Nightcap

72° - partly cloudy at 9:42pm

Good evening from Michigan. Spring weather appeared to finally arrive today as we hit 79 today.

Few odds and ends from around the 'net:

David Lee Roth. Found an MP3 online of David's isolated vocal tracks from Runnin' With The Devil. Enjoy: link.

Later: sent the DLR link to friend and production pro Roger King at KRFX/Denver who then told me they were all over it in January (err.."VAN-UARY")...and shared these sweepers.

Dr. Pepper and Axl Rose. Mentioned here last month. And now from Ad Age comes the story behind the story. It all started with a couple of rock 'n rollers working at Pepper's parent company. Read here.

Radio History. I was going through my bookmarks tonight and found one I marked years ago. Some great stuff here from a name you know if you're a longtime reader of this blog.

More. Jay (J.) Blackburn - retired programmer/GM/owner - now has his website setup for his new novel "The Radio Gypsies".

This past Monday, I received my copy from Jay and spent the entire night reading. More on that soon.

Check out Jay's site here.

Roger King

Meet Roger King. On my list of heroes and influences. Roger is Creative Services Director of Clear Channel's KRFX/Denver (103.5/The Fox).

He's one of a few to teach me that station imaging is much about bonding: to the music, artists, market and audience.

Roger's Day: "I get into work around 11:30a and am usually finished by 7:30 or 8p. Answer e-mail first, download audio from Harland Williams. Then edit, add music and sfx to Harland's stuff for afternoon drive, and hand place it in the log..."

"..Meet with the PD and write copy, produce imaging for the station (everything from daily cross promos for the morning, midday, and evening show, to topical legal ID's - to music imaging). Next, I groom the rest of the log - and the last thing I do is the bit of the day."

Just to explain: Comedian/celebrity Harland Williams does afternoon drive on the station via recorded tracks from LA (or wherever he may be).

Not too many years ago, Roger made the point of inserting specific imaging into the log after it was generated:

"Yes, I still groom the log w/ production. I don't hand place every single piece, but like to insert rockin' production into rockin' songs, slower prod for slower songs, and some production is song or artist specific... ie: Seinfeld/Kramer drop into BTO's "Takin' Care of Biz", "Immigrant Song" intro by Jack Black (on the special features DVD from School of Rock), "The Office" drop - when Michael Scott's talkin' about Doobies, Letterman, Leno, Ellen, or any show where they introduce artists that play on the station."

"I also like to groom song to song without production and match the beat or create a tasty segue by marryin' the fade with the ramp. It's time consuming, but worth it. I'm familiar with all the imaging loaded in the system, so it just makes sense."

"Prophet/NexGen is the system we use at Clear Channel. It allows you to create a color coded daily log of what's on the radio station including commercials, songs, DJ voicetracks, traffic, and production. You can listen to and move each element and "groom the log" so that everything runs seamlessly."

Aside from station imaging and promos, Roger also produces "The bit of the day" - a comedy piece - everyday - five days a week. He syndicates this to other Clear Channel markets plus stations in non-CC markets.

Check his website here. Click and listen to both "King Calls" and "King Bits". Awesome stuff. Listen to Roger's imaging on The Fox stream here.

Roger King. One of the best in the business.