"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered."

Let me insert another photo of yours truly with King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford.  This picture was taken outside the soulless, modern KTYD studios in Goleta, after having left the eighth floor of the historic Granada Theatre building.  Note, I am wearing the unusual wooden glasses that I had bought from France, imported into Santa Barbara to an optical store on State Street and Micheltorena.  It's the '80s folks, and these are my Salad Days (what the Hell does that mean? That I couldn't afford the main course?).  I loved those glasses.  They were made of lightweight Asian wood.  Comparisons were made to Elton John or Trevor Horn, but I never saw anyone else have a pair.  And at the time, I thought they fitted in with what I was trying to do.  A little style, a little Art, for one who felt ambivalent about show and biz.  I used to joke about the frames: 1) I would say that the wood was from the Original Cross, and 2) that the wood was so light, that if I ever drowned, you could locate the body where the frames were floating.

Anyway, I make a long story longer...

Those glasses...the picture...in front of the soulless studios.  Later on, a photo was taken of the radio staff (in front of the same studios) for a Christmas Greeting Card.  We are now run by a GM who breaks the mold in hyper, right wing paranoia.  He is my bete noire.  My wooden glasses have broken their spring-based ear stems.  I can't wear them for the photo. I will have to wear my older, John Lennon-like wire frames for the foto shoot.  GM goes Bobby De Niro or Al Pacino fumed nutso. Pulls Program Director aside and sez, "What's Guden trying to say? That modern rock sucks and we should go back to the '60s? Fire him!"

This was not the first time El Jefe tried to remove yours truly.  It started during the election of Reagan against Carter.  On election day, boss man comes into the studios, eyeing me as the soul member of a '60s based mindset (I still had the longest hair among the Sales types).  He boasts that he was the first to vote in the early morning hours at the Santa Barbara Court House ("I wanted to be the first one to vote for Reagan").  He mentions that he stumbles on a couple of long-hairs, camped out to be the first to vote for Carter.  "Your people, " he digs at me.  I reply: "Well, I voted for Carter, so my vote cancels out your vote."  Surprise, surprise!  It's AMAZING what you can say to a high octane fueled, ultra paranoid Big Biz type that can set him off.  He pulled off his dutiful Program Director into the Secret Sanctum and commanded: "Fire him!"  The PD rather timidly pointed out that someone couldn't be fired for their democratic freedom of choice at the ballot box.  But the V for Vendetta was put into place.  "Find a reason...and Fire Him!"  Ah, those were the Good Old Days, Mein Herr (und Meine Dammen).

And they found a way.  During the Christmas Holidays I got sick, so I called in a fellow employee to fill in for me.  This was a breach of command ("I should have called the GM, despite being unavailable for such trivialities, to authorize who would fill my time spot.  Unacceptable.  You're fired. 12 years with KTYD, goodbye...no severance pay... get out, f**k off.").

Now this came from a man who boasted that he had paintings on his wall that had swastikas hidden behind him, and he would invite his Jewish business friends over for dinner just to laugh at them for not knowing that they were there (!!!).  This man would tell you that a certain nightclub owner (who was a sponsor) couldn't be trusted because he was a coke addict, while he himself was doing lines of coke in the business room.  It was a movie, folks.

And you wonder where my cynicism comes from.

Like I said before, my own egocentric behaviour wanted to be the longest surviving member of KTYD.  And I was.  This totally noncommercial, really weird program of electronic and foreign music, mixed with sound collages and very odd humour...it should have died years ago.  And yet, with all the format changes and other bullshit...it lasted.  Why?  Because the audience knew...far more than the sales wonks, that love it or hate it...it was the real deal.  With all it's flaws, and I take full responsibility for its content...it was free.  Freedom of choice.  Freeform.  No corporate strings were pulling the show.  It was up to the audience.  Here's the music.  Do you like it or not?

So, with that, I let go of my desire to set a Guinness World Record for being the most noncommercial radio program on a commercial radio station; silently told coke-fuelled General Manager to go fondle his tiny penis...and went down the street to have the best radio job of my life.

For a while, at least.  Then came the General Manager who thought the station should have a news helicopter, loved to drive the streets in the news car at 3.A,M.... like he was in the Batmobile, and would call me during Space Pirate Radio and tell me to play "Smuggler's Blues" by Glenn Frey.

Hey...any Space Pirate Radio listeners with tapes, remember "Smuggler's Blues" popping up somewhere between Tangerine Dream and Amon Duul 2?  No?  I didn't think so.  Guess where that decision went?  After dealing with so many chemical infused, ugly bosses, I didn't care about protocol anymore.  When new toady boss called me during the show and told me to play "Smuggler's Blues," I said, "You can come in and play it yourself."  "You're NOT going to play it?" he barks.  And smart ass me sez to to Bossman, "In 20 years of Space Pirate Radio, no one has told me what to play in the show and you're not going to be the first.  So come on in and play what you want and I'll go home.  Otherwise go f...k yourself."  Well, I was marked by then.  He hired 3 program directors to fire me, but the first: I clued him to how he was actually going to hire the man who was going to replace him; the second was an LA pro who knew how successful Space Pirate Radio was and he wasn't going to let it go; the third was his hit man.  I bet he liked "Smuggler's Blues."

