The Calm Before The Tempest
In the weeks leading up to program 1000, the tension was slowly building. But it really got to be big 2 weeks before when the press stepped in. I’ve sent press releases and show menus for over a decade. But with some help from the blueberry, the impact of the press release sent shockwaves all about. It was nice to see the show get as much coverage as it did. I mean, we have been in the paper several times before. But this was big…we were in many papers. Many of which I didn’t know about. I have to say for the first time I was hoping no one was going to say stuff like, “Hey dude, I just saw you in the paper.”, or, “Hey dude, I really liked reading about the show…I didn’t know it was on for this long…” Well I was wrong. People were stopping me at Wawa, at work, in the city, at the mall. I started sweating. I have to make this a good show. And keep in mind, it’s not that I wasn’t proud of the milestone, but realistically the meat of the show was from 1995 onward. That’s where all the great guests, performances, events, concerts, etc took place. The notoriety began at WBZC. Despite what those past or present may think, the show’s success has been at WBZC. Dr. Messina, President of BCC, did what he set out to do in 1993. Create a powerful station that would clearly surpass other colleges similar to ours. He and Rich Pokrass, director of College Relations, who was obsessed with my long hair at the time, said to me while giving the freeholders a tour of the station on a Saturday night in 1996, that he wanted to see me there in another 10 years. Well, 12 years later, here I am. I couldn’t even believe it. Most people leave the college circuit and work in commercial radio or television. And many of my old cohorts have. But I decided that if I really loved what I was doing, playing progressive rock on the radio, I needed to stay where my palette would be untouched….a college station. No compromises. Granted, there have been a lot of changes to the show itself over the years, but all in all, there isn’t a radio station within a major market in the United States that offers that. So even if the show itself moves on to a bigger forum in the future, WBZC will always be the reason. So in the 3 weeks leading up to this show, I worked my hardest in all my years. The actual ‘archives’ were opened up. My office was a disaster. Old reel to reel tapes, cassettes, DAT’s, Mini Discs, CD’s, things that I haven’t seen in years. I slept in front of the stereo many a nights listening to old interview segments in those 3 weeks. I didn’t have a ton of help but it wasn’t anything my staff could really do. I knew what I wanted to do, and now with JBird giving up his 4 hour show for program 1000, I had to make it a good one. Saturday was closing in…
Program 1000
A few weeks before the 1000th show, my station manager unexpectedly and reluctantly pulled the plug on the internet stream for reasons around the RIAA ruling which was recently successfully appealed. So after talking to him, he gave the ok for this one broadcast to be on the internet. Many of the other jocks felt it was the right thing to do at the least, seeing that radio show’s bread and butter is the internet audience. Once I got to the station, Keith Rowe was willing to give up his 2-6 show as well! Wow. I was flattered. But that all changed once we realized that the computer in the studio for the web stream suddenly wouldn’t work. But the show must go on. I wasn’t going to look too deeply into it, but a lot of people weren’t happy with it both internally and externally. But I decided to not let it affect the show and move forward. I decided to start the show off with our interview with Greg Lake from 1996. This was an interview where I was accompanied by our one time co producer, Charlie Nolan. I loved Charlie for igniting the spark back into the show and at that time, he was firing on all cylinders. We followed up the segment with a track from the 1992 favorite Black Moon. Black Moon was our #1 album that year on the show despite the jokes and heckling from Bobber, Hitman Mike Gillen, Instigator, Wheels, and Jason Mollica. God, it sure brought back memories. We then fast forwarded to our interview with producer/artist Robert Berry from 1999. He’s been like the Phil Spector of prog, only without the guns and inferiority complex. I followed it with drummer Simon Phillips who is just the man. Clearly. He talked about Toto, and how HE was supposed to be the original drummer for Asia. I thought that was wild. I featured a cut from one of my favorite releases in 1999 titled Another Lifetime and the song Jungle Eyes. I then took a trip back to 1992 and my first local band that were my first guests as well. They were called The Age Of Reason. Keyboardist/composer Frank Staneck and drummer Patrick Van Belle were regulars on the show several times back in the Blackwood University days. The Age Of Reason and I had become pretty tight. Songs like …And Then…, Closer Than Today, Quodlibet, Lilies In The Field. There are so many others. It was special. When I was a rookie, I felt that they were MY band. I played them almost every show, even the prerecorded shows. Frank and I had become pretty close musically. The