WHOoPLA: Chapters 28, 29 & 30

Chapter Twenty Eight: It Blows Up Real Good.

Having simmered nicely over the weekend, the story began to blossom Monday morning as the idea of calling out to encourage coverage quickly became overshadowed by the demand to handle the calls that were coming in. Channel 6 was the local CBS affiliate and now dispatched St. Aubin to also create a piece for the CBS News network that was to air on the Evening News and on Tuesday’s CBS Morning News Show. Genko was soon over her head with people on hold wanting to talk to the “Crazy DJ on the Ledge.” At first, it was mostly newspapers and radio stations from just about everywhere in mostly rural America responding, but as the day went on some bigger names from farther away started to enter the picture and managing the onslaught was starting to become dizzying for both Arnold and Genko.

RJ Harris fired Bobbin Beam that day citing low ratings (this was two days before the actual ratings period start). She was replaced by Eddie Democelli on the air and Susie Austin dove in head first into the rock radio war as Beam’s Music Director replacement firing off a blast to the FMQB radio trade/rag saying:

“Lee Arnold, everyone knows you’re off your rocker. Why don’t you quit calling attention to the fact?… Our station blows yours off the dial right now and you know it…everyone knows you’re full of it. I’m sick of this.These people who read these trades are not our listeners—they’re professional radio people who are tired of reading all your bogus comments. Quit using this trade to badmouth us. Try talking about your own station for once. Your Who promotion is almost over, and so are you. My dad still thinks you’re an idiot.” (Austin explains that RJ Harris’ work nickname was “dad.”)

No time for The Animal to pay any attention to the Brewers defeat of the Boston Red Sox 4-3 that evening as he had an interview with Bob Coburn for the syndicated show “Rockline.” Rockline aired in over 100 markets in a combination of live and taped shows. In Milwaukee, Rockline aired live on Monday Nights on QFM.

The cities karma was just hummin’ as The Packers beat the Vikings that night on Monday Night Football by a score of 27-19. It was the last league game before a league wide strike that lasted until November 21st.

Tuesday morning Lee Arnold fired back at Harris “counter petition” editorial.

“We welcome the support of EVERYBODY who wants to help 93QFM in OUR quest to bring The Who to Milwaukee. It’s not too late…”

This wasn’t a back room battle fought by underlings. It was the OK Corral with both leaders standing alone out in the middle of the street, face to face, taking direct shots at each other.

The tit for tat was nearing childish proportions as the morning team fielded a call from a listener who said they had taken a small hand held sign to the Brewers game the night before that said:

“Milwaukee loves The Who.”

It prompted a call to everybody who was a rocker and who’d be attending this home stand to do the same.

The CBS News and Morning Show coverage spawned NBC News to dispatch their local affiliate, Channel 4 to get video footage for The Today Show. While they passed that footage on to the network, they themselves continued to ignore the story locally. Didn’t matter. A total of more than 70 American and 8 Canadian radio stations, over 100 newspapers and two of the BBC Network channels would call before the week was out.

Legendary KMET freeform LA DJ Jim Ladd was considered “the master of the moment,” always in tune with the sentiment of the times. He called Tim at 10pm California time- midnight Milwaukee time- for the first time Tuesday to get the lowdown. Having read Ladd’s book, “Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial” I know that Ladd was in a funk at the time mourning the end of radio’s progressive freeform era. His closest friends had all moved on or passed on and he was the last of his breed. It must have been invigorating for him to listen to The Animal’s passion for the cause because he jumped on with vigor encouraging everybody in LA who listened to “Honk for The Who in Milwaukee.” Record reps in LA tell of the city spontaneously ringing out with car horns as though it was a citywide mass wedding. Ladd had dusted off the old tribal drum and it rung gloriously for the next generations cause.

After that The Animal and Ladd had nightly conversations sometimes running 10-15 minutes. Ladd’s good friend was MTV founding VJ J.J. Jackson. He too began doing daily reports on the story for the relatively new music video channel. KMET’s afternoon drive jock Paraquat Kelly and Rodney Bingenheimer (as seen in the 2003 Independent Spirit Award winning movie “Mayor of the Sunset Strip”) also called Tim for regular updates. Chris Connelly, who today can be seen doing Academy Award red carpet interviews, also called as he covered the story as the writer for Rolling Stone Magazines “Random Notes” column.(The “ledge stunt” mention occurred in issue #382 on 11/11/82 on page 30).

Among the live rock star interviews was April Wine’s Jerry Cantrell who liked to get high but not in that way. Cantrell couldn’t be coaxed out onto the ledge and stayed in the newsroom forcing The Animal to jockey his short arm in and out of the window for the pre Palms Club concert hype.

