speaker 1: the mail bag last Sunday and I was doing this
2:35
Speaker 1: what we normally do, and I mentioned that I would
2:37
Speaker 1: be away from the post for a few days, and
2:41
Speaker 1: you didn't hear. Some of you didn't hear. So obviously, today,
2:44
Speaker 1: the day before, I'm told there's a big Fourth of
2:48
Speaker 1: July holiday. It's kind of a big deal. We love
2:50
Speaker 1: round numbers. Nobody gets all excited about two forty nine
2:53
Speaker 1: or two fifty one. Now two fifty that's a big deal.
2:57
Speaker 1: That's a big deal, And it's one of those glitches
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Speaker 1: that human and have obsessed with round numbers. You don't
3:03
Speaker 1: like the odd numbers, you love the round numbers. You
3:07
Speaker 1: just love them. So anyway, it turns out that my
3:10
Speaker 1: wife declared this week was a special week. It was
3:14
Speaker 1: her birthday week, not just her birthday, her birthday week. Now,
3:18
Speaker 1: how am I involved in that? I wasn't there when
3:20
Speaker 1: she was born. Well, it's a federal holiday in the
3:23
Speaker 1: Malor universe. Yeah, it's a federal holiday somewhere. Hallmark executives
3:28
Speaker 1: are applauding, Yes, we need a full week of that.
3:34
Speaker 1: And I was informed, not asked. I was informed that
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Speaker 1: there would be a lot of celebrating with a lot
3:40
Speaker 1: of other people, which meant I am going to have
3:44
Speaker 1: to settle in to all of that activity and with
3:48
Speaker 1: resistance futile. As you know. I'm just happy she did
3:51
Speaker 1: not schedule fireworks in the backyard, although that could still
3:56
Speaker 1: happen at some point. The neighbors already think that we're
3:59
Speaker 1: very strange. I'm awake all night. My neighbors know a
4:05
Speaker 1: little bit about what I do. They don't know everything
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Speaker 1: that I'm involved in, everything I'm dabbling in. So it's
4:12
Speaker 1: odd because every once in a while they'll have to
4:15
Speaker 1: get up late at night and they'll end up doing
4:18
Speaker 1: something outside because they have to go to the airport
4:21
Speaker 1: or they have to do something, and they'll hear me
4:23
Speaker 1: yelling about the salary cap or the collective bargaining agreement,
4:30
Speaker 1: and then they'll be like, am I dreaming of that?
4:32
Speaker 2: Like?
4:32
Speaker 1: What is that? And then when they're awake during the day.
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Speaker 1: I'm never awake in the morning, and they'll be out
4:40
Speaker 1: mowing their lawn or doing something like that. On a Saturday,
4:43
Speaker 1: I'll be inside sleeping. They don't know that I'm sleeping.
4:46
Speaker 1: I'm just not outside. That's just the way things work
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Speaker 1: in these parts anyway. So this week, something completely random happened.
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Speaker 1: We'll save the tales of the birthday week for another podcast.
5:02
Speaker 1: I wanted to get into this here on this Friday.
5:05
Speaker 1: So most of these podcasts now are just kind of
5:09
Speaker 1: things that happen, and we'll have people on every once
5:13
Speaker 1: in a while and all that, and it's behind the scenes,
5:15
Speaker 1: the magic, the making of the nonsense. So I get
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Speaker 1: a bunch of random texts. I have people in my circle,
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Speaker 1: a lot of old radio friends, new radio friends, people
5:24
Speaker 1: that were never in the radio old friends. Not many
5:27
Speaker 1: of those left from my younger days then I wasn't
5:31
Speaker 1: in radio. So anyway, one of the people was sexy
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Speaker 1: me my radio buddy, my pal Tom Looney, you know
5:41
Speaker 1: him from TV's Benny Versus the Penny. And Tom was
5:45
Speaker 1: back in his native land in upstate New York, visiting
5:49
Speaker 1: family and friends, which has nothing to do with me.
5:53
Speaker 1: And so Tom was bored, apparently, and so he sent
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Speaker 1: me a couple of text messages out of the wild
6:00
Speaker 1: blue yonder. Hey, look at this. One of my buddies
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Speaker 1: gave me an old shirt. Let me borrow his car
6:08
Speaker 1: when I'm back here. Okay. My response was, okay, great,
6:11
Speaker 1: would you like a cookie? What do you want me
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Speaker 1: to do? Looney said, it's an old shirt. Okay, congratulations, outstanding.
