I haven’t been a good blogger, which could be my first broken resolution. Damn. 17 days and out. Please forgive.
So we are on a stronger signal. That’s cool, because bigger is usually better. Sucks for my friends – past and present – who has affiliations with 99X. I really, truly, honestly have a broken heart for them. 99X was a LEGENDARY radio station for Atlanta and the music industry as a whole. Brian Philips, Leslie Fram, and crew created a brilliant, innovative, trend-bucking, trend-setting, and amazing brand. It set the tone for a generation of Atlantan’s and drove a significant part of rock / alternative music in the 90’s. When I was just a baby radio dude in Tucson, I called Jimmy Baron because I wanted to be like him and I wanted my show to be like his. (He never called me back. But now we are dear friends and I don’t call him back. Karma.)
Musically, a whole generation of Georgia artists owes an incredible debt of gratitude to WNNX and Leslie in particular. Collective Soul, REM, John Mayer, Shawn Mullins, and Butch Walker are just a few I can think of know. Tens of millions of albums sold, hundreds of millions of dollars generated, and countless fans moved because Leslie gave her thumbs up. It truly is incredible.
But radio is cyclical and that format is reaching the bottom of a cycle. This is a business and businesses need to make money and perform for their customers. 99X is still a great brand, and will now exist and grow at 99X.com … which has great potential and could be the next, well, 99X. But it will never be the 99X of 93-99, and that makes me sad.
But now we are moving into their house. Our new house. And I don’t know that it has sunk in yet. The responsibility given to us by the owners of our company is a little intense, but filling the shoes of the previous tenants is equally as foreboding to me. Not to mention the fact that now we are on an even playing field as most of the other ‘players’ in the market … there is no excuse for poor performance. Ugh. Work. I got into radio to play. Damn it.
Speaking of ‘play,’ I have spent the past 5 days playing in the Caribbean with some great friends. We drank, sunned, drank, at shi**y food, drank, raced golf carts, drank, swam with dolphins, drank, hugged a sea lion, drank, rode on a Catamaran with an angry sea captain and his mistress, drank, and drank. Not kidding … I don’t know if I have ever consumed so much beer in one spurt. I feel swollen, like one of those old-timey school hippity-hops. We were at an all-inclusive and would sit in the shade while the women tanned. And if we set our mug or cup down and it was more than half empty, it would fill. It was miraculous and dangerous.
During my dolphin swim I had a brief spell of simple, and it was recorded on DVD for perpetual humiliation. See, the trainer of the dolphins said ‘now we are going to dance with your dolphin.’ And I’m like cool, I can do that – even with no phat beats to bounce too. But then he said to hold their fins and let them dance, but I didn’t hear that. So the dolphin danced. And I danced. But I didn’t ever hold his fins. And I look like an enormous tool. Jessica’s in the background doing just fine, but you can hardly see her. And over the dolphin squeals you can here my buddy Ed laughing at the funniest thing he’s seen in decades.
But I’m a dumb tool that danced with a dolphin and I am OK with that, ‘cause it was cool as hell.
I’ll post the video shortly.
