Have fun hitting the post on these....

http://www.98wrc.com/ControlRoom/controlroom.html

I am not in radio but this has always been something that bothered me. Why talk all the way up to the part when the singing starts?

Its one thing if you have usefull info but most of it is pointless jibba jabba

Forward momentum. Top 40 has been doing this for YEARS!

OOOOOOhhhhh man that was fun. Give me that primary and secondary tones.

"Why talk all the way up to the part when the singing starts? "



Mc74

We never knew. We were never told. For most of us it was don't ask....don't tell. It was like a musician hittin' a riff dead solid. We just knew that if we stomped on it...the "bat-phone" would ring. That was your quest. Smack the post. Smack it pretty. Keep the PD or consultant off the bat-phone because their very existence ( as far as we could tell) was waiting for you to stomp on a vocal. Then call your buds and ask them if they heard you nail it like the guys on WLS, WCFL, KHJ.......

That was so awesome Bob, thanks for posting this!!
Answer to the question was right on too.
I only know that when I hit the post it was like.....well not like but pretty close to ok, well slightly nearly kinda like orgasmic.
Ok, maybe not, but it sure felt good when I did.
It is just the way radio was.
I still love the I-Man's lead up to "Build me up Buttercup". That was the best post lead I ever heard!

When Art Bell does his show, he usually picks songs with long intros and hits the post. Leading up to the post, he summarizes what has been on in that segment of the show or does a teaser for the next one. I think that this sounds a lot cooler than other hosts who just make loops out of the instrumental parts of popular songs.

Bob, great web site! I recorded this while clicking the icons on the WRC web site. I could have multi-tracked the individual cuts, but that would be cheating.

http://www.divshare.com/download/4805454-f77

Hey Steve that was great.
I played with that thing for an hour last night.
Came up with all kinds of fun cuts.
Then I added my own voice to their jingles and promos, that was fun too.
Best of all, I played them for my 15 year old and he just laughed but loved it and wanted to know why we don't do that anymore!

The reason we originally talked over the record intro and/or closing, was because in the early days of consumer audio recorders, BMI and ASCAP were absolutely paranoid about the possibility of listeners actually RECORDING a song off the radio, as opposed to buying the record. Word got around the PD community pretty fast, that you'd be less likely to have to deal with a playlist audit by the "collectors", IF you co-operated by having your jocks talk over the intro of the recordings, fade one into another, etc. In many cases, the jocks who began working in later years never even knew the reason for doing it, it was just the way "everybody else did it". Now, of course, it's just a hold-over from the past (I notice the jocks at 106.7 do it a lot); some stations tho, like KMHD, specifically discourage it. By the way, those network logos and bottom-of-screen animations that periodically pop up, when you're trying to watch a movie on TV -- same purpose (SS-DD).

I find it fascinating that even in professional radio, "traditions" get started and these traditions get perpetuated just because everybody else does it that way. One of my frustrations when I did college radio and tried to get serious about it was that we had all of these traditions and taboos about the station that were not in writing, and these existed "just because."

In one of our jock meetings at Z100 we were talking about talking "up the ramp" to the post. We discussed how a vocal with no words was also considered a post. Some songs had multiple posts and on the cart lable they were typed as : 05/10/17/23/4:50 fade.

I also remember talking to Chet Buchannon about this and he said if you do step on the post, STEP ALL OVER IT, don't suddenly stop because you messed up...earn that Bat-phone call....

Bobmiller, fun stuff. Nice find.

Mickproper, I had never heard that explanation before...talking over to prevent recording of songs. That may have been the start of it, but "flow" and "energy" were why we kept doing it.

The northwest had two of the best ramp talkers...Dancin' Danny Wright and the great Andy Barber. I'm sure there were others...
Oh, Ron Leonard too!

Wow thanks Bob! I didn't know I still had it in me! Lots 'o'fun.

Bob, I agree with everyone else...that was pretty fun stuff!

Funniest stomp on the post I ever heard: September 1978, KWRO Coquille. Jock (unknown-not me!) was talking up Robin Gibb's "Oh Darling". Over the :07 Intro:
"Sixty-three Kaaaaaaaaaaay Doubleyouuuuuu R-O (crunch!).

Of course I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but this gem is stuck in my brain forever, not that I didn't do more than my fair share of stepping over vocals. I've conveniently blocked those out.

And, slightly off the topic, remember when we could do great segues? Here's the best one I ever came up with. Have fun with this: Linda Ronstadt's version of "Ooh Baby Baby" in to Delfonics "La La (Means I Love You)" Hit "La La" on Linda's last "Ooh".

Chills

I dont really have a problem with it but it was nice to find out how and when this started.

If its done correctly, its fine. Its when its so painfully obvious that then it bothers me. Make it natural.

I heard an aircheck from Z100's Morning Zoo ( mid to late 80s) and they either got a letter or a phone call asking the very same question on why the DJ's talked at the beginning of the song.