6:21
Speaker 1: My emotional investment in an old shirt, old laundry, not
6:26
Speaker 1: that high, somewhere between actually folding laundry and staring at
6:31
Speaker 1: the paint on the side of the barn dry. Then
6:37
Speaker 1: he sent me a picture. All right, so okay, I
6:40
Speaker 1: can see the old laundry, and wowie, because how here
6:45
Speaker 1: we go? Geronimosy Looney knew that this was red meat
6:51
Speaker 1: in the Hungry Lions den across the top of the shirt,
6:56
Speaker 1: this old relic, this old piece of laundry. Atop the
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Speaker 1: very top, it said the Wolfman Jack Radio show. Now
7:05
Speaker 1: down on one side, it said the Wolfman. The sub
7:09
Speaker 1: headline Wolfman back on the prowl. Monday through Saturday, it said,
7:15
Speaker 1: Monday through Saturday'm looking at it right here, look at
7:17
Speaker 1: a photo of it. Seven pm until midnight. W NBC
7:23
Speaker 1: sixty six Radio. The only station You'll ever need. That's
7:27
Speaker 1: that was their slogan. The only I'm mna steal that.
7:30
Speaker 1: The only station you'll never you'll ever need. I can
7:33
Speaker 1: change it to you'll never need. That is that has
7:36
Speaker 1: been for years. It was wf AN, which is now
7:39
Speaker 1: fn FN's on AM and FM. But that was the Blowtorch,
7:44
Speaker 1: which is six sixty am that. Back then, before FM
7:48
Speaker 1: radio took off, it was very popular. It was the
7:51
Speaker 1: mainstream entertainment. WNBC is the we steal that from the
7:56
Speaker 1: Howard Stern Private Parts movie. Now, the other side of
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Speaker 1: the side of the shirt had this incredible cartoon of
8:04
Speaker 1: wolfman Jack leaning into a microphone with a Looney Tune
8:10
Speaker 1: style wolf hanging on his back. Another cartoon Looney Tunes back. Instantly,
8:18
Speaker 1: I had a cheshire cat smile ear to ear. Now.
8:24
Speaker 1: The wife looked at the picture and if you're of
8:26
Speaker 1: a younger age, you probably wont to the f is
8:29
Speaker 1: a wolfman dude? She kind of shrugged and give the bible.
8:33
Speaker 1: It's a shirt, you know, That's what it is. Shirt,
8:36
Speaker 1: you know, she said, cool, cool, cool, But it's a shirt,
8:38
Speaker 1: you know. And if you're unfamiliar, there was a time long,
8:43
Speaker 1: long ago when the boss jock rolled over the radio
8:48
Speaker 1: and long long before all the modern entertainment. You got
8:53
Speaker 1: your pop culture, you got your latest music, you got
8:57
Speaker 1: everything you need from the hip cool DJ and the
9:02
Speaker 1: boss chalk era of radio, which would be the nineteen
9:04
Speaker 1: sixties into the seventies and just a wonderful, magical time.
9:11
Speaker 1: And I want to point out this was not a
9:13
Speaker 1: shirt to me. This was a time machine. Now. The
9:17
Speaker 1: shirt was too small for me, so I couldn't beg
9:19
Speaker 1: for it, and it's not mine anyways. Tom's not mine.
9:23
Speaker 1: You know how some people we'll see an old baseball
9:26
Speaker 1: glove and immediately flashback to when they were nine years
9:29
Speaker 1: old playing Little League, or hear one guitar riff and
9:34
Speaker 1: there's suddenly sixteen again, futsing around with the guitar in
9:38
Speaker 1: the garage. This was that. This was that for me.
9:44
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, all I wanted to be
9:47
Speaker 1: was on the magic radio box. I wanted to be
9:49
Speaker 1: on the magic radio box. I didn't want to do TV,
9:52
Speaker 1: wasn't planning on becoming a movie star, didn't want to
9:56
Speaker 1: become a matinee idol. It was our ad. Oh. Radio.
10:02
Speaker 1: I became obsessed, absolutely obsessed, completely completely immersed And how
10:08
Speaker 1: could I get on the radio? Radio is where introverts
10:13
Speaker 1: become loud for a living. Think about that, A little introvert.
10:17
Speaker 1: I don't go to parties and hang out with random people.
10:19
Speaker 1: I didn't know I'm an introvert. But radio allows you
10:24
Speaker 1: to perform for literally millions of people without making any
10:29
Speaker 1: eye contact. Think about that. Like the thing that causes
10:33
Speaker 1: the problems is the eye contact. And I could just
10:36
Speaker 1: kind of hang out and do my thing and I'm
10:38
Speaker 1: talking to it and you're listening, and that's it. Radio
10:41
Speaker 1: is a stage where nobody can see a sweat, Like
10:45
Speaker 1: you could be doing the worst show in the world
10:47
Speaker 1: and then your sweat. Now they've changed that in recent years.
