Charles Laquidara: Part Two A Boston Legend talks about radio daze

Buzz Knight 00:00:01

Taking a walk with Buzz Knight. Well, welcome to part two of Taking.

Charles 00:00:08

A Walk with the one, the only, Matt Siegal

Buzz Knight 00:00:13

Charles Laquidara. It’s so great to be with you. We’re in Concord, Massachusetts, a great spot for a walk. Beautiful day. We had a nice lunch. Buzz I bought, which I love buying, you bought for me so many times. So do you remember the first time that you interviewed for a radio job? And where was that?

Charles 00:00:38

I never interviewed for a radio job.

Buzz Knight 00:00:40

Never?

Charles 00:00:41

No, I don’t think so. When you got your first job, you.

Buzz Knight 00:00:45

Didn’t have to interview.

Charles 00:00:46

No. From what I remember, you’re talking I’m Buzz, I’m 54 years old, give or take three, four decades.

Buzz Knight 00:00:55

Yeah.

Charles 00:00:56

So I don’t remember going back that far. But I do remember that my buddy owned a theater, a small community theater in Hollywood, and he had a part time job as a disc jockey at KPPC in Pasadena, California. And we were in Hollywood, and he said, hey, Charles, do you want to come into the station with me? And I was doing some work with I was writing a play at the time. And I said, no, Dave, I’m really he said, Come on, take a break. Come on with me. So I went into the station with him. He was playing jazz, and so I was watching him, and he had me sitting at the console with him and do that stuff. And he said, by the way, he said, they’re looking for somebody to do a classical music piece called the Sunday Night Opera of the Year. Do you know anything about opera? And I said, yeah. I said, I like classical music. I said, I don’t know that much about it. But he said, Anyway, you should just brush up on your offer. And I’ll tell him I’ve got something to do with things. So I just went in one night and the engineer showed me how to work the pots. I think they call them the sliders, or whatever those were. And then I got a write up in the Pasadena Star News by their music critic. He said something like, I still have a copy of it. Something like, in this world of classical music, when the announcers are so proper and so along comes an aspiring actor named Charles Laquidara who talks like somebody, you know, on the street, somebody who finally we have an ordinary human being, one of us. Anyway, he gave me a great write up, and so there was that. And then the station I was working at changed from classical to rock and roll. That was when the underground stations took over. All the classical stations, like up in San Francisco, in La, in Boston, Boston WBCN was a classical music station. And then all of a sudden, they couldn’t make any money doing that, so they switched to rock and roll. So here I was now the station that I was working for is a classical station, changed to a rock and roll station. And they kept me on because I was cheap labor. I was $2 an hour. I didn’t know that much about rock and roll. I didn’t know that much about classical music. I was trying to be an actor, so I just mixed it up together. Mixed up. I play rock mining off and just follow that with the Beatles or something like that. And then anyway, I came from California. I came back here to my home in Milford to take a few weeks break, and I heard this station called WBCN, and I called him up and I said, hey, you guys are great. What’s going on? And he said, he asked me who I was, and I said, Charles. Oh, you’re the crazy bastard that plays rock and roll and classical music. He said, Come on into the station. And BCN was looking for somebody because Peter Wolf was there, I guess mid morning DJ or Night DJ, and he was leaving and they needed something to replace them, so I lucked and I got a job. But anyway, that’s not what you asked me. I forget what you asked.

Buzz Knight 00:04:43

Well, I asked you the first interview, which you said, but then you said where it led to BCN. When you called up to get the job at BCN, who did you speak to? Is that Ray?

Charles 00:04:55

The first guy that I talked to was Jim Perry. He was the guy on the phone. And then when I went into the station, Sam Kopper hired me. Sam Kopper was the program director, and he said, yeah, Peter Wolf is leaving to form some band, j. Geils Band or whatever, and we could be looking for a night guy. So I worked late night guys, and that was amazing. I worked at ten at night to two in the morning shift, and it was so weird. Rooney. Kate covering Rooney. I’m staying within Boston right now. She and her husband, she at the time was a listener line. She was the head of the listener line. Five, three, six, 8000. Anyone who remembers the early days of BCN knows that number by heart. Leo 8000. Anyway, she came in and said, there’s two guys out there. No, three guys downstairs want to come up, they want to come up and play. And this is about midnight. I said yeah, because my shift wasn’t over for 2 hours. So they came out. It was Jerry Garcia, it was Duane Allman, and I think Mickey Hart was somebody from somebody else in the Dead, but Duane? Did I say? Duane Allman you said Duane

Buzz Knight 00:06:17

Yes.

Charles 00:06:18

Duane Garcia. And then another guy Mickey Hard I forget.

Buzz Knight 00:06:25

Did they just come and hang out?

Charles 00:06:28

Well, one of them had a guitar, and the other one no, just one had a guitar. And they went back and forth, handled the guitar, but they just came up to hang and smoked pot. Yeah, right?

Buzz Knight 00:06:45

And you didn’t realize how freaking cool it was?

