Citizen Steve And His Face For Radio

That Facebook post was my idea of “marketing” for my band ten years ago.

Allow me to quickly decode this for you. I played drums in a power-pop/garage band called “Little Boy Jr.” (LBJ for short) from 2009-2015. Reggie’s is a music venue in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood. Apparently we performed there on 3/28/2010 at 5p.m. (That’s early for a rock and roll show.)

I reached out to one of LBJ’s frontmen, Joe, because unlike me, he remembers details from every gig, even ten years on. He reported:

“Bob left his bass and magically it was still there the next day. It was a rockabilly show except for us. Rockabilly people did not love us.”

I had recently dropped out of college (hey, I wonder how many weeks it’ll take for that to no longer be relevant to these posts) and the rest of the band would be graduating imminently, so we were trying to transition from a campus outfit into a bona-fide big-city act. The thing was, at the college venues, we could pretty much curate our own bills, booking ourselves alongside our friends’ bands who sounded quite a bit like us. In Chicago, we were thrilled to settle for rocking out in broad daylight to the handful of wannabe pin-up girls and extras from “The Wild One” who showed up early for the evening’s headliners.

 My recollection of the rockabilly crowd that night

That transition would force us to learn ways to appeal to new audiences. And you know who else was pursuing a similar agenda that week? Chicago radio legend Dick Biondi.

In a 4/1/2010 Tribune article, Bob Sirott seemed to think it was hilarious that an old-timer like Biondi had created a Facebook page. (He also took a shot at Twitter in the article. None of this has aged well.) He then argued that Biondi actually invented social media in the 60’s when the phone lines to his call-in radio show got crossed, and Chicago teens would use the glitch to flirt and arrange dates. Ya know, just like Facebook. This is a lot like when a baby boomer tells you that Bob Dylan invented rap with “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” You just try to steer the conversation elsewhere before things get explicitly racist. 

But I’m not here to bash Bob Sirott. He hosted Fox Thing In The Morning, my preferred local news source from ages six to eleven, alongside anchor Marianne Murciano. I was like ten when I found out that they had gotten married and it BLEW MY MIND. It remains the only bit of celebrity gossip that I’ve ever cared about.

So I'll leave Bob alone, and instead I'll celebrate Dick Biondi. I grew up taking him for granted as the voice of Oldies 104.3 (sorry, Chicago folks, but you’re now stuck with that jingle in your head all day), which was a monster success in my mom’s minivan in the 90’s. By the time I was back in the city as a twenty-something, WLS (there’s another jingle) 94.7 had accepted the torch as Chicago’s oldies station, and they rightfully gave Biondi the late-evening slot. Back in the saddle, Dick dusted off his call-line gag, and the requests rushed in.

Many of the callers to whom Dick gave a “shout-out” were probably old enough to have overwhelmed his original phone circuit back in the 60’s, but we younger listeners only knew him as that incorrigibly enthusiastic septuagenarian who was the only DJ still spinning The Buckinghams on the FM dial.

One night during a college summer break, my friends and I caught wind that our old pal Kara, who was living with her grandmother in a cozy house in the neighborhood, was having people over while her grandma was out of town. This was welcome news. We had been living in our little college dream world, where underage folks like us had constant access to adult beverages and places to freely enjoy them. But back home in Chicago, we had to temporarily revert to our high school methods of tracking down a house party and some cold cases of Old Style.

Beer pong balls and loud accounts of fond memories were flying around Kara's Grandma's house when somebody shouted for everyone to quiet down so we could hear the radio. Dick Biondi was back from a commercial break. He began listing off the latest “shout-outs,” his run culminating with, “And, from the South Side, a big shout-out to KARA’S GRAAAND-MA!” The party erupted. People were hugging. You would have thought the Sox had won another World Series.

Perhaps inspired by Dick Biondi, I have dreamed of being a radio DJ since I was but a boy. When I was a pre-teen, my older sister, Anne, started allowing me to tag along to local rock shows with her and her super cool friends. (In retrospect, our mom probably forced her to take me with.) I was wildly impressed that Anne knew the people in the bands. Undoubtedly, witnessing those swarths of teens shrieking in adoration for their peers simply because they were the ones on stage played some part in my becoming a musician. But, there’s a lot to unpack there, so I’ll save it for another post (or my therapist). 

Right now I’d like to discuss one guy at all those shows who was not a musician. His name was Kevin. He was the emcee, who also served as a sort of stand-up opening act, and he booked all the acts and negotiated with the venues. The musicians all got to be a part of the show; Kevin was the show.

Anne introduced me to Kevin (which was probably embarrassing for her) and I found out that he hosted a weekly radio show out of St. Xavier University, right in our neighborhood. 