10:50
Speaker 1: They've put these big giant cameras and lights and all
10:53
Speaker 1: this crap in here, and I got to deal with that. Ultimately,
10:56
Speaker 1: though I'm in a room by myself. Ultimately, I'm in
10:58
Speaker 1: a room by myself. Don't love the cameras. Don't love
11:02
Speaker 1: the cameras. They're there, the company wants them. I want
11:05
Speaker 1: to keep my job. So it's more than just used
11:08
Speaker 1: to be. For most of my radio run, it was
11:13
Speaker 1: just me and that was it. So only in the
11:16
Speaker 1: last few years have they added a lot of camus,
11:19
Speaker 1: a lot of cameras. But radio is the ultimate sport
11:23
Speaker 1: for us introverts. And I've met a good number of
11:26
Speaker 1: people that are fellow introverts, which is always odd when
11:30
Speaker 1: we meet, because you know, it's what are we doing?
11:32
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't really work to put five introverts
11:36
Speaker 1: in a room. It's a nightmare. Yeah, you spend four
11:39
Speaker 1: hours talking in the middle of the night, in my case,
11:43
Speaker 1: talking to complete and total strangers, and you're sitting alone
11:48
Speaker 1: in a padded soundproof room. That's life, right. Normal kids
11:55
Speaker 1: who are not introverts are outside socializing and playing with
12:00
Speaker 1: friends and all that stuff. And I was inside up.
12:03
Speaker 1: I was of the age. I didn't have the in
12:06
Speaker 1: an interweb, so I was reading books. There was these
12:09
Speaker 1: things called books about radio legends. Now not everyone had
12:13
Speaker 1: a book written about them, but the people that influenced me.
12:15
Speaker 1: There were many books written about Howard Stern. I read those.
12:18
Speaker 1: Paul Harvey, Good Day, Jim Healy. Did not get a
12:24
Speaker 1: Jim Healey book. That was my big inspiration in La
12:28
Speaker 1: Radio Hoo goofed that. I've got to know. Paul Harvey
12:32
Speaker 1: was great. Art Bell read a little bit about Wolfman,
12:36
Speaker 1: Jack and a bunch of other boss jocks from that
12:39
Speaker 1: era to me. To me, they were not broadcasters, they
12:44
Speaker 1: were audio gods. I studied them like I was going
12:49
Speaker 1: to be in a final exam. Now, if only I
12:51
Speaker 1: paid that close attention in school, I would have had
12:54
Speaker 1: this great Eureka moment with education instead of chasing rainbows
12:59
Speaker 1: and radio. But here we are. It seems to have
13:02
Speaker 1: worked out. Okay. So I studied these guys and I
13:05
Speaker 1: wanted to learn what made them tick, you know, how
13:07
Speaker 1: they got to where they got the style that they had.
13:11
Speaker 1: They sounded so magical and spontaneous, and found out a
13:15
Speaker 1: lot of it was not spontaneous. A lot of it
13:18
Speaker 1: was well planned. They would tell stories, and I love
13:21
Speaker 1: the stories. Jim Healy had all his sound bites, and
13:24
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, that's great. Those are so funny, and
13:27
Speaker 1: I hope for certain sound bites and sometimes they would
13:30
Speaker 1: be played. Most of the time they wouldn't. And how
13:33
Speaker 1: did they make you feel like they were talking directly
13:37
Speaker 1: to you? That's the magic radio, right, How did they
13:42
Speaker 1: make you, sitting by yourself in your room feel like
13:45
Speaker 1: they were direct talking directly to you? Never met me,
13:49
Speaker 1: you know, there's millions of other people listening, and you're
13:51
Speaker 1: talking to me. That's odd. The answer, of course, is,
13:54
Speaker 1: as I said, magical, abra cadabra, hocus pocus. Well, let's
14:00
Speaker 1: go back to the point of the story. Not only
14:02
Speaker 1: did I read books about Wolfmanjack and other radio people
14:06
Speaker 1: in my life, the magic of radio mixed with some
14:12
Speaker 1: talent and a frightening amount of preparation. Just great. So
14:17
Speaker 1: years later we now move ahead in the story. So
14:19
Speaker 1: years later I went through high school, I had a
14:22
Speaker 1: little bit of time at Saddleback College, and I landed
14:27
Speaker 1: my first radio job at a commercial radio station. Although
14:30
Speaker 1: I was not getting paid. I was an intern. I
14:32
Speaker 1: was unpaid. Oh my god, it's unfair. So it was
14:35
Speaker 1: an unpaid intern. That's how we used to do things
14:37
Speaker 1: back in the old days at the mighty six ninety
14:40
Speaker 1: right there on SeaWorld Drive in San Diego, and we
14:44
Speaker 1: were across from the Highway Patrol station, which is still
14:47
Speaker 1: there if you want to go buy the building. It
14:48
Speaker 1: is no longer a radio station they moved to. They
14:51
Speaker 1: merged the station with other stations and got bought and
14:56
Speaker 1: sold multiple times since I worked there. They are an
14:59
Speaker 1: iHeart state, I believe, although they're playing salsa music now
15:03
Speaker 1: and they moved to another building. The building I went to, though,
15:08
Speaker 1: is still there. They shoul put a plaque out in front.
