Jeff Laurence said:
Maybe you have some old WYSL-FM pictures..Jim Pastrick..c'mon and shed more light on this. Wasn't WYSL off the air until the teen DJ's came on at like 6pm or so..? I seem to remember hearing nothing but white noise until they signed on at 103.3 or was AM simulcasting then?
Well Jeff, your account of Larry Vance would have made me throw down some organic skid marks in my shorts if I was in your shoes.
My recollection is the Teen DJ's did their shows at all hours of the day, mostly 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. The WYSL-FM antenna on top of the Larkin Warehouse, as Ken noted, got blasted by lightening and was off the air for months before returning with a more disciplined approach and Kevin O'Connell doing a regular shift.
I was not paid for being a TDJ. As I noted, I wasn't a first line TDJ, just some third stringer who got a call a few times a month, most likely when there was a hole to be filled.
When WYSL-FM went Progressive, I recall WYSL-FM simulcast WYSL-AM from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at which time the paid, progressive jocks worked the "underground format" from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
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Ken Kiedrowski's accounts of this particular venture and events on the Buffalo radio time line make for interesting reading here. Regarding Larry Vance, I had a brush with him at a WYSL remote when they used to bring out a unit that featured a Gates consolette and built in turntables and mic.
Larry was doing his act, appearing to be very distant and not connecting with the gawkers and geeks who came out to see a "real, live dee-jay" do his show. During a commercial break, I reached over the velvet ropes that divided the d-j from the great unwashed, stretched out my arm and said (use your best Simpsons pimple-pocked Quickie-Mart counter boy voice on this) "Hi Mr. Vance, I'm Jim..." He cut me off mid-sentence and said, "Yeah..." then turned his back and found something better to occupy his precious time.
My immediate reaction? "This guy's a jerk!"
Is it any wonder the dude got his bell wrung by Dan Neaverth on KB? When I was a 17 year old high school kid doing a one hour Sunday night Junior Achievement Show (which was recorded on Thursday evenings) with Tom McCray (now Professor of Communications at Buffalo State College) and Bob Sikorski (attorney and now President of Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service) I would arrive early and weasel my way to the air-lock between the control room and air studio and watch Neaverth work afternoon drive. If Jeff Kaye didn't "catch me" back there and run my ass to the lobby, Dan would occasionally invite me into the K-Big studio at 1430 Main Street and watch him do that magical PM drive show.
Who needed Larry Vance when you could actually watch and sometimes talk to a class act like Dan Neaverth on 50 thousand Watt KB!
I guess you have to be a 45+ radio geek to fully appreciate the near mystic experience that this was for a 17 year old kid. This is why many of us have a magical bond with the medium. Long before the Madison Avenue money men discovered the communications business as a horse on which to place a bet, there was this thing called "radio."
But I have another wacky WYSL-FM story. This one involves Bob Allen, God rest his soul. It's not as good as Jeff's, but it may reflect the craziness that went on at WYSL AM & FM in those days.
I'd applied to be a Teen DJ, wrote a letter and by sheer luck, got a phone call to "come down and audition" one weekday evening at the station's 18th floor studios in what was then the grand Statler on Delaware Avenue.
My parents drove me to Buffalo and waited in the well-appointed lobby of the Statler while I (being the travel-savvy 15 or 16 year old that I was) took the elevator to the 18th floor solo. By the way, that particular elevator went only to the 14th floor, which required hopping another elevator up to the 18th.
It was about 8 p.m. I had no idea what to expect when I finally made it to the 18th floor and meandered down the long halls to a suite of offices and studios marked at the entrance by a wall placard which read
"WYSL AM & FM, The McLendon Stations in Buffalo."
Before the main entrance, there was a glassed-in radio studio, as Jeff and Ken described it in their posts. I stood at the glass door looking at some guy with horned-rim glasses and red-brown hair. He waved me in. I opened the door and before I can introduce myself, he says, "You here for an audition?" It was Bob Allen.
"Yes, my name is..." He has a clipboard and a sheet of paper in his hand. "Jim Patrick?" he says. "Good radio name."
"It's
Pass-trick," I respectfully correct him.
"Patrick, Pastrick... same thing."
I'm sensing a disconnect and already the interview is off to an unsteady beginning.
"Well, here's a commercial to read, take a look at it for a couple of minutes and I'll record you." He hands me a 60 second radio commercial on official
WYSL AM & FM Mclendon copy paper. It's the first time I've ever seen copy paper, with the left side indented column and the numbers adjacent to each line of words. Sixteen lines, Times New Roman font, all letters capitalized = 60 seconds.
I'm captivated by the look of the freakin' COPY paper and I haven't even read one line!
"You ready?"
"Uhh, can I have a few minutes more?"
"Give you a minute..."
"OK, you ready? Put on these (Clevite-Brush) headphones and talk into the microphone from about five inches away. Go."
I read the copy flawlessly for about ten seconds, adrenalin coursing through my veins, my voice in the stratosphere and creeping upward. Then, I stumbled over a weird concoction of words that I didn't understand and throw in a line from "Get Smart" to try to save my ass, "Would you believe..." and re-read the bungled phrase. I read another ten seconds and Bob breaks the take.
"OK, that'll do."
"Done?" I ask myself. "My audition is DONE?" I read maybe 20 to 30 seconds. It wasn't bad but it wasn't good. The Maxwell Smart line saved my ass, but it didn't make the mistake go away. I blew it.
Bob says, "That wasn't bad, I think we might be able to use you."
Whoo-hoo!
"We'll call you, OK?"
A dose of reality hits. "We'll call you." Ever heard those words in your storied careers? It means, "You didn't get the gig because there's somebody better than you who DID!"
"OK," I say and begin to walk out. Bob says, "hey, you wanna see the station?" Well hell yeah, I do. So he takes me on the tour of the joint. Dick Kemp is smokin' (literally and figuratively) on the AM. He acknowledges me and tells me to forget about getting into the business.
We tour the production studio and Bob says, "Hey, watch this." He picks up calls on the WYSL-AM request line in the production studio and starts ripping on the callers. I smile nervously, wondering just what the hell is going on. This guy's wacked. He answers the phone, "KB, wuddayouwant?" Then he tells the caller, "Nah, we don't play that, you're gonna have to call WYSL for that song."
"I have to catch a bus home," I tell him.
"OK, we'll call you if we need you. Thanks for comin' down."
I left and walked down the long hall to the elevators, wondering just what the hell had happened in the last twenty minutes.
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BTW, the station was known as Y-103 for a while when it was CHR after dumping the WPHD call letters and switching to WYSL-FM when Bob Howard owned the stations.
