Charles Laquidara: Part One/A Boston Radio Legend has some things to get off his chest.

Buzz Knight 00:00:01

Taking a walk with Buzz Knight. Well, it’s a beautiful day in Concord, Massachusetts, and it’s even more beautiful because I’m taking a walk with my dear friend Charles Laquidara. Charles, it was delightful to have lunch with you. That we could walk off our lunch a little bit. Thanks for taking that walk.

Charles 00:00:23

It was more delightful because you paid even better.

Buzz Knight 00:00:27

Even better.

Charles 00:00:28

Well, so nice to see you.

Buzz Knight 00:00:29

So I think we’re going to break this great Takin A Walk episode into two parts. Part one, this part, we’re going to let you rant a little bit. You did a little ranting in your day with the big mattress. That would be an understatement, I think, from time to time.

Charles 00:00:49

Did you know you sound like Howie Carr? I’m sorry, what were you saying, guys?

Buzz Knight 00:00:59

Ouch. So this is the get off the lawn episode of Taking a Walk. What things are you ranting about these days?

Charles 00:01:11

Well, there’s not much to rant about in California because where I live in California is like a blue bubble. So politically, everybody sort of agrees with me. I like that when that happens. And the air there is good and you don’t see anybody smoking. God, I remember I used to freak out. I smoked from the time I was twelve until, god, I was in my forty s. And I quit. And now, being 64 years old, give or take three decades, I find that people don’t smoke anywhere except in foreign countries. I remember one of my great challenges, one of the great expectations was to finally go to Italy, to go back and find my ancestral heritage. So I go to Italy. Everybody fucking smokes in Italy. Everybody in all of Europe. And the bad thing about that is that in Italy, you want to eat outside. You don’t want to be stuck inside and eating in a restaurant. You want to be outside with watching everybody go by and be a people watcher and hear the music that’s everywhere. But you can’t because everybody’s smoking cigarettes. And in Europe, it’s very interesting because the government it’s not like in America where each state, each town has its own rules. In Europe, it’s like all the European countries, even Ireland, you cannot smoke indoors. I mean outdoors. No, indoors. You cannot smoke indoors anywhere in Europe. Even Ireland, when we went to Ireland, the streets of Dublin, it was like there was so much smoke, it was all foggy. And you had to go to a pub to get fresh air.

Buzz Knight 00:03:19

Right.

Charles 00:03:19

I swear to God. And in Italy now, you have to go inside to have clean air to enjoy a meal.

Buzz Knight 00:03:27

And there’s machines all over, like when you’re walking down the street, there’s cigarette machines everywhere in Europe.

Charles 00:03:35

Yeah, I don’t know, because I don’t smoke anymore. But it’s like me, I have a Tesla now, so I don’t see gas stations, I don’t see cigarette machines. There’s just some things you no longer see. But the other thing that bothers me is I got in trouble on the radio statement for it. Some woman came in, and I was interviewing her with her, and she had perfume on. I’m thinking, do people still wear perfume? Or guys with cologne? It’s like complaining about perfume. Do you wear cologne?

Buzz Knight 00:04:17

No.

Charles 00:04:18

Okay. See what I’m saying?

Buzz Knight 00:04:21

Never.

Charles 00:04:21

Who is cologne, though? Italians? Armenians, greeks? I don’t know. Guys wear cologne, I guess. The guys in Revere, maybe, but well.

Buzz Knight 00:04:35

I want to say to you, we have a global audience for this podcast.

Charles 00:04:39

Oh, boy. Okay, I apologize. Greece, your cologne is the best cologne, the best ever. It’s not the Gillette cologne. Oh, now I pissed off the Krafts

Buzz Knight 00:04:52

You can’t get out of your own way, but people, I think generally, in my opinion, over the last few years, there’s a lot of impatience in the world, wouldn’t you say? Do you find people tailgating more, just as an example?

Charles 00:05:11

Well, you know, I moved from Hawaii. I spent 20 years on Maui in Hawaii. So when I would get in my car, I just get in my car and you go someplace. I mean, Hawaii, they drive 40 miles an hour on the highway on the left and the Pacific, because they say they’re doing this. What’s your hurry, bra? Forget about but then when I moved to California from Hawaii, because I wanted to be close to my grandkids, so I left paradise, and now I’m loving it with my grandkids. But I coming fresh out of Hawaii, getting in a car in my car. I had my car shipped over and getting in the car in Northern California, they’re crazy. No matter what lane you’re in, you’re going to get past. And so I just sort of stay in the right lane. I make you believe I’m kind of an old Italian washer woman. I just sort of stay in the right lane. And this part of the long, and the cars are zooming by me, because otherwise, if you want to compete, you get in the middle lane and there’s zooming by you. You’re going 80, they’re going 90. Everybody’s crazy out here, and the people are a lot less patient. Everybody’s in a hurry to go nowhere, right? Where are you going? Yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:06:40

What’s the deal with people out on the roads? There’s traffic everywhere, but yet supposedly no one can find anyone to work at their places of business. What’s going on? Why aren’t people wanting to work?