15:10
Speaker 1: Right across the street. There's a big highway there, SeaWorld
15:14
Speaker 1: Pacifico's Highway, and then it's across from the Highway Patrol station.
15:17
Speaker 1: So anyway by the time I got to the mighty
15:20
Speaker 1: sixth ninety, it had become a sports station. Obviously, before sports, though,
15:25
Speaker 1: it had another life. That building had been home to
15:29
Speaker 1: one of the great border blaster stations in the history
15:33
Speaker 1: of broadcasting. The hallways were covered with giant tributes to
15:38
Speaker 1: the past. There were photographs of radio's golden age, and
15:43
Speaker 1: I just loved it. I got there early. I left
15:46
Speaker 1: late because I wanted to be and raided. I just
15:48
Speaker 1: want to soak up the environment at the radio station.
15:50
Speaker 1: This was so great to me, amazing to me. And
15:53
Speaker 1: every day I would walk past a aisleway of pictures
15:59
Speaker 1: of legends that had worked at that radio station and
16:04
Speaker 1: the FM station, which was at the time ninety one
16:06
Speaker 1: X famous station in San Diego. I think it's still
16:10
Speaker 1: ninety one X, but who knows. So one photograph stopped
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Speaker 1: me every single time. It had two words wolf man Jack.
16:20
Speaker 1: That's it. Those are the words underneath it. Imagine I'm
16:24
Speaker 1: nineteen years old. I'm nineteen. I'm walking past someone whose
16:28
Speaker 1: career I no one knew a lot about it. I
16:31
Speaker 1: don't know I memorized everything, but I knew a lot
16:32
Speaker 1: about it. It felt like baseball players must get when
16:36
Speaker 1: they're in the old Yankee Stadium, they'd see Babe Bruce Locker.
16:41
Speaker 1: Of course, probably not, it was long gone. Maybe not
16:44
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth, maybe the ghost of Babe Ruth or a
16:47
Speaker 1: Baby Ruth Candy Bar or something like that. The Mighty
16:50
Speaker 1: sixth ninety itself had some history. It had seen a
16:53
Speaker 1: thing or two in the magical Time years earlier. Back
16:58
Speaker 1: in its heyday, the Mighty six ninety blasted from across
17:03
Speaker 1: the US Mexico border on the Mexico side in Baja
17:07
Speaker 1: Cateia with one of those monster signals that seemed to
17:13
Speaker 1: ignore geography. Though there was a time you could not
17:15
Speaker 1: listen on the iHeartRadio app or any app for that matter,
17:20
Speaker 1: and they had these border blaster stations seventy seven thousand watts,
17:26
Speaker 1: as my mentor Lee Hexa Hamilton famously said, from Baja
17:30
Speaker 1: to the Canadian Rockies, Baja to the Canadian Rockies, that's
17:34
Speaker 1: how big the signal was. I think he made some
17:36
Speaker 1: of that up, but still, and it happened once the
17:39
Speaker 1: sun went down during the day, even though it was
17:41
Speaker 1: seventy seven thousand watts all the time. It just worked better,
17:44
Speaker 1: bounced better. The signal bounced around and went further, and
17:49
Speaker 1: that is about the time Border Blaster stations really owned
17:55
Speaker 1: the radio dial. They owned that signal was like the
17:59
Speaker 1: Energizer Bunny. It kept going and going and going and going.
18:04
Speaker 1: This was long before streaming, long before podcasts like this,
18:12
Speaker 1: long before the Internet convinced everyone that they knew everything,
18:16
Speaker 1: and they just that was it. Radio, especially at night,
18:20
Speaker 1: was a mysterious world. It just was. And these DJs
18:27
Speaker 1: were household names, these boss jocks, because all the young
18:31
Speaker 1: punk kids would stay up late and get their music
18:34
Speaker 1: from the boss jock, so the way they go. No,
18:36
Speaker 1: they obviously had guys during the day that would work
18:38
Speaker 1: at LA New York, Chicago, big cities had boss jocks.