Age Of Reason would be one of my first hosted concerts as well. The date still rings clear in my head. 8/17/92. The Age Of Reason would be opening for Kansas at the The Pennant East in Bellmawr, NJ. Here’s the kicker. I wasn’t 21 yet. So, after serious schmoozing and well, begging from the band, I got to get on stage and introduce….my friends. I later would host them at Bonnie’s Roxx in Atco….another memorable night. But, as the story goes, the band somewhat dissolved and became a chapter in the back of my head. All until I heard from Michael Vogt, the bassist, a little over a year ago. He proceeded to send me the 2 releases they had remastered. It was a flashback to the olden days. Still to this day, despite all the music I have come in contact with, the guests, the bands, the discoveries, they will always ring true to my foundation. Something I won’t forget. Whenever I think I am getting too big for my britches, I put those discs on. I go back to a confusing, curious, yet happy time, full of naivety. They were the ones standing at the door to the beginning of the gagliarchives story. I then moved on to program 571 from 1999 when Ozone Quartet came to play in our studio. It was great performance until halfway through when the drummer’s bass pedal broke, and they had to stop playing. But what they did play, was hot…as was the studio. I then ventured to our interview from 1996 with guitarist Geno White. Hailing from Cape May, he released one of our favorite releases from that year titled Standing In Stereo. Geno is a wild cat with fantastic talent. I’ll never forget his trip up to the studio…It was one of those interviews I was put on the spot because all of my interview notes were lost along the way so I had to wing it. (this was the first of that happening many, many times.) I moved from there to 1999 and one of the monumental interviews with keyboardist/composer, Rick Wakeman. Rick was a great, great, great interview. To say Rick was down to earth is an understatement. He is real. In the interview, which was supposed to be 20 minutes. Wound up being nearly 70 minutes. All bits on that tape were timeless. We talked about religion, music, spirituality, Philadelphia sports (which he invested in the city’s soccer team), his solo career, his falling ill in 1998, oh and Yes. (haha) When I say it was monumental, I say that only partially to the fact that, it was the first radio show of the program to ever be heard online. I was approached by Radio Free Kansas to air the interview with Rick Wakeman on their station as a online radio special. The response was OVERWHELMING. It was from that moment on that many stations took interest. It spawned the original deal with Progradio.net and then ultimately, Aural Moon. Thanks Rick! Sticking with the keyboardist thing, I shot ahead to 2005 when everything was working out so great with the show, I landed Patrick Moraz. That was another interview that was a two parter! He was so funny with the stories of touring on his own, with Yes, and Bill Bruford, I nearly peed myself. Sticking with the Yes theme, I then went to our interview with original Yes guitarist Peter Banks. Peter was a great guest, but unfortunately still had some bitterness towards his counterparts in Yes. One of the highlights was Peter telling us HE gave the band their name. I then moved on to our interview from 2003 with guitarist Steve Howe. Steve’s interview was great and unexpected at the time. I had to scurry to get notes together, (not that I don’t know about him) but I had to pull out some obscure questions I was always curious about. Then when the interview ended, he just hung up. I panicked. No station ID’s??!? I called right back and he answers: “I forgot the station ID didn’t I?” Whew! That was a close one.
Chapter II
One of the finds in the 3 weeks leading up to program 1000, was our interview from a band I can honestly say was one of my favorite finds of the third incarnation of the Gagliarchives. The band was Boud Deun. I was first turned onto them by the much hated one time vendor Rob Wolf of Sights And Sounds. He sent me a box of discs and one of them featured the band Boud Deun and their Fiction And Several Days CD. This band was unbelievable. Powerful live, and their stage presence alone made you feel special. They were four guys. Rocky Cancelose on drums, Shawn Persinger on guitar, Greg Hiser on violin, and Matt Eiland on bass. This hodgepodge project rolled into Pennsauken, New Jersey one beautiful autumn night in 1996. Now the funny part was, if you have ever seen the debut album cover, it has a tractor on a farm field rusted out, looking dirty etc. They played at the Serengeti in Pennsauken that night with road construction going on off of Chapel Avenue. The street was littered with road machinery, tractors, blacktop cutters, but parked parallel! So I thought to myself, wow, this would make a great album cover for the live album. Well it obviously never happened, but wow that was cool. At any rate, they played on a stage about the size of an album, and I have to say, as did Roger, they were incredibly powerful that night. They followed it up with a candid interview, and the rest was history. They would break up 2 years later.
