[Kzyxtalk] Crying (or) Flying saucer rock and roll.

[Marco McClean]

Subject: Crying (or) Flying saucer rock and roll.

/"Phil has always been a fighter. He was getting in fights all the time. 
I told him that if he ever hit me then I would leave the band. He wanted 
to find out if I was telling him the truth, he hit me, so I left, and 
that is how UFO split up." -Michael Schenker/

Here's the recording of last night's (2023-07-07) eight-hour-long Memo 
of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and 
KNYO.org:
https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0548

Email /your/ written work on any subject and I'll read it on the very 
next Memo of the Air.

Bill Mulvihill called to talk about his Mendocino Coast Music Archives 
labor-of-love project of collecting, digitizing and making available 
recordings of musicians of the Mendocino area in the 1970s. After that I 
played eight or so songs from the collection, for breaks in the reading. 
Go there and poke around. Much of the material was recorded by Rainbird 
(RIP) on a cassette deck at, among other places, the legendary Toad Hall 
(also RIP). For 1970s consumer-grade tape technology the sound quality 
is terrific. Colors, Dirty Legs, Horse Badorties, Gene Parsons Band, 
Lenny Laks, John Chamberlain, Judy Mayhan, and more all the time. it's a 
treasure trove of Mendo music history.
https://soundcloud.com/arts-mendocino/

I read the results of my asking the MCN listserv for people's stories 
about parts of movies or songs or whatever in their lives that, when 
they hear it or think about it, it kicks them in the chest and they're 
crying all over again. Some of them were a struggle to read aloud 
without breaking down, myself. (I'm thinking here about the vivid story 
of Leslie Sutherland's mother's death.) That's in the show too, as are 
all the regular features, stories by Eleanor Cooney, Mitch Clogg 
(reporting from the V.A. hospital), R.D. Beacon, David Herstle Jones, 
Bruce Anderson, Mark Scaramella, Ezekiel Krahlin, John Sakowicz, Kent 
Wallace, Manuel Vicent (translated by Louis Bedrock), Del Potter, Rhoda 
Teplow, Charlie Engel, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jheri Cravens, Chris 
Skyhawk, Al Nunez, Keri Ann Bourne, Ryan Boosel of the H.P. Lovecraft 
Historical Society, Harper's Weekly Review, some history (the so-called 
Indian Wars in general and Custer's Last Stand in particular, from an 
Indian, objective, standpoint), a ChatGPT story about Pantagruel in 
Paris; and Biff Rose's last will and testament that he posted to 
Facebook, putting his affairs in order, anticipating his looming 
departure from this world due to advanced liver cancer. And that's not all.

NEXT IN NEWS: The cold Juanita and I got a few weeks ago wasn't just a 
cold but tested positive for covid. I'm better now, just a lingering 
cough mainly at night, past the quarantine period and properly masked 
and hand-sanitized when out of the house, but Juanita's still wiped out, 
gradually improving, though depressed: She'd just got a new job after 
losing her job of 15 years, passing through another job for a month, and 
her latest boss fired her over the phone because she was too sick to get 
up and so forgot to call in the night before, though she'd told him she 
was sick and had tested positive a few days before that and so was still 
within the posted quarantine period. The sound of her crying into her 
phone and begging him not to fire her will be with me for the rest of my 
life. Meanwhile, I just found out that they raised her apartment rent, 
not by much, but her bill-pay service didn't reflect that since then, so 
that has to be paid off over a few months now, on top of the increase, 
so basically it's gone up by a significant amount, as has the storage 
rent. Money my 94-year-old mother gave me to get my car fixed will be 
going there instead, and then that'll be gone. I've been at Juanita's, 
away from my day job for weeks this time. I'm probably how she got sick 
in the first place; I got sick first. Yesterday we did the 
waiting-on-hold and then the phone call with a Sonoma County social 
worker to start her unemployment process, which can take weeks to get 
rolling, and we still haven't got medical insurance since she lost her 
good job in March, meaning several more agencies to deal with, two 
separate counties and the state, plus money I owe my doctor, who I have 
to go back to sometime soon… That's much but not all of what's tangling 
me up right now, and I'm feeling increasingly overwhelmed in an 
unfamiliar and frightening way. Realistically, for a goal, we'd be fine 
on decent medical insurance, Juanita better and with work in her 
field(s) that pays at least what she was getting for 15 years up to 
March, but looking forward we'd still need hundreds of dollars more per 
month than we can reasonably make, and we don't live expensively; 
there's no way to cut out any vices we don't have. I'll be 65 in 
November. I understand that full social security retirement age is 67 
now and there are powerful reasons for me to hold off for that, but I'm 
tempted to start it early out of desperation. Also everything everyone 
needs to live costs twice as much as it did just fifteen years ago. But 
you know that.