18:43
Speaker 1: The guys at night though the Border Blaster guys just
18:45
Speaker 1: was a little different. Hits a little different at night
18:48
Speaker 1: because people let their sensibilities down at night a little
18:51
Speaker 1: bit more, and so you'd spind the dial. They actually
18:55
Speaker 1: had radio dials, and suddenly voices from hundreds, sometimes thousands
19:01
Speaker 1: of miles away appeared out of nowhere. I felt like
19:04
Speaker 1: you were being transported. This is unbelievable. You're like cheating.
19:08
Speaker 1: What are you doing. You're listening to the local news
19:11
Speaker 1: in Saint George, Utah, or Phoenix, Arizona. I grew up
19:14
Speaker 1: in California, in southern California. You get the stations out
19:17
Speaker 1: of northern California, or I got station as far as
19:20
Speaker 1: wells from Seattle, San Antonio. It's like a big deal.
19:25
Speaker 1: Now Wolfman became and he's a little before my time
19:29
Speaker 1: in terms of an impact. I did not hear Wolfman
19:32
Speaker 1: on the radio other than interviews, but he became one
19:35
Speaker 1: of the masters of that world. And his name, of course,
19:39
Speaker 1: shockingly was Wolfman Jacket at birth, unless it wasn't unless
19:44
Speaker 1: that was his stage name. He was born Robert Weston Smith,
19:49
Speaker 1: the pride of Brooklyn, New York. Like they grew up
19:51
Speaker 1: right next to Marcel in Brooklyn, another great broadcaster, and
19:55
Speaker 1: somehow transformed himself into the coolest werewolf in America. His
20:02
Speaker 1: famous gravelly voice not entirely natural. He joked that a
20:07
Speaker 1: couple of shots. I saw some interviews, I've read some books,
20:10
Speaker 1: and he said, a couple of shots a whiskey helped
20:13
Speaker 1: him get this voice. The closest comp for the somewhat
20:17
Speaker 1: modern radio consumer would be Scotty Farrell, who we've had
20:21
Speaker 1: on this podcast. A radio buddy of mine, Pharrel on
20:24
Speaker 1: the bench. He's got that gravity voice. Even that, though,
20:27
Speaker 1: does not do justice to Wolfman Jack. It just doesn't.
20:31
Speaker 1: And as far as the whiskey, whether that's true or not,
20:34
Speaker 1: when the legend becomes the fact, you go with the legend.
20:36
Speaker 1: The voice was unmistakable. You heard it once, you never
20:40
Speaker 1: forgot it. I've heard air checks and whatnot, howling like
20:43
Speaker 1: a werewolf, sound effects, fake phone calls, rapid fire, ad libs,
20:49
Speaker 1: crazy energy. It was a Hokier style. It was a
20:54
Speaker 1: Hokier style before anyone called it personality radio. Though Wolfman
20:59
Speaker 1: was already do it. He was. There's another thing that
21:03
Speaker 1: fascinates me. For a long time, Wolfman Jack avoided making
21:08
Speaker 1: public appearances. Now I freaking love this part of the
21:11
Speaker 1: legend of Wolfman Jack. So this guy is a massive
21:16
Speaker 1: radio star. Before video killed the radio star, radio still dominated.
21:23
Speaker 1: There was a point, believe it or not, in the
21:26
Speaker 1: nineteen I think it was like the seventies into the
21:30
Speaker 1: early eighties when radio still owned. Television television were around,
21:34
Speaker 1: and then radio still was bigger. People on radio got
21:37
Speaker 1: paid more, and then somewhere in the nineteen eighties, I
21:40
Speaker 1: think it was around the time cable television became a
21:43
Speaker 1: real legit thing. That is when like ships passing the night,
21:47
Speaker 1: the TV star, the video star killed the radio star
21:52
Speaker 1: in terms of money, and the radio business killed itself
21:55
Speaker 1: consolidation also, I can get to that. That's a whole
21:58
Speaker 1: different podcast. I don't get it out of here. I
22:01
Speaker 1: could do three hours on what killed radio back in
22:05
Speaker 1: those days before the New World that were in and
22:08
Speaker 1: all that. So back to the point. So Wolfman Jack,
22:12
Speaker 1: who was the biggest thing on night radio as a
22:15
Speaker 1: boss jock, he did not make public appearances. He avoided
22:20
Speaker 1: People were forced to imagine what do he looked like.
