Obscurity and Decay

Our favorite electronic media medium at Obscurity and Decay is the “original and best”, as miraculously dreamed of by Nikola Tesla, not Marconi. Again, the wrong person gets the “credit” in mainstream ‘thought’…

Our favorite radio station is the truly unique and one of a kind, WJJL 1440 AM, with main studios in the beautiful Southgate Plaza (which is itself a beautiful thing to behold) and satellite studios in the Niagara Arts And Cultural Center, which is a wonderful old “high” school which has been put to most excellent re-use, a concept we wholeheartedly endorse, just as the old Moog Synthesizer factory on Walden Avenue currently houses the most wonderful Super Flea!

We were treated to actual visits to WJJL when our friends Bill & Skitch hosted “The Go Show” on the station in the Summer of 2009.

With “a little help from their friends”, Zeus and the mysterious Mr. Ski-Mask, which seemed like something out of the Counter-Culture of the 60’s paired with some of the modern aspects of “shock”.

That’s where our “vintage” Southgate Plaza pictures originate, as the station is now in a different location – so glad we were able to document this time in history – note the superb Elvis wall hangings in the lobby, no doubt in honor of one of the station’s best programs, “WJJElvis”, one solid hour of Elvis music hosted what appears to live by Uncle John Phillips, on Fridays 11AM to Noon! We never miss it!

Also at the top of our list is “Casa Rico”, the oldest running heritage program on radio, hosted by one of the most talented, entertaining, and humorous radio hosts I have ever had the pleasure of listening to, Lenny Rico. The show specializes in “Paisan favorites”, often incredible remakes of 60’s hits with vocals sung in Italian, and often with some pleasant fuzz, as in the cover of the Monkees song “I’m A Believer” this week that literally blew my mind. Interjected in between is some old school humor. My favorite segment, though, has to be “Spaghetti Spotlight” – the introduction Lenny Rico has put together to start this segment of the program is pure genius – a sonic pastiche worthy of George Martin, if you ask me. There are sound effects of creaky-sounding decrepit machinery when the guest pepperoni stick spinner spins the pepperoni stick to rate the song sent in by a local artist. There is a rating system, as explained by Lenny, in which the pepperoni stick will fall on a range of between 1 and 10 meatballs, which are arranged “in circular fashion, just like a clock”. The pepperoni stick, by the way, is nailed to a piece of plywood, for as Lenny informs the listener of constantly, “this is a low budget show”. It is a living example of what radio must have once been like when the likes of the Mad Daddy from Cleveland were running the airwaves before the days of demographic market automated bot programming. The show is on both Saturday and Sunday mornings for a Power Paisan Weekend!

As for “The Go Show”, to quote Lenny, “The Go Show WENT“…just like most of the things we enjoy here at Obscurity and Decay!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 2:58 am and is filed under AM Radio . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.