So I'll be 65, Juanita will be 60. Neither of us has ever been on any 
form of government assistance. Just a few years ago, there was KMFB 
paying me to repair things at the station and do my show and I got a cut 
of the advertising money my show brought in; KMFB doesn't exist anymore, 
since 2011, and KZYX hates my guts so I can't go there, even if they 
/paid/ their local airpeople, which they don't, though they have money 
coming out of their ears, largely from government assistance, hundreds 
of thousands of dollars a year more than they realistically need, 
management paying itself very well including benefits (okay, sorry; it's 
easy to set myself off on that subject); Mendocino Theater Company paid 
me a little bit each month for a couple of decades for sound work and 
engineering, that spigot mostly shut off in 2020; and there was and is 
my beloved (not kidding, really beloved) day job in Albion since 1989, 
when I can get to it, but everything is different now. I'm throwing 
myself on the mercy of the court, I guess. If you have an abundance at 
this juncture, and you've enjoyed using my radio and teevee and teaching 
and publishing and event-recording work since the early 1980s, much of 
which I accomplished unpaid or barely-paid, or even if you haven't, or 
if you appreciate Juanita's helping you or someone you know on a 
project, we could use your help now. Mail a check in any amount to Marco 
McClean, box 1497, Mendocino, CA 95460. I'll get it when I'm back in 
town and put it where it's called for and keep it relatively local. I'll 
probably send this whine out a few more times, so if it bugs you, I 
apologize in advance, and you know what to do: skip it. There's no pressure.

ALSO OF NOTE: The county is requiring better plans filed for the 
transmitter and  antenna move for KNYO. Bob has contacted a structural 
engineer to cut that red tape. As things are, with the antenna rig at 
the original site, though lower, we reach /almost/ the broadcast radius 
we had before the storm disaster, but the June-planned two-mile move and 
range-restoral/improvement has been pushed back even more weeks or 
months. KNYO can always use your help, short term or long term, via the 
big red heart at KNYO.org. If you'd like to do radio (music and/or talk 
and/or theater and/or something as yet undefined) at KNYO, there are 
time slots open. Do it from the studio in town with KNYO's equipment, or 
from anywhere you have reliable internet access, using your own 
inexpensive readily-available studio machinery. The price of that has 
actually gone down.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a 
fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you 
while gathering the show together, that don't really have anything to do 
with the show but arrested my attention, and I think you'll like them. 
Such as:

Roy Orbison – Crying. (The Man In Black in Douglas Adams /Restaurant at 
the End of the Universe/ was based on Roy Orbison, not Johnny Cash.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLC9o_unLq4

Our Town. (full 90-min. film) (via Lynn Keisewetter)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeBrf4Qjf9g

A hundred people screaming as loud as they can. My favorite is the one 
who is too shy to at first. The cameraperson prompts her a little, and 
she tries, but faintly, and then she's surprised to notice that her 
cheeks feel hot. Like, huh, how about that. Small steps. She'll be 
screaming like a teenager at a Beatles concert in no time. Nose up. Drop 
your shoulders. Sing from the diaphragm.
https://laughingsquid.com/100-people-scream/

And here people jeer at and taunt a bull, and poke at it with long 
sticks, all from behind the safety of fences that are heavy enough 
protection from the consequences of their actions but not quite high 
enough, it turns out. Things go instantly from /Hey! Ha-ha! Hey, ya dumb 
bull! Look over here! *poke, poke*/ to /AI-EEE! AAAUGH! EEEE!/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12266125/Instant-karma-spectators-taunting-bull-animal-leaps-barrier-gets-revenge.html

Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org
https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com