22:24
Speaker 1: That's the theater of the mind part of the equation. Now,
22:28
Speaker 1: some listeners even assumed that Wolfman Jack was a black
22:33
Speaker 1: dude because he knew rhythm and blues, and so people
22:37
Speaker 1: assume certain things, and he knew all about that style
22:42
Speaker 1: of music and he'd play that stuff. And everything was
22:45
Speaker 1: segregated on the radio for years. You had certain formats.
22:49
Speaker 1: You didn't play songs that were outside the format because
22:52
Speaker 1: that's just not allowed. People needed to know what they
22:55
Speaker 1: were getting, and Wolfman Jack would just throw random crap
22:59
Speaker 1: out that was from other formats. Because he liked it.
23:02
Speaker 1: I mean it sounded like he'd been born inside a jukebox.
23:06
Speaker 1: And then the reason I love this story, so he
23:08
Speaker 1: didn't make a lot of public appearances of any at all,
23:11
Speaker 1: became a big star on radio, and then came this
23:13
Speaker 1: movie American Graffiti. Now you might not know what that is.
23:18
Speaker 1: It was a historical movie, all time movie for that
23:21
Speaker 1: era in Hollywood, or way for Hollywood before they stopped
23:25
Speaker 1: making new movies. Suddenly everyone could see the mysterious All
23:32
Speaker 1: Night DJ. And there was this young guy. I don't
23:35
Speaker 1: know whatever happened to him in movies. I think he
23:37
Speaker 1: worked out okay, named George Lucas. And the legend is,
23:42
Speaker 1: and whether it's true or not, again, when the legend
23:44
Speaker 1: becomes the fact, you were the legend. The legend is
23:46
Speaker 1: that a young upstart George Lucas, who hadn't become the
23:50
Speaker 1: George Lucas he would become in Hollywood, paid Wolfman Jack
23:55
Speaker 1: with a slice of the movie revenue instead of just
23:59
Speaker 1: a paycheck percentage of the profits. Now, to say that
24:02
Speaker 1: is a good decision would be like saying investing in
24:05
Speaker 1: Apple when it first started would have been a good
24:07
Speaker 1: choice as well. The movie became a cultural phenomena. More importantly,
24:13
Speaker 1: it became a box office hit. Wolfman Jack kept cashing
24:17
Speaker 1: checks for years. He made more money from that than
24:20
Speaker 1: he did as a radio DJ, and it wasn't even
24:23
Speaker 1: that close. And that's called winning without buying a lottery ticket. Now,
24:28
Speaker 1: at his peak, Wolfman Jack's syndicated nighttime radio show aired
24:34
Speaker 1: on more than two thousand radio stations in over fifty countries.
24:41
Speaker 1: He was literally known in the air everywhere. Now, think
24:44
Speaker 1: about that two thousand stations. We love to brag that
24:50
Speaker 1: were on six hundred plus radio station. The Ben Mallor
24:54
Speaker 1: Show is on over six hundred radio stations. That is
24:56
Speaker 1: a ton That is mind blowing. You know what's more
25:01
Speaker 1: mind blowing the fact that Wolfman Jack was on seventy
25:05
Speaker 1: percent more radio stations than we are. And I feel
25:08
Speaker 1: like six hundreds like insane. He was on two thousand stations.
25:12
Speaker 1: Today everybody talks about I want to go viral. Wolfman
25:17
Speaker 1: Jack was able to go viral before anybody owned a computer.
25:23
Speaker 1: Think about that. Rock stars would mention him in songs,
25:27
Speaker 1: DJs copied him, broadcasters borrowed pieces of his act. He's
25:33
Speaker 1: been dead for over thirty years. It's thirty years after,
25:37
Speaker 1: over thirty years after Wolfman Jack died of a heart
25:39
Speaker 1: attack at a young age, and you can still hear
25:43
Speaker 1: the echoes of Wolfman Jack every time some gas bag
25:48
Speaker 1: blow hard personality decides to put a little razzle dazzle
25:55
Speaker 1: on top and stop just reading the script and simply
25:59
Speaker 1: be interesting. So we honor wolf Manajet. When I do
26:02
Speaker 1: these eighteen minute commercial reads every hour during the World Cup,
26:07
Speaker 1: we are honoring wolf MANGI. You think I'm reading the
26:09
Speaker 1: copy of verbatim. God, No, I'm adding a little extra
26:12
Speaker 1: on top, making sure to read the legal least so
26:15
Speaker 1: I don't get in trouble with the corporate people. But
26:16
Speaker 1: I just add and make it a little better, dress
26:19
Speaker 1: it up a little bit, put some window dressing on it,
26:21
Speaker 1: some extra cayenne pepper, and that's it. That's it. But
26:25
Speaker 1: wolf Manjack all the fame he got because he figured
26:29
Speaker 1: out that radio wasn't just playing records. It's about creating theater,
26:35
Speaker 1: which brings me back to the shirt. It's amazing how
26:37
Speaker 1: one faded piece of cotton from at least gotta be
26:42
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. I would think that shirt came out
26:47
Speaker 1: early in the mid seventies, and that single photo unlocked
26:52
Speaker 1: all of these memories of wolf Man Jack. One little
26:54
Speaker 1: cartoon drawing on a T shirt, A voice from an
26:58
Speaker 1: era I did not grow up listening as I said
27:00
Speaker 1: to wolf Manjack. And suddenly I flashed back to when
27:02
Speaker 1: I was nineteen years old walking the hallways at the
27:07
Speaker 1: mighty six ninety in San Diego, dreaming impossible dreams. And yeah,
27:12
Speaker 1: I was that kid. Ah someday, Ah, somehow I'm gonna
27:16
Speaker 1: get my shot. And it is. It's one of the
27:19
Speaker 1: great things that happens in life. For of those funny
27:21
Speaker 1: things in life. Sometimes it isn't the fireworks that make
27:24
Speaker 1: the biggest noise. Sometimes it's a person harassing you with stories.