Later in 2000, Shawn Persinger went on tour and released his first solo album and made a cameo at the gagliarchives that summer. He played for about an hour and a half. It was nice. To an audience of 2. With clapping! I then jettisoned to 2003, and our interview with multi instrumentalist and composer Billy Sherwood. Billy was the center point of one of my favorite discs from 1995 in World Trade Euphoria. It still is one of my favorites to this day. He grew up as a big Yes fan, but also had a lot of progressive rock tendencies in the music he wrote with his projects. Not to mention he’s a big Star Wars fan. A good guy; and a very real personality. I then moved onto the Tunnels/Brand X set. These are two bands that obviously have shared components. I featured a segment of an interview outside the Tritone in Philadelphia in 1997 with Percy Jones and Frank Katz. The funny thing was, there was a fight that had broken out, outside the club and Percy was just calm and collected. Now in the meantime, I had Roger with me who was laughing the entire time. Percy even started laughing. That night, Percy and I started a bond that still is the same as it was then. I also featured and interview from program 769 that had Marc Wagnon and Percy, now of Tunnels, in our studio one cold November night as JBird had the Disco Biscuits playing live in his studio. It was so loud from the next studio, I couldn’t hear Percy and Marc answer my questions. I had to be honest, it was one of the most uncomfortably funny moments in the show’s history. Derek Shulman’s interview has to be one of personal accomplishment. This is one where I was very nervous about. I had been contacted by Rick Krim of VH1 to see if I was interested in airing the new Gentle Giant remasters. Uh duh? Is the Pope Catholic? Is cheese tasty? What got me uptight was that Derek was only doing a few interviews. And when I say only a few, he literally had 3 interviews planned. I was flattered, nervous, yet stoked to talk to famed front man of Gentle Giant. It was a great interview. I tried to touch lightly on Gentle Giant and his work with other bands, and ultimately his career as a record company head. I still remember how long the interview was…25.13 minutes. Enjoy it, you don’t get those all that often. The only disappointment was we had planned on doing a 4 part Gentle Giant documentary with many interviews never even aired from the band members. The disappointment was we never got any other remasters after the first two. No returned emails, no nothing. Like I said, enjoy it, and move on, and in hindsight, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I went from Derek to an interviewed guest that is up there with repeat visits in 16 years in the great, charismatic, funny, warm, and tactful Tony Levin. Tony has been on the show so many times, I don’t even remember the number. I pulled out our interview from the Bruford Levin Upper Extremities era. Tony was great. It was an interview I would wind up listening to in its entirety. The story that always bums me out was when he had gone out on tour and came to play with his band at the North Star Bar in Philly, he had asked me to introduce the band. I was so pumped and excited. But on the way to the show, I was plowed into by a pot infested car. But nonetheless, I survived by 3 inches after doing a 360. It was a wild night….but great memories in hindsight. I would have changed one thing. I would have taken the right directions with me that night.
Chapter III
On to the Crimson portion of our blog. I kicked off the portion with an interview with ‘The Dude’. I’m not talking about Lenny Dykstra either. I’m talking about Asia/Yes keyboardist Geoff Downes. First off, there are some hilarious stories over the years with Geoff and I. But what most people forget? Geoff was our first ‘big’ guest back in 1992. He’d later rejoin us in 1994, and then in 1998 with the whole Yestival thing. Geoff’s first night in the bar at the hotel featured him and I getting hammered to tune of 9 Yuenglings, (don’t know what he had) and him staring at a girl I was seeing at the time. Geoff, I’m over here. Anyway, we talked about all the hate that was spewed on him when he went with the whole new lineup of Asia in 1992, then looked to sneak out of the hotel and head to Philly for a cheesesteak. He says I’m dude. Dude, your dude. Then after featuring a b-side to Don’t Cry in the song Lyin’ To Yourself (originally a song called Barrenland from Howe’s homebrew) I featured a collage of interviews from the Patron Saint to the Gagliarchives in John Wetton. John Wetton was first on our program in 1993 and was one I was most excited about. He was so cool. Not only was he a fan favorite back in the Blackwood days, but on one of our morning shows that summer of 92, we named him our Patron Saint. Since 1992, Wetton has been a guest multiple times. He will always be the man in the genre. Dude, Larks. Larks! Speaking of which, we spoke in 1998, to violinist David Cross of the middle Crimson era. His Exiles album was a big favorite on the show as was his second album Closer Than Skin…and I capped the Crimson section off with our several interviews over the years with Trey Gunn who was once in King Crimson. Our first meeting was unforgettable. It was 1995, November, Thanksgiving weekend, and there I was…at the Long Acre Theater in New York City. I was taken away by how powerful the city was. You’ve heard my emotional rant on this. But what I never really included was how well I was treated by the theater in NYC. It was like red carpet. Oh, and here is your back stage pass to meet Trey Gunn. It was great. We did our interview in this room that had a radiator whistling and leaking from the 120 year old pipes it was connected to. It was memorable…where did the time go?