With The Brewers getting closer to winning the league pennant, every game was being watched closely by ESPN and the mainstream sports media. No progress Tuesday, though, as they lost to Boston 3-4.

Chapter Twenty Nine: Postcards from the Ledge.

Having landed in the US, The Who were to be playing the first of two shows Wednesday night at The Capitol Centre in Landover, MD (Washington, DC). (The now demolished 20,000 capacity venue was later the subject of the underground cult classic video documentary “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” which chronicled the tailgating antics of Judas Priest fans before a 1986 show.) As the band awoke there Thursday morning, Milwaukee’s efforts were virtually splattered everywhere. ESPN had coverage of the Brewers win over Boston (3-1) that showed two home runs and dozens of giant “Bring the Who To Milwaukee” banners spanning the width of the bleachers. More importantly, the local Washington D.C. CBS affiliate added Rosanne St. Aubin’s CBS News feature to the end of their local concert coverage turning what would have otherwise been a 60 second mention into a three to four minute feature. NBC’s “Today Show” aired their piece that morning too. But would the band see any of it? Had it been enough?

The long week of interviews had been exhausting for Tim The Rock N Roll Animal who began feeling the effects of living outside in fall Wisconsin weather being buffeted by both the 21st story winds and the unrelenting media. Lee Arnold had kept Tim abreast of the attention they were getting but had not said anything about the status of communications with the band. For good reason, there hadn’t been any.

That Thursday night as The Who played their second Landover show, The Animal’s ever optimistic and hopeful demeanor gave way during his talk with Jim Ladd. Ladd:

“Tim we’re seeing a different side of you tonight then we’ve seen before…. you don’t sound too good. A little bit more on edge. You sound tired, you OK?”

He wasn’t. It was starting to get to him because he wasn’t seeing that the band had made any overtures. He was fatigued. Dirty. And tired of having to gather up his own excrement in the plastic bag beneath the porta potty. The very act of handing his own shit into the window to the always cringing Patti Genko turned his stomach. She would encase it into another paper bag for disguise and traverse the elevator to the street and then the alley behind the building where a dumpster would be the final receptacle.

“I really became sequestered out there…shut off from the world.. The isolation was starting to get to me and I started feeling really strange and really weird and out of touch with everything and everybody.”

He also had begun to see what the consequences of failure would mean should the band decide not to come.

“I began to feel like I would be some kind of personal failure… if it didn’t happen.”

He was getting the way people get when they’re in the midst of a maelstrom and haven’t had much sleep. He was personifying the event as his own and it wasn’t like him to do that. It went against what the message had been becom, that this was a Milwaukee cause, that there was a greater purpose.

Ladd’s comments shocked him into making a recharge of his effort to stay focused and stay on message. He turned to reading the cards and letters of support that had been sent to the station to remind himself that this was a matter of pride for everyone, not just him. Then he paged through the hundreds of pages of petition signatures, all 76,000 of them, to drive the point home. It was calming and it was the first night he would allow himself to sleep well. And he did.

Chapter Thirty: The Cause Celeb.

Friday morning found the “Morning Sickness” team in even worse shape than the previous week. Their usual Thursday night wine cooler vomit extravaganza had the added feature of Milwaukee Brewer Paul Molitor as a judge for the bikini contest. Their down and recovering mental/physical state fit the vibe of the Who event as the frenzy had peaked and was finally starting to taper off a little. The reverse could be said for Molitor who scored three runs off four hits in five at bats to help the Brewers demolish the Orioles 15-6 that Friday afternoon.

The Animal arose out of his near comatose hibernation with his mind reset and ready to start again. A tape from a former QFM jock who was now working as the production director at another station was making the rounds. Steve Palec, who had wanted a similar position at QFM but was beat out by the creation of the research department at budget time, had misgivings about his decision to leave QFM a few months earlier. With all the excitement of The Who stunt he was wishing he was still there. So when he heard an AP radio news feed that featured someone from The Who commenting about “that guy on the ledge” he thought he’d pass it on. For the weary Animal, the timing of it was great. It added an extra shot of espresso to his morning’s first cup of coffee.

“That was a really, really, big deal because it was the first time, the first acknowledgment that the band even knew what was going on and that they were even talking about it.”

Things took their first turn for the bizarre as Republican candidate for Governor arch conservative Terry Kohler visited. He was way behind in the polls and must have had an aide who thought it would prop up his poor numbers with “the kids.” He signed a petition and climbed out onto the ledge for a photo opp with Tim. To no avail, he lost in a landslide to democrat Tony Earl.

Kohler’s visit was confirmation that this was an event that transcended the radio battle between LPX and QFM and had touched everybody in a way that meant more than just a band coming to town to play a concert.

So now people who had no thought of ever going to the show wanted this concert to happen. It had become a cause celeb.

~ by Scott on December 2, 2007.