27:29
Speaker 1: I got this T shirt. I thought you might like
27:32
Speaker 1: this old T shirt now. In closing, Wolfman Jack famously said,
27:36
Speaker 1: if you do right, everything will come out right. That
27:39
Speaker 1: was one of his great quotes. He also said, we
27:40
Speaker 1: are put on this earth to have a good time.
27:43
Speaker 1: This makes other people feel good. And the psycho continues,
27:46
Speaker 1: and so a couple of famous lines from wolf Man Jack,
27:51
Speaker 1: which leads us into the word of the week. That's right,
27:57
Speaker 1: the word of the week. As we awaken a sleeping giant.
28:01
Speaker 1: The word of the week this week is a word
28:02
Speaker 1: we used years ago. We have brought it back. A
28:04
Speaker 1: number of you seem fascinated by the word. I use
28:06
Speaker 1: it all the time. The word is schmuck. Schmuck is
28:11
Speaker 1: the word of the week. The word schmuck has one
28:14
Speaker 1: of the more interesting histories in American slang. S c
28:19
Speaker 1: h m u c k schmuck. Now, the word is Yiddish,
28:25
Speaker 1: and I'd like to thank my grandfather may he rest
28:27
Speaker 1: in peace, who used that word and many other more
28:31
Speaker 1: colorful words in the home growing up. So it's a
28:35
Speaker 1: Yiddish term, and it is spelled in Yiddish. Well, it's
28:39
Speaker 1: spelled in their language, but s h m okay. The
28:42
Speaker 1: modern spelling is s c h m u c k.
28:46
Speaker 1: In Yiddish, it's s h m okay. Originally, schmock was
28:51
Speaker 1: not an insult at all. It was it was it
28:55
Speaker 1: was just a word meaning penis. That was it. Schmuck's
28:59
Speaker 1: a penis. And it ended up entering the lexicon, obviously
29:04
Speaker 1: from Yiddish and related Polish and Slavic. It's about the
29:10
Speaker 1: male anatomy, obviously, And and then there's this debate of
29:16
Speaker 1: how it ended up becoming mainstream. Like many body part terms,
29:22
Speaker 1: there was an evolution into an insult, meaning something something
29:27
Speaker 1: more than just a you know, you say you're a schmuck.
29:30
Speaker 1: You're calling someone a fool, an idiot, a jerk, loser, loser,
29:38
Speaker 1: just a contemptible person. The progression was the clinical term penis.
29:46
Speaker 1: Then it became obnoxious person. Then it turned into fool
29:51
Speaker 1: that Now it's that guy's a schmuck, which is what
29:53
Speaker 1: I use. You're a schmuck, you know, just a douche,
29:57
Speaker 1: which is another fun word, but I usually say schmuck.
30:00
Speaker 1: Word spread into American culture the Jewish immigrant communities in
30:06
Speaker 1: places like New York City during the early nineteen hundreds,
30:10
Speaker 1: and by the mid twentieth century it had become mainstream.
30:14
Speaker 1: Now it was mostly because of Vaudevillian comic comedians, Jewish
30:20
Speaker 1: comedians in Vaudeville, the Borsch Belt comedy circuit. If you've
30:24
Speaker 1: ever studied the Borsch Belt, that's an interesting tale, and
30:29
Speaker 1: then a bunch of Hollywood writers sitcom, stand up comedy.
