Explanation...
I’ve lived in the Cincinnati area all of my life, and have had been mostly exposed to local radio. I graduated from college in 1996 and found a job at a company that built broadcast facilities. My first road job was building the new Weather Channel in Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta.
Our days started at 6:30 a.m., and I listened to the radio as I worked. After a couple of weeks on the job I discovered the new-rock/alternative station 99X. Since I was (and still am) a fan of good radio-morning shows, I tuned in to the Morning X show with Barnes, Leslie, and Jimmy every morning, and continued listening all day. I did this the entire time I was there: September 1996 through March, 1997.
I thought the show was funny and it certainly made my busy workdays easier. I got to know 99X’s personalities better than Cincinnati’s stations. At the end of March, 1997, the Weather Channel project was nearly finished, and I went back home. Back home I discovered that music currently heard on 99X made it to Cincinnati stations three or four months later.
Late in 1997 I got a new job as assistant engineer for a pair of radio stations in Cincinnati. There I learned that 99X was one of their sister stations. How very cool! I soon began to tune 99X online in my office.
One project that soon came up was to build a new facility for the Cincinnati stations. By this time I was a veteran systems-installer. In 2000, I was asked to fly to Atlanta to help wire and build the new studios for 99X and Q100. I returned Atlanta for about a month wiring and equipping Q100 and 99X. In 2001 I flew to Kansas City, Missouri to help build other sister stations, including KCFX and about five others.
I infrequently continued to listen to 99X until my assistant-engineer position was eliminated in the summer of 2002. Afterwards I worked for a local A/V installation company followed by nine months of unemployment. In those nine months I decided to leave engineering and installation completely and focus on a writing career. After unemployment ran out, I began working as a data-entry temp in March, 2004 at a nearby investments company and continued to write on the side. My shift started at 9 a.m. and I quickly burnt out listening to the local morning shows. I sought something to listen to online and remembered 99X. Every morning I tuned my workstation in to the last hour of the “Don Miller Morning Show.” After a couple of weeks my hours changed to 7:30 enabling me to hear more of the show.
Barnes was gone from 99X and the show had changed. In his place was Fred Toucher. I remembered Toucher as an evening jock from when I listened in 1996. The Don Miller Morning Show was much better than the Morning X, although there was nobody called Don Miller. This was an ensemble show. Although Toucher was the main host, every personality in the show had almost equal airtime: Toucher, Wally, Jimmy, Leslie, and Crash Clark; “associate producer” Calandro, and interns including Wes, Sebastian, and someone called Fat Kid. THIS was the show I wanted to hear! Cincinnati radio could have learned from them.
I listened every morning, timing my breaks away from my desk to the commercials. I quickly realized some of the things I heard were unlike any other morning show I had ever listened to. The bits were funny, and it was obvious the show had real chemistry. What I liked most was that they never dwelled on any particular bit, milking it until the audience had more than enough. It was fast-moving, with humor, news, and traffic interspersed with commercials and two or three songs an hour. I have to admit that it almost reminded me of old-time radio.
One of the first shows I heard included a one-time appearance of “Charlie the Bum.” Calandro, while searching for homeless people for the Homeless Restaurant Review, met and interviewed the nearly-unintelligible Charlie. The morning show was so delighted with him that they persuaded Calandro to bring him to the station so they could meet him in person, get him cleaned up, and feed him. The whole thing turned into a hilarious series of misadventures, some of which can be seen on the Morning Show Archives on the 99X page. It was riveting drama that lasted nearly the entire show.
THAT was great radio.
And then there was Saint Patrick’s Day, 2004.
On the morning of Saint Patrick’s Day, the stocky intern Fat Kid drank a shot of vodka every time someone said “dude.” It was funny, funny stuff, something I wished I was recording. The highlight was when he sang The Darkness’s Do You Believe in a Thing Called Love. This was the funniest radio show I had ever heard.
A couple weeks later, Crash, Jimmy, and Toucher discussed their issues with bicycles on the streets of Atlanta. The station was quickly flooded with complaints about what listeners (and non-listeners from outside of Atlanta) felt were irresponsible comments made on the air. They talked about it all week long. Management emailed three mp3s of the questionable bits to a bicycling website forum, which put them up for download. I downloaded them and laughed again. I am a bicyclist myself and was not at all offended. I thought it was hilarious. I’m pretty sure I know what a joke is, and what is not. People who complained blew a funny bit way out of proportion, and station management acquiesced to a threatened boycott buy running PSAs and other sponsorships promoting bicycle safety. The three bits are on the 2004 download page. (link)
See http://www.coffeeandbagel.com/99x.htm A comment on this website states that the bicycling group threatened to boycott Clear Channel Communications, which would have been fine since 99X was owned by Susquehanna.
For even more: http://www.bikeleague.org/mediacenter/e-news051404.htm
I realized that the bits I was enjoying so much in the mornings would also be entertaining in the evenings. A google search yielded a free graphical audio recording program called Audacity, which allowed a user to record any kind of audio on his PC and quickly edit it and and save it as an mp3. I began to get up an hour early every morning just to tune in 99X on my computer and listen to the show, recording when something interesting was going on. I was on dial-up and the connections could sometimes be choppy. I sometimes would leave it connected so the show would get recorded while I went to work. When I got home later, I stopped the recording and edited what I wanted to save. The results are all in the Downloads page.
Toucher has mentioned that callers sometime ask for recordings of some of their more popular bits. When the show is off for a vacation or holiday, repeats are heard in a “Regifted show.” However, the bits are usually edited into shorter segments, and a regifted show never features everything. 99X sometimes posts some of the bits on the morning show page, and on Fred Toucher’s website, but nothing is comprehensive. I am giving fans of 99X and Toucher, Jimmy, and Leslie the chance to relive their favorite moments from 99X back to April 2004.
Many of the bits include discussion before and after, because I like to listen to their chatter even when they’re not doing the bit. Also, some of these are not bits, rather they are just moments when they were talking, and what came out was funny radio.
Don’t you have a life?
Why, yes I do. The 99X audio project is something I do for fun. And between January and July, 2005 I researched and wrote a book while working full time AND while listening to the morning show. Cataloging and organizing all the audio I’ve accumulated took only a few days in July, so really, this project is not time consuming. Now that TJ&L ended on March 17, 2006, I will likely not be uploading any new audio, unless the new show really makes me laugh.