Bring On The Jebster
By this part of the show, Jack Webster and Frankie Alfeeri joined us in studio to video and take those awful pictures of me you see in the scrapbook. I guess I forgot to add how many people wanted my head for not being able to actually hear the show. I felt bad for many. Dan ‘the pimp’ in Grand Junction; Ali in Vancouver, CA; Floyd in Trenton, NJ; Chris in Omaha, NE; Darren in San Luis Obispo, CA. So many others to list….it’s sad. All I can say is for those that email about it, please understand, I am not the man in charge when it comes to the RIAA. It all comes down to the powers to be. I am just a DJ being tortured by it. The stream being shut down has also shut 85% of my audience. Let’s see what happens…ok, back to 1000. I featured snippets of interviews with guitarist Scott Henderson of Tribal Tech fame, the former frontman to Marillion in Fish. That was a funny one. Apparently he was a bit spirited during our meeting in 1999. Funny thing is, I went to host his show at the TLA in Philly, and when I went backstage, he was like, 7 foot 5. Like Andre The Giant size. Ok maybe not that big, but dude, he was tall and intimidating as well. I think one of the favorite parts of this whole ‘production’ twist for show 1000, was our interview collage with Marillion over the years. They first played in our studios in 1995, then returned 10 years later and did it again. Not to mention, our 500th show we hosted them at the TLA. I remember that night someone saying to me, what will you do for show 1000?!?! These are unforgettable memories. They will always be nestled in the backdrop of the show. I certainly couldn’t forget Genesis. That was up next. In their band collage, I featured interviews with keyboardist to The Musical Box, David Myers. We have had some funny run ins over the years. Including almost getting thrown out of the Borgata for conducting an interview with him while he gambled on the slot machine….the eye in the sky saw it all. I couldn’t help but laugh. They thought we were trying to steal detailed slot machine information. Absolutely hysterical. Get over yourself. Anyway, I moved on to our interviews with Tony Banks and Steve Hackett of Genesis. Steve has been a regular guest of the program over the years. Genesis is obviously my favorite ‘prog’ band of all time, but probably one of the least in sense of members actually being on the show. Tony Banks was big, this was, at least in my mind, the ONLY one to have. He is the center point of the band. Of course it was difficult holding back on questions about Genesis due to the fact the interview was more focused on his new classical album at the time, titled Seven: A Suite For Orchestra. He was great. It was so special. Something I never forgot. It was almost like, is there anyone else to interview after someone like that? I think not. (settle down dude).
At this point Jack and Frankie were just laughing at me in my 7th hour, and my 35th listener call on why we were not streaming.
The Return Of The Buttered Gazelle
Roger Beckwith was a big part of our Saturday programming from 1994-2000. Roger along with Janet Watts clearly made Saturday night a party. But because he missed our former station manager Drew Jacobs, Roger decided it would be best if he left. He hadn’t seen the studios in years. After a night at the Piccalilli, Roger decided to come up and visit Program 1000. The smell of Grape Soda mixed with madness was evident. He laughed hysterically for reasons he may only know, but I have to admit, I felt good having him there. I really did. The last hurrah. Flashback segments included Jan Erik from Anekdoten at Nearfest, Jeff Berlin talking about the best boxers in the fight world, a spotlight on both sides of the Echolyn break up which devastated me back in 1995, the creation of Finneus Gauge who struck the song “Open Up The Fog Lines” sigh….which moved into another big feat in interviewing The Mahavishnu Orchestra members Jan Hammer, and John McLaughlin. This was also memorable as a pivotal point in our shows history. Another memorable guest on 2 separate occasions was the great violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, do I even need to explain his position in music? Happy The Man, you know the band that was supposed to be the group to back Gabriel when he left Genesis? They were featured in time capsule collage as well. I decided to round out the show with in studio performances from Boston band Fluttr Effect from 2005, violinist Caryn Lin from 1996, and a look at the last 2 #1 discs in the annual stress loving project titled the The Top 100.
I closed out the show on the 8th hour with Echolyn’s This Time Alone. It just seemed to put everything into perspective. My only regret was there was no internet to stream all the work that went into it.
A thousand more?
Nobody sees you like I do
Nobody loves you like I do
Nobody needs you like I do

Selfish, but well spent
Few and far between is the luxury of alone
Use this distance, left the rest behind

I am, I think, I want, I need, this for myself