 “But, he’s in high school,” I said. 

 “Yeah, but they have a program where people from the community can host shows there,” Anne explained.

Normally after school I would hang out at a friend’s house for a while, but on Mondays I started going straight home and tuning in to Kevin’s show. I’d call in to request my sister’s friends’ bands. I’d win contests (but Kevin wasn’t great at using the mail so I don’t know if I ever actually claimed any prizes). One time he patched me onto the air to tell my story about my mom taking away my Smashing Pumpkins CD because it had an “explicit content” label on it. Then he played “Cherub Rock” and I turned it up very, very loud. That was my first time appearing on the radio.

After that, I wanted to be the guy on the air. But, I was too intimidated and lazy to do it on my own, so my friend Mike, who has never hesitated to jump into any half-cocked scheme, talked me into just walking into the St. Xavier radio station to pitch them our show: “The Sweet And Sour Hour with Sweet Steve and Sour Mike.” Remember, we were children.

The station manager, a cheerful British gentleman, readily welcomed us into his office. He encouraged us to pursue careers in broadcasting, but informed us that, unfortunately, their schedule was currently “chock-a-block.” After he used this term a few more times, we finally deduced that it meant the schedule was filled. Soon after that, the university changed its policy to only offer airtime to its own students. So Mike and I are still sitting on that gem of a name for a show.

I kept in touch with Kevin throughout high school, making appearances on his show with my band and performing at gigs that he booked. But I still dreamed of working in radio, so in the summer of 2009 I took an internship at 670 The Score, a sports radio station.

Here’s the thing about me and sports: I don’t know anything about sports. But a family friend was the head honcho over at The Score, and he offered me the position, so I took it. My thinking was, “radio is radio.” Then I saw what my friend Michele was doing at her internship at WXRT, the hip local music station, and contrasted it with what I saw doing at The Score, and I realized: radio is not radio. I had no business working at a sports station.

At the station, I pursued one goal at all times: Avoid talking about sports, so as to not reveal to anybody what a fraud I was. I would constantly offer to run out for breakfast or coffee. I would try to steer workplace conversations towards music, or the 90’s (the only era when I actually did pay attention to sports), or, when all else failed, the famous wives and girlfriends of the athletes being discussed. (That topic went over well in that distinct pocket of bro-culture).

I volunteered to do extra technical work, so that I could hole up in an editing bay by myself, slicing audio clips and uploading them to the station’s website, hoping that these tasks would take up my entire day.

Halfway through the summer, the program manager asked me if I wanted to switch over to the golf show on weekend mornings. I figured anything was better than trying to fit in with all the swinging dicks on the weekdays, so I accepted. That first Saturday morning, I introduced myself to the show’s host as his new intern, and he said, “Wait. One important question…  Beatles or Stones?” 

I responded, hesitantly, “Stones?” 

“STONES!” he yelled, beaming, his fists high above his head.

I don’t think he asked me one sports-related question that whole summer. All that mattered was that I was a Stones guy. My anxiety disappeared.

One day, during a commercial break, the host and producer were debating the relative merits of two local strip clubs, and they requested my sage counsel in settling the matter.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a strip club,” I responded.

The two men were aghast. They had about ten seconds to process this bewildering information before the final ad ended. Coming back from break, the host couldn't fathom discussing any other topic with his listeners.

At first he just plainly stated, “Our intern Steve just told us he’s never been to a strip club.”

After a while, he started recommending locations for my first skin-bar visit, even offering names of joints in Canada and The American South, as though I was going to plan a vacation around a strip club. At some point he started calling me a “strip club virgin”. I didn’t love the sound of that, but I was still enjoying this unprecedented level of attention on the show.

In the episode’s send-off, however, when it came time for the host give me his customary on-air acknowledgment, he said, “and thanks to our intern, Steve The Virgin. Ok that’s our show, good day everybody.” (Signs off.)

Ok I’ll just jump to a few weeks later when my mom was at a wedding, chatting with some other guests, telling them what her kids do. She mentioned my internship, and a guy asked what show I worked on, and she said the golf show, and he said, “Oh! Is your kid Steve The Virgin?”

So, my attempts to make it in radio left me with nothing but tales of failure and embarrassment. But, Joe shared one more detail about that LBJ gig at Reggie's ten years ago:

 “When we walked into the record store part of the place, our music was playing.”

 So I have experienced the joy of walking into a room and unexpectedly hearing myself coming out of some speakers. It's happened a number of times, actually, and I'd like for it to happen some more. I guess what I'm saying is, if you host a radio show, please have me on.