January 23, 2009
"Can you imagine C.L. Sulzberger as a kid?" — asks Jean Shepherd.
Long ago, long before Rush Limbaugh, we had Jean Shepherd on the radio, mocking the editorial voice of The New York Times.
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16 comments:
I think it's easier to picture how young kids might be when they grow up, than to picture how adults were when they were young. The immutable features in kids persist in adults, but in adults the mutable has mutated too much.
I'll read any post with an rhhardin tag any day, any time.
Jean Shepherd on WOR. Late (for a kid) at night on an AM transistor radio. Wanda Hickey's night of golden memories. That takes me back. Rush wishes he was that good.
Rush was somewhat like Jean Shepherd when Rush first started early in the Clinton administration.
But somewhere along the way Rush came into millions, and that changed him
Now Rush has an air about him now; and he often takes himself too seriously.
Jean Shepherd never took himself seriously. He was always just a punk kid that used to hang out with Flick and Schwartz.
Shepherd was determinedly unpolitical. Ridiculous to compare Rush to Shep.
Yes, Shep was totally apolitical, unless it was the politics of kids living in a steel town in Indiana.
It takes me back too, listening to him in the dark of my room on the third floor of our house. What a drag when it wasn’t Shep but Marv Albert calling the Knicks or Rangers game.
For many years in the 1960s, I went to bed when the show started and listened in the dark.
And Rush Limbaugh has always reminded me of Jean Shepherd (and Cousin Brucie).
Shepard was person of his times - and boy is he dated! Shepard doesn't age well.
Someone who does age well from Shepard's era:
Allen Sherman (hey, he was an entertainer, what can I say?)
Rush is a man of his times, but he will surely last a bit longer, if only for the overall quality of his recordings.
"For many years in the 1960s, I went to bed when the show started and listened in the dark."
Really need a tag for this: "shepherds Althouse has slept with"
What cheek that Meade has! You gonna 'low that, Althouse?
A rotating bunch of Shep shows are here, taken from Mass Backwards (WBAI, also online) about 5:15am Tuesday mornings, and from a weekly Sunday donation by Gary in California, who apparently bought a bunch of the shows. Two shows a week show up.
I have, let's see,
$ . .shep
$ ls *.rm|wc
268 268 3216
268 of the shows collected over several years, on the HD now.
I'm totally cool with that, rh.
I just hope Trooper doesn't scroll through and see that. It. will. freak. him. out.
man.
I loved those Sunday night Jean Shepherd shows, 9 pm to 1 am on WOR. I think he read every poem in the Henderson haiku book. And the long stories about the dunes, and Hammond, could have gone on longer. The long format was ideal for him. When he switched from four hours on Sunday night to forty-five minutes five times a week, something was lost, or, y'know, changed. Right about there it started getting less poetic and gritty, and more "Christmas Story." But I treasure the memories of listening to that man talk for hours at a time.
I have the album, bought it about as soon as it came out. But it's short pieces. I should have air-checked those shows, ah well, what did I know then. "Too soon old, too late smart."
Hah! "Should have air-checked those shows!" My Dad hadn't bought the tape recorder yet, and and it would have been fun holding the tiny microphone up to the tiny speaker of the AM radio, and changing reels in the middle!
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