Remembering Art Bell-Radio Stories-Legends-Podcast 714

Remembering Art Bell-Radio Stories-Legends-Podcast 714

Radio legend Art Bell passed away on Friday, April 13th 2018. Bell’s show, Coast To Coast, was creative and unique. Time to talk about Art’s impact on me and reminisce about radio in Remembering Art Bell-Radio Stories-Legends-Podcast 714.

All Night Wonder

Many stayed up all night to listen to the show. Who got any work done when we stood around talking about Martians, ghosts, aliens living in the hollow earth or The End Of The World?

Saving AM Radio For A Time

These days, radio has become a wasteland of partisan political operatives shouting, cajoling, attempting to persuade. Many broadcasters have given Rush Limbaugh credit for ‘saving AM Radio’, and he certainly deserves his props. On the other hand, many forget that Art Bell probably had as much to do with resurrecting the AM Band for a short time during the 1990’s. For a kid from Chicago who spent summers sitting on the front steps all night listening to the radio, that meant something.

Creating A World You Could Never Forget

Furthermore, it isn’t the political shows I will remember from the past twenty years. It’s the Art Bell shows. The guy from Area 51. Father Malachi Martin. Gary North. Ed Dames and every other crazy person on that show. You knew it was nuts to believe this stuff. But when you’re rolling through the wastelands of Wisconsin at three in the morning, struggling to pull in a thousand watt AM station out of Rice Lake, it seems real. Because Bell was so good at creating a world where anything was possible and probably true.

For radio people, the ability to create a new world, using only spoken word, is truly significant.

The Broken Down Radio Station On The Edge Of Town

Art Bell had a big impact on me because he brought me back to my roots. The radio station in a corn field. On the edge of town. A single tower blinking red in the wilderness. The possibilities endless.

When The Guy On The Radio Was Your Best Friend

So it’s time to tell some stories. A tribute of sorts from someone, like many, who never knew Art Bell. As a listener we felt we he was our best friend. A throw back to the DJ’s of the 1960’s and 1970’s on the big AM stations in the big cities. Or to struggling to pull in a radio station with a big signal in a far away city.

A Voice In The Night

Most noteworthy is the fact that the experience of listening in the night is gone. Replaced with artless and amateur You Tube Channels predictIng the end of the world.

Making Magic

It is good to remember the magic that Art Bell created as a guide for podcasters. I doubt seriously radio will ever be able to accommodate a talent like Bell again.

Sponsored by Reliafund Payment Processors and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Remembering Art Bell-Radio Stories-Legends-Podcast 714

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Podcast 538

Western Minnesota Road Trip. Freestyle talk about my travel in the last last 6 weeks. My reflections on a weekend jaunt to Western Minnesota’s New Ulm and Walnut Grove, tying in the talk about technology threatening jobs in the future. Recent road trips have intensified my interest in the history of the Western United States. There is a lot of significant western history in Minnesota. We often think of historic topics like Indian Wars and Pioneers has happening further west, but one of the bloodiest clashes between settlers and American Indians happened in New Ulm in 1862, when the mostly German townspeople had to barricade the streets of their town to fight off attacks by the Dakota. Further west is Walnut Grove, the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the famous ‘Little House On The Prairie’. While the museum in Walnut Grove could use a little bit better curation, some of the artifacts in the museum are interesting, especially grasshoppers or Locusts the size of a man’s hand, which plagued the settlers of Walnut Grove. When you examine items in a museum, it’s easy to think about how old they are. For the people of the time though, it was new technology. It’s fun to flip the script and wonder what our descendants will think of the artifacts of our time in a museum at some point a hundred years from now. Today, supposedly new tech like robotics and autonomous machines and software threatens millions of jobs. Proposed ‘solutions’ to this ‘threat’, like guaranteed minimum incomes and job retraining programs don’t make much sense. When people came west for opportunity, 140 years ago, they didn’t have job retraining programs. They couldn’t have known they’d be plagued by grasshoppers the size of a man’s hand. Yet they came anyway. We need to start thinking about the opportunity new technology provides us in building a new world, and stop being so negative all the time. Sponsored by Karow Contracting and Hydrus Performance.

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