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R.I.P.Dick Clark: The DJ’s DJ, the eternal MC, knew when to shut up
Posted by Amok in blog, journalism, news on April 18th, 2012
As a broadcaster, I was in awe of Dick Clark.
Back when disc jockeys didn’t scratch and rap, they talked over the records up to vocals and did their thing during the intros and outros of the songs they played. It wasn’t a very respectable job. Fun, but not respectable. Dick Clark made it respectable.
As the DJ entrepreneur, Clark elevated the species. He represented that the disc jockey could do more than just say ”that was…here is…coming up next.”
By knowing how to shut up and play the music, he displayed his genius and made a mint doing it.
Clark was always the class act among DJs. He wasn’t particularly funny, nor witty. He was just pleasant. He was a “personality.” He wore a suit and tie. Oh, and did I say, he knew when to shut up.
Clark was definitely old school when I was coming up in broadcasting in the mid-70s. My very first paid broadcast job was as a rock DJ in Houston, TX, where my claim to fame was being the first to play the Ramones.
At the time, a guy named Howard Stern was liberating the DJ world by actually talking and not playing music.
That appealed to me.
Compared to Clark, it was downright radical. I don’t know what Dick Clark felt or what he thought. He was always just a happy, positive sort, who played the music. Or presented the acts on “Bandstand.” He knew who the star was. It wasn’t him.
Knowing that made him bigger than any disc jockey around. I wish I had followed his role.
Clark was the eternal MC who figured out how to make it all work as a business.
His heirs? There’s really only one person out there who came up from the DJ ranks, Ryan Seacrest.
Inoffensive and bubbly, Seacrest is the perfect “that was, here is” guy.
He becomes a star by getting out of the way.
But alas, he’s no Dick Clark, pop culture’s eternal MC.
I can see him at the Pearly Gates now, about to introduce a great new trumpet player named Gabriel….
Dear Ann: My job offer to Ann Romney
Ann Romney never worked a day in her life.
Let me rectify that.
Ann, I ‘ve got some light filing you can do. And I can pay you the San Francisco living minimum wage even (much higher than what they pay in Utah, or Massachusetts, or Michigan, or wherever you domicile these days). You’ll get the experience you need to counteract all those mean Democrats who’ve gone over your resume and don’t think you can survive a finger nail break.
I think my job would be a better defense for you than your current surrogates. Like last night, there was Sarah Palin defending you on Hannity’s show, saying how you did have a job—raising five children.
Come on, Ann. I know you contracted out some of that job. I’ve met one of your nannies (on a plane in buisness class) and she said you were a nice employer. But I think she did all the heavy lifting in that job.
That’s all right. You can start for me hourly.
Call it my attempt at some affirmative action for rich, white women who just can’t seem to catch a break these days.
I’ve got your back!
Goh profile expands; He wanted his money back from Oikos U.
As more information is revealed about the Oikos University shooting suspect One L. Goh, a conflicting profile emerges.
Is he an awkward but failed would-be womanizer? An angry consumer who wanted his money back ? A crazed gunman? Or a cold-blooded execution-style killer?
At a media conference on Wednesday, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley offered a new twist when she said Goh was not kicked out of Oikos, but had left voluntarily last November.
Earlier reports said Goh left at the beginning of the year for “bad behavior.”
But O’Malley indicated a key reason for the voluntary departure was a disagreement over the return of admission costs. Goh wanted his money back. The school had refused any refund. This may explain why a school administrator is believed to have been his main target.
Police had originally said Goh was angered because people made fun of how he talked, and his accent.
One instructor, Romie Delariman, told the Chronicle, that Goh seemed to be looking to the school as a source of friendship and companionship, when he should have been looking to the school to learn. He apparently wasn’t successful in making the personal connections he sought. Some said it was how he talked to people as much as how he sounded. Delariman went so far as to described Goh as “mentally unstable.”
When O’Malley was asked whether anything could have prevented Goh’s outburst, she dismissed any notion of mental instability.
Said O’Malley:”I don’t think this individual (Goh) particularly displayed any behaviors anyone saw that would have predicted the magnitude of his murderous rage.”
How can she be so sure? At least, one instructor appears to dispute that statement.
The case is being set up for the death penalty, with the special circumstance charges against Goh.
O’Malley’s got Goh’s voluntary admission, And her confidence level is high.
I wonder if anyone has advised Goh of his legal rights before he “confessed”?
For as much as O’Malley said at the media conference, she did show some restraint by not answering more detailed questions. Of course, she was protecting the “people’s interest.”
Someone should be protecting Goh’s.
He’s charged with horrific crimes. If he’s guilty, let’s let that come out after he gets his due—a fair trial.
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