30:35
Speaker 1: Most people today use schmuck without originally without knowing the
30:41
Speaker 1: original story. It was use it, that's it, and some
30:46
Speaker 1: of the big comedians who were able to promote the
30:51
Speaker 1: use of the word schmuck. Jackie Mason, Don Rickles, who
30:55
Speaker 1: ripped me when I was a kid at a bar Mitzvah,
30:57
Speaker 1: Rodney Dangerfield, who I was in an elem with in
31:00
Speaker 1: Burbank at eleven fifty and he was in an elevator
31:05
Speaker 1: and it was very odd because I had seen all
31:07
Speaker 1: of his as an older man. I'd seen his old
31:10
Speaker 1: work and I had heard about him on TV. And
31:12
Speaker 1: then I'm in an elevator with Rodney danger FOREL like, Wow,
31:16
Speaker 1: that's kind of weird. Jerry Seinfeld, of course, Larry David,
31:19
Speaker 1: all purport people that promote schmuck. Calling someone a schmuck
31:26
Speaker 1: is it. It's higher on the insult scale than you're
31:30
Speaker 1: a fool. However it is now over time, it's it's
31:36
Speaker 1: less of an insult because it's been used so much. Right,
31:41
Speaker 1: And you know, it's all about the tone with most
31:44
Speaker 1: of these things. What's the tone? I need the tone
31:46
Speaker 1: the time that the tone would be he said, what
31:49
Speaker 1: an idiot? Or don't be a jerk, or that guy's
31:52
Speaker 1: a dope, a real dope, whatever, let's listen. It's it's
31:57
Speaker 1: all about the liver. It's usually a fun word. It's
32:02
Speaker 1: not hostile anymore. It's a it's a silly phrase. And
32:06
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of other Yiddish terms that have been
32:09
Speaker 1: repurposed in English. Mensch mention on a bench. That's one
32:15
Speaker 1: of the few Yiddish words that's actually a compliment. Minsh
32:20
Speaker 1: a person of integrity and honor. You're a real mensch.
32:23
Speaker 1: That's a compliment. Putts literally another vulgar Yiddish word for anatomy,
32:30
Speaker 1: and now it's been repurposed. You're an idiot, You're obnoxious,
32:34
Speaker 1: you're such a putts, that old thing. I mean, you
32:39
Speaker 1: can go on. There's a bunch of other Yiddish terms
32:41
Speaker 1: we can go on and on for as well. On
32:44
Speaker 1: that note, it is good to be back in front
32:47
Speaker 1: of a microphone. I apologize for my my time away
32:52
Speaker 1: going a wall. Blame the wife, Blame the wife. You
32:56
Speaker 1: only live once. You got to enjoy things. So we
32:58
Speaker 1: enjoyed some time. Tell you some stories about that. I'm
33:01
Speaker 1: sure we'll come up here on the old pod cast
33:05
Speaker 1: on the old podcast. So we'll be back new pod
33:08
Speaker 1: on Saturday, the fourth of July. Well, anyone will be
33:11
Speaker 1: listening to a fifth hour podcast on the fourth of July.
33:14
Speaker 1: We're gonna find out if the numbers aren't good, won't
33:18
Speaker 1: do it again. And the mail bag. We're gonna have
33:20
Speaker 1: a mail bag on Sunday, so send a bunch of
33:22
Speaker 1: questions in today. We'll put the mail bag together for you.
33:26
Speaker 1: That'll be the fifth of July, better known as a
33:30
Speaker 1: couple of days from night right now, so we'll have
33:34
Speaker 1: that to look forward to and enjoy. The fourth I'm
33:37
Speaker 1: excited get the big hot dog eating contest, assuming all
33:41
Speaker 1: the weather's good and all that in New York, Coney Island, Brooklyn.
33:46
Speaker 1: And in years past, we've had Joey Chestnut on this podcast,
33:51
Speaker 1: and I did consider reaching out to Joey and my
33:55
Speaker 1: schedule because of the stuff I had, the window that
33:58
Speaker 1: was available to chat with Joey Chestnut did not really
34:02
Speaker 1: work with my schedule, and the quality of the recording
34:05
Speaker 1: would not have been good. So I decided to we'll
34:08
Speaker 1: have him on another time. I do like the outlaw
34:12
Speaker 1: version of Joey Chestnut, the criminal version, because he got
34:16
Speaker 1: into some kind of dust up and that's kind of
34:19
Speaker 1: the backstory and all that. He is all what this
34:24
Speaker 1: is all about, and it's great with the World Cup
34:27
Speaker 1: and everything going on, What a time, What a time
34:31
Speaker 1: to be alive. All right, have a great rest of
34:34
Speaker 1: your Friday, And as Dick and Dayton would say, bye bye,
34:38
Speaker 1: bye bye