The show remained faithful, as best as it could.  But the background continued to be ugly.  It was a business.  And business was usual.  Unfortunately, it was I who continued to remain unusual.

Sorry, old habits die hard.

"We can make it better with a little bit of razzamatazz."

Mentioning my 1973 play Nothing is Sacred in the last entry has brought back thoughts about being daring and nutsy on stage during those early '70s.  It was great, folks!  A tremendous amount of freedom, again in thanks to Santa Barbara City College drama instructor Max Whittaker.  The school would put on its regular productions and then allow the student run Theatre Guild to mount its own show.  All of us at the time had been fortunate enough to be in involved in the comedy production of Love Rides the Rails.  This old time melodrama had been hipped up enough (thanks to the cool direction by Mr. Whittaker) to be the most successful play in SBCC's Little Theatre history.  I was Theatre Guild president at the time, so it was my desire to take the momentum of the first comedy and be more outrageous with the second.

Nothing is Sacred was meant to be a surreal day in television.  In the spirit of the Firesign Theatre, Ernie Kovacs and the Goon Show, I wanted to try and go further--especially in visuals and sound.  We were young and we had energy.  Madness, really!  Here's the proposal:

What would happen if the characters from the early morning kiddie show would carry on... through the matinee movie, into the afternoon soap opera, continue into the evening news, and then wind up in the late night entertainment show?  And sandwich this story in the trappings of a day of trivial broadcast crap, done hopefully in provocative parody.  Let's mix the chemicals and see what happens.

The main theme was centered on the cheezey Red Scare sci-fi film of the '50s, entitled Crabs, that was being played on the Ben Hummer Matinee Movie.  A real parody, now long forgotten.  The film, somewhat inspired by the actual movie, Attack of the Crab Monsters, focused on the dismal life of a man named David Typical.  A person who, having been given a slight case of the crotch squirrels by his girlfriend, has the bad fortune of, while visiting his dentist for x-rays, having his lower jockey shorts area exposed to the radiation rather than his teeth.  Are you following this so far?  The radiation affects the infestation of crab lice and before you can scream "Jim Arness," the community is dominated (in a Bert I. Gordon sort of way) by giant mutated crabs.  Why not, I say?  It's only f..king Santa Barbara.  A harbour town.  Deal with it, you poncey bastards!  You got CRABS.  GIANT CRABS!!!  And they're crawling on the Arlington Tower...the Granada Theatre building.  All those oak trees (what else are you going to find for a forested pubis habitat)?

So the poor, hapless bastard becomes crab infested in the movie, winds up desperate for medical attention (that will NOT be given to him on the soap opera Cottage Cheese Hospital), generates giant crabs that will appear later on the incredibly mediocre and amateur local news...and finally wind up as guests (the giant crabs, that is) and destroying the late night talk and entertainment program...the After Death Show, with your (g)host...Post Mortem.

Cool!

I was fortunate enough to do this show with all the actors from the mega-successful Love Rides the Rails.  The cast included R. Leo Schreiber, who had played the lead villain Simon Darkway to my side-kick henchman Dirk Sneath.  He had the talent to assume a multitude of characters for this crazy production and gave his all in shape-shifting madness.  It was fun times 2.  Double Fun.  He was great to work with, always on my wavelength, easy to direct and a solid character actor.  Also in the cast was Sue O'Reilly (her married name) who later became Sue Dugan (her maiden name).  A talented comic actress, who was also my girlfriend at the time.  Like R. Leo, she had the ability to do a comic repertory.  It was like doing SCTV before it happened.  Sue could be a ten-year-old adenoidal child one moment and then turn into a fifty-year-old society matron the next.  Also in the cast was Ken Brigance, a free spirited cat who could do Gabby Hayes meets Slim Pickens types on the spot.  An artist as well.  He drew the KCOW logo that would be the symbol of the show (Hee-hee! We shot down 2 out of three local crap network affiliates).  Mary C. Webb, a lovely lady (pictured in the introduction as Sally Fetish, the Weather in Leather Girl); Billie Vrtiak, the solid actress with the delightful dark Jane Fonda-like shag haircut; and Frank Califano, one of the sweetest and most sensitive actors I ever met (like those character actors from the '40s who would play tough but were really children) rounded out the cast. This was a smart cast.  We had come off the success of Max Whittaker's Love Rides the Rails, so feeling cocky, we wanted the party to continue.

And we still felt like creative anarchists.  Santa Barbara, like certain other areas of the U. S. of Ah, was a certain contradiction.  Extremely hip and free spirited in some ways, the city also housed the ultra-powerful--the types who stepped out of a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel.  People who had something to hide and could afford to hide it...found the Big Avocado a delightful community to step out of the limelight and merge peacefully in the sun drenched shadows.  A community of oxymorons, if ever there was.

The Big Avocado.  RIPE for parody.  Fools Rush In...