Charles 00:06:56

I don’t know the answer to that. I know that you’re not going to hear people saying, I can’t find a job anymore because there are a lot of jobs out there, a lot of openings for people who want to work. But I don’t know. I don’t understand. That all happened since COVID, didn’t it? Yes.

Buzz Knight 00:07:16

I don’t understand that. Especially seeing everybody’s out on the roads. So they’re going somewhere. Where are they going? And then there’s I know you went to the Patriots game.

Charles 00:07:32

Oh, God bless. I got season tickets, and because I live in California, I only go to one game a year, and I used to go in December when the games are important, they’re vying for the Championship Series and all those different series of playoffs. But I decided two years ago, you know what? I’m too old for this shit. So I just come here now in the summer. At the end of the summer, I went to opening day game, and I’ve never done that before, where people standing or the entire game, they stand the entire game.

Buzz Knight 00:08:11

I know. That’s the thing. I know. It is for me. It is for you.

Charles 00:08:14

Same with concerts. When I used to go to concerts, people in front of me started and I’m thinking, Wait a minute. I have to stand up. Even like, even when the piano’s playing, I have to stand up. These people just they stand in front of you, and all you see is their butt is going back and forth and back and forth. They go, you know what? And I don’t want to tell them to sit down, because they’ll just say, hey, we paid our money. I paid my money, too. If I want to hear the show, I’ll just buy a CD, but I want to see the show.

Buzz Knight 00:08:48

Right.

Charles 00:08:49

And I don’t want to have to look over your show. And then, of course, if the guy is 6ft seven, you get that, too.

Buzz Knight 00:08:56

Decorum seems to have gone out the window. Would you agree?

Charles 00:09:01

Yeah, I remember I used to open the car door. I don’t even do it anymore. Open the car door for people.

Buzz Knight 00:09:09

You don’t do that anymore.

Charles 00:09:12

You give it up. Yeah, I want people to open the car door for me.

Buzz Knight 00:09:16

So do you think that people have learned during this pandemic thing how to appreciate the outdoors and enjoy themselves a little bit more? And I’m very cautious as I’m asking this question, because I still can’t get over the sting of you saying that I sounded like Howie Carr.

Charles 00:09:41

Well, a lot of people consider that a compliment. Half your audience, probably. Yeah. Howie and I are actually friendly with Howie and his family. I mean, I haven’t seen them in a few years, but I used to have an indoor swimming pool when I lived here and how he would take his family, and they’d swim in my pool. But we never talk politics. That’s the key, is you never talk politics with your friends. If you do, you pay the price, you lose a friend

Buzz Knight 00:10:13

Deep price, right?

Charles 00:10:14

Yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:10:16

Anything else you want to rant about? Because we can close out part one of the Takin A Walk episode if you’d like, or you can tell me what’s on your mind.

Charles 00:10:28

I think perfume, cigarettes, people who stand in front of me, they’re pretty good at concerts, at football games, yeah. And people who don’t wash their hands when they go to the bathroom. I have this dream if I had a billion dollars, what I’d do is I’d have a TV show that here’s what I would do. I would stand right outside of the Gillette Stadium, the restroom, and as the guys would come out, I would be standing at the exit door, and before they came out, I’d say, you didn’t wash your hands. Get back. Hey, this guy didn’t wash his hands. Look at him. In fact, one time I was at a restaurant, I noticed that the guy who would work in there, he came out of the stall and he just went right out the door. And I thought, I am not eating in this restaurant anymore.

Buzz Knight 00:11:29

Right away.

Charles 00:11:30

Yeah, that’s about it.

Buzz Knight 00:11:32

All right, well, I have one that I’m going to bring up, which is going to lead to my final question for this part one. Part two, by the way, is going to be radio days. Is that D-A-Z-E-I think so. You’ve done that one. You had a project, I think that was called that, didn’t you?

Charles 00:11:51

Yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:11:51

So it’ll be the radio days for part two. But these darn cell phones, you go to dinner, you see a couple at the next table. They’re not talking to each other. They’re each staring at their phone, and they’re not even making eye contact or conversation, or you see somebody going at a crosswalk and they’re you see somebody.

Charles 00:12:26

Bumping into someone.

Buzz Knight 00:12:27

Yeah, right. I mean, it’s just this addiction to these devices is pretty significant.

