Show #2 - Thanksgiving Related

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and this past Sunday on the show, we had 4 Thanksgiving-related programs.

If you click the show title above, you'll be linked out to a podcast of the show.

On tap, we had Stan Freberg's skits "Take an Indian to Lunch" and the "First Thanksgiving".  Both are funny, though it's hard to say whether Freberg would have gotten away with the first one nowadays, in the age of increased political correctness.  He's still around, and for a few years hosted a program called "When Radio Was", which similar to the Old Time Radio Express, played old radio shows.  The forum didn't give Freberg any chance to roam off-script, so hard to say what he thought.... I'd guess he's still not one to go with the flow.

Bob Hope followed with a monologue on Thanksgiving.  You hear in Hope a little bit of a pre-cursor to the opening monologues of the late night TV talk show hosts.  That rat-a-tat-tat joke telling, hitting on all the topics of the day.  You know, it's not a stretch to think he would have filled such a role quite well.  The only problem he might have had was getting out of the way of his guests.

Then we took a 30 minute trip with the Life of Riley.  Riley is a good, B+ of a program.  It's not going to be many people's favorite program, but it's good for a solid laugh.  Like a lot of the sitcoms from the Golden Age of Radio, a little bit of the sheen has been lost.  Moreso than mysteries and dramas, it seems that you feel the age of comedies more.  An obvious reason to that is that to be great, comedy has to speak to a particular audience at a particular moment in time.  Mysteries touch on themes like jealousy, anger, love - things that stir the same feelings that they likely did 70 years ago.  A joke about J. Edgar Hoover, though, is going to be lost on a modern audience for the most part.

The same can be said of the Good News of 1940, our last show of the day.  As I mentioned on the Old Time Radio Express show, it's by no means great radio.  That brings up a good question - should I only play "great" radio?  Who decides what is great and what is not?  Certainly, in my collection, there are some programs that I don't like.  I'm not so wrapped up in the Golden Age of Radio that I love everything equally.  But, as a philosophical matter, is my obligation as a host to expose you to a variety of OTR shows or to pick out only the best?  It's not worth getting into a long narrative about, but I don't think it's the latter.  I'd like to think I'm giving you a representative sample of what Old Radio had to offer, warts and all.

Well, with that said, take care, have a great Thanksgiving, and we'll talk again on Sunday!     

Looking forward to our Thanksgiving show...

I did some work on this week's Thanksgiving show last night, and I think you'll find it fun and informative. The thing I find I'm enjoying most about this grand radio experiment is having the chance to listen to shows in my collection that I have not heard in awhile, often years.  It's just as much a treat for me as I hope it is for you, hearing them for the first time.

Like any good Thanksgiving offering, our plate will be full on Sunday, so I hope we'll have time to squeeze in our last planned offering, "Good News of 1940", a program aptly broadcast in November of 1939.  We may have to loosen our belt buckles a bit, but we'll try to get it done...

Until Sunday....

November 15th Show - Jack Benny & Challenge of the Yukon

I have been bad about updating this blog, but for those who don't know, I now have a weekly show on XRB 1610 AM Radio Brownsburg and streaming online at radiobrownsburg.com, Sunday nights at 7pm EST.

I got the show on the strength of the demo program I did with the Shadow & Lum and Abner.  (Strength may not be the right word).  I don't plan on airing the demo episode on XRB, but you can always download it on this blog.  Maybe when they release the collector's edition box set of "The Old Time Radio Express" the demo episode will be thrown in. 

For the premiere broadcast, I went with two standards - Jack Benny and Challenge of the Yukon.  Both are standards in their owns right - Jack Benny ruled the comedic airwaves during nearly his entire run on radio, and COTY was one of the better-written, better-produced "kiddie programs".  Like the reputation of the Pixar movies today, the COTY shows had a reputation of being both kid and grown-up friendly.

This coming Sunday, we'll celebrate Thanksgiving.  Look forward to talking with you then.... be sure to tune in.