Well as they began to set the bit up a song started playing and of course the ZOO was talking all over the song. As a matter of fact they talked all the way through song saying how rude it was for DJ's of any kind to do such a thing. It was a classsic Zoo bit.

So when I was doing mornings at KPAM when it was in it's Christian format (97-99), I got a call from a guy who asked the very same question. So not being shy I totally ripped off the Z00's bit and started talking over the first part of the song. Since I didn't have a side kick I didn't feel I could get away talking all the way through a song.

The guy called me back and said, "okay I get your point."

> some stations tho, like KMHD, specifically discourage it.

When I was in college, my roommate Brian and I did some of the weekend jazz shifts at the university's radio station (not KMHD). I never talked over the intros or the ends of songs (the exception being applause at the end live tracks) because I suspected that the audience for that program expected a formal sounding presentation. Brian would sometimes talk over part of the intro to a song, and he once got a call from a listener who didn't approve of the practice, though the listener was polite about it. The Top-40 forward momentum approach, in my opinion, doesn't work for "fine arts" type radio formats.

When I was volunteering for KMHD's "Homegrown Jazz" years ago, I once learned that the training program for the campus-only "X58" student station also specifically forbids talking up the ramps of songs. I don't know the reason, although I suspect that likely, the goal is to produce as consistent a sound as possible with relatively novice airstaff.

If we're talking about someone who knows where the ramp is, I have to say that I never heard Craig Walker step on a record!

Alfredo-

When I taught for a semester at Mt. Hood all my students pulled an air shift on X58. It was a top 40 type presentation and they talked up the ramps to songs. But that was 10 years ago.

Semoochie....When Craig Walker stepped on an intro he still sounded good.

Ok since my people are still talking to his people, I can't say much, but, I can tell you that in my attempt to bring the legendary Craig Walker out of retirement to my new station KRAP, I have been working closely with him on ramping as well as losing his irritating light hearted banter and good natured delivery.
I am trying to get him back to his roots as a SCREAMING top 40 deejay.
I am happy to report that both the negotiations and the training are coming along nicely and the new and improved Craig Walker will be airing soon.

Craig had talent and instincts that really distinguished him in this area. Even coming out of the news with John, it was just a natural conversation that conveniently ended right at the post. In years of listening I never heard him miss one.

During the heyday of Top 40 radio in the 50's and early 60's, this was the norm and they all did it and did it well.

Hitting multiple posts in a song seems to be a lost art. Here are some examples from KISN airchecks:

http://www.386server.info/~alfredo/PDX_radio_history/CD2-low_bandwidth.mp3

The end of the following recording has some airchecks from the KGW morning show, where conversations naturally end at the post of a song:

http://www.386server.info/~alfredo/PDX_radio_history/CD4-low_bandwidth.mp3

You might want to save these mp3s and play them later because they reside on a server whose connection really slows down if more than a handful of people try to access it at one time.

I always thought the best intros had multiple posts, preferably with shouts, yeahs or ohs.

...It's not crap, it's K-RAP!

Thank you all for the kind words. I don't remember stepping on many vocals, but when I did, it really ticked me off. I would go back to the aircheck and figure out what I did wrong. The usual problem was that I talked too long!!

Now Craig, I'm sure you remember that if you could nail "What Is Life" by G. Harrison...you were absolved from clobbering "Afternoon Delight" by The Starland Vocal Band...or was that just an east coast thing?

Craig: are we getting closer on this deal? I have Gary Owens standing by if you aren't on board!

It's been a long time since I've listened, but I remember Bill & Tim at KKNU in Eugene are very good at bantering back and forth up a ramp and Bill always nailed it.

Easy to do the talk overs and hit the posts of all the Oldies" presented on this website. One thing doing Oldies, no surprises , you know all the posts, you could do them in ur sleep using only the right side of your brain, which is the creative part, not the left side, the logical organized part ! It was a lot more difficult when all that music was brand new. It took at least a pot of coffee, listening to the new intros on air or in the production room or at home before your shift and so forth.

Speaking of that, I still have a " Radio " dream of some kind a few times a year. Its always a scenario where I am doing a show, analog , carts, CDs Records, live...and so eventually I get distracted by something else and miss a break, segue, something like that, then get all confused and bent out of shape, wind up waking up mad !

And I discovered many years after the summer of 76' when " Afternoon Delight " was in the top 40, doing Oldies , that if you had a very good pair of headphones one could hear the Danoff's take a breath just before the vocal started, also the drum beat changed , but it was real fast and you had to pay attention.

And thanks Bob for the link. I had fun with this myself. Its been awhile ! I found myself longing for 'gain' control...to be able to control a liner talk over correctly. Also, I sent this to my " peeps ". Lot of them family , who never were actually in a radio station, but heard me on the air at some point or another. They have emailed me back declaring what fun they had with the 'control room '. And Oh thats how it was huh?