Charles 00:12:36

Yeah. You’re talking to the wrong guy. When I would go to the bathroom, I used to read a magazine. Now I take my phone and in fact, somebody said, I think somewhere where somebody not spend a lot of time in the bathroom, just make sure they don’t take their phone in with them. There you go. I use my phone all the time. In fact, with my Tesla now, they just upgraded it so that when I’m driving along, if I decide that I want now, I don’t text and drive. I know that’s stupid because you can kill somebody or yourself when you do that. But I do occasionally just look at my phone well for directions, the GPS or whatever, and my Tesla, after they upgraded it, one day I’m driving along. I didn’t know what the upgrade would do. They don’t always tell you. They just do it. So I’m driving along and I’m looking at some things that I got. I just got some alerts on my phone. So I’m looking all of a sudden on the screen, it says, please keep your eyes on the road. I went, what the what is that? And then my car crossed over the line a little bit, and it said, are you sure you don’t want to get some sleep?

Buzz Knight 00:13:55

Well, I was always under the notion that if I ever had the opportunity in another life to run into Steve Jobs, I would ask him the question and say, is this what you intended from the creation of this device? The fact that a device addiction basically.

Charles 00:14:17

To the phone person or to any person that ever invented any device.

Buzz Knight 00:14:21

I’m talking to Steve Jobs in particular. Let me have my dream. But I wonder whether he knew how disruptive this would be in the right way and the wrong way.

Charles 00:14:37

You talk about the Internet or phones?

Buzz Knight 00:14:39

I’m talking specifically the phones, because the.

Charles 00:14:45

Person who invented the Internet, I’m sure it’s a lot of different people, but.

Buzz Knight 00:14:50

Al Gore or something.

Charles 00:14:51

No, Al Gore. Well, Al Gore what he said. They took out a concept. You know, how they should add you.

Buzz Knight 00:14:59

I’m just seeing if you’re paying attention.

Charles 00:15:06

The Internet was once that came in, it changed the whole it gave everybody a voice, including a lot of people who maybe shouldn’t have as much of a voice because they’re just evil people. Stuff changes every day. You’re speaking of get off my lawn thing. I mean, there’s so much stuff going on. I just read in the paper that they’ve got a device now that can actually if you type something up, you say, I want to see an Avocado telephone. All of a sudden, this device will make an Avocado telephone, and you will swear it was taken by a camera.

Buzz Knight 00:15:59

AI.

Charles 00:16:00

Yeah, in AI. They’ve also got ways they can put faces on people. Within my lifetime, I think I’m going to live to be 104, so I’m sure it’ll be within that time, but within my lifetime, I’m thinking that people will just not they won’t believe anything they will say. The only way I believe it is if you’re standing with me, talking to me and what you’re saying. I will believe that you are here, and I will listen to what you’re saying, but anything else, there will be so much screwing around with the technology that you don’t know if they didn’t put Al Gore’s head on Hillary Clinton’s body or if they didn’t put do such and such. Is that really a squirrel with six legs? I mean, you won’t know anything because of what they’ll be able to do with the technology. So people will just say, whatever is out there. It might be true, it might not. But if the person is right in front of me look at this. So I want to read a sign. I’m just walking with Buzz here, and I want to read a sign to the person who is chopping branches off my hedge. Please stop. This hedge, which is an arboviti, requires a specific kind of pruning technique that I learned from the staff at the Arnold Arboretum. This sounds like me on a bad day and consultation. Anyway, let’s keep going away. Meanwhile, what you’re doing is vandalism. I will kill and will kill my hedge. I’ve reported to the police and I’ve set up my webcam. Oh, no. Buzz, guess what? We can’t make this up. That’s a perfect I’ll be going back to California. You’ll be hearing all the rest. They got your face here.

Buzz Knight 00:17:52

It’s okay. I’ve been by there before. Well, back to what you were saying on AI. Perfect lead into episode two is they say that they’re going to have disk jockeys that are created through artificial intelligence. How messed up is that?

Charles 00:18:13

Well, do you remember when I forget what they call it. But when you’re going to a movie, it’s not a cartoon, but it’s a real looking face. What do they call those, hologram or something? No, Disney movies. There are certain movies that have people that look like real people, but they’re sort of cartoon. I don’t know. Anime.

Buzz Knight 00:18:37

But I don’t know. Anime.

Charles 00:18:39

Yeah, I got it. All right. It’s like I have to play the guessing games. I’m not sure anime is the right way. When you go to a Disney movie, it’s either cartoons of lions and pinocchio and stuff, or it’s people that look like sort of real people. And they move around and they walk around and stuff, but they’re not real. So you don’t have any kids. So when was the last time you went to see the Lion King? Anyway, episode two. Check it out.

Buzz Knight 00:19:12

It’s coming up. Taking a walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.