Charles 00:06:48

No, we did. We were sort of all together. We were DJs. We liked the music, they were musicians, they liked the radio. And we just sort of we didn’t think of it in turn.. I didn’t go. Oh, my God. It’s Duane Allman, right? Hey, dude. Yeah, what’s up? And it was just hanging out. How are you doing? Yeah, it wasn’t hey, dude, back then. It was, hey, man.

Buzz Knight 00:07:10

Hey, man.

Charles 00:07:11

Hey, man, how are you doing?

Buzz Knight 00:07:13

But you had that nighttime soothing DJ voice.

Charles 00:07:22

I remember I had seen The Exorcist after I saw the movie The Exorcist. I lived alone in Cambridge and I thought, I am never, ever going to go to bed alone. I am never so I would go on the radio and just ask people if I could come sleep at your house. So many times I ended up on the floor next to some bed and next to a kitty litter box. It was like but anyway, one time this girl called and we talked for oh, my God, my shift started at ten. We talked from maybe 1130 until 02:00. And at first we were going back and forth, you know how you’re doing phones when you’re sort of trying to find the ice breaker line and stuff like that. And one of the things she asked me, she says, what do you look for in a woman? And I said, you want to hear the truth or you want to hear what I know you want to hear? Tell me what I want to hear, what you think I want to hear. And I said, what do I look for in a woman? I look for somebody who’s intelligent and somebody who likes poetry, somebody who can watch the sunsets with and somebody who, you know, likes to share ideas and thoughts. And she goes, okay, so what do you really look for? In a moment, I said, well, now, this is before me, too. This is a long time ago, so I don’t think I want to do.

Buzz Knight 00:09:11

You want to stop that?

Charles 00:09:12

I’m going to stop it right there. Anyway, so finally we agreed to meet. Okay, so I drive it’s 02:00 in the morning. I drive down to her place. By the time I get out of there, it’s almost like mornings come. It’s 400 or whatever, and she lives in Watertown. And I drive up to her house and I just sit there. And at the time, I was smoking cigarettes. And so I’m sitting there waiting for her to come out. And I’m sitting there with the cigarette, and I’m blowing smoke rings. I’m being so cool. You have to picture it good. I’m just like, sitting back there, blowing smoke rings with my cigarette, sitting behind the wheel of the car waiting for this beautiful woman to come out because she said she was a ten. And all of a sudden this woman comes out and I’m not looking because I just want to be surprised. How wonderful. And the car door opens and then the car door shuts and I start shaking the seats going up and down. So, needless to say, she was healthy. Very healthy.

Buzz Knight 00:10:22

Healthy.

Charles 00:10:23

Healthy.

Buzz Knight 00:10:23

Good way to put it.

Charles 00:10:24

Yeah, she was a ton of beauty. And when I looked over after I threw my cigarette out the window, I looked over to her and she had painted her face green. And my dad’s pissed off at me because I just left the house. She says, So get me out of here. This will teach you to go for looks. Something like that, anyway, whatever it was.

Buzz Knight 00:10:55

Did you stay off the request lines after that?

Charles 00:10:58

Sure, yeah. I decided it wasn’t worth it. The Exorcist still haunts me today. It’s funny because I used to have movie nights in Hawaii where once a week we do a different movie that we would all pick out. And so one week, and usually I had 20 people coming into the house in my condo in Hawaii, and it was like one night I sent out the invites and I said, hey, we’re going to go back a little bit. We’re going to have some fun because it’s Halloween. We’re going to do the show of The Exorcist. And every one of the 20 people, not one person said they would come. They all said, Nah, I can’t make that. No, that was the scariest movie in my life. No one would come.

Buzz Knight 00:11:41

Wow.

Charles 00:11:42

And that’s years later and still I think it’s considered the scariest movie of all time.

Buzz Knight 00:11:49

Yeah, I wouldn’t have come, I don’t think.

Charles 00:11:50

Did you ever see it?

Buzz Knight 00:11:51

I did, and I never saw it again after that. I had nightmares.

Charles 00:11:55

Were you Catholic?

Buzz Knight 00:11:56

I was. And so I was practicing, if you will, at that point, my Catholic thing, which I didn’t quite realize what I was doing, but I think I righted that ship.

Charles 00:12:12

Yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:12:12

Are you practicing any religions these days?

Charles 00:12:21

When our kids were born, we had to decide whether we wanted to bring them up Catholic. And I thought, hey,. And then we decided we’ll just bring them up to be good people.

Buzz Knight 00:12:32

Yeah. There you go. So you interviewed George Harrison at one point, didn’t you?

Charles 00:12:38

That was my first interview ever. I was so nervous in that that.

Buzz Knight 00:12:43

Was a formal interview, right? Like you formally, like yeah, we had tape recorder running.

Charles 00:12:49

It’s too bad that interview is somewhere out there on the Internet, at least part of it. And you could tell it was my first interview ever. And that radio station that I had.

Buzz Knight 00:13:04

Just started at, what was he promoting?

Charles 00:13:07

That was the White album I had promoted.

Buzz Knight 00:13:09

Oh, my God.

Charles 00:13:10

And the way it happened, the only reason they let me do it was because we had gone to Columbia or Apple something, whatever record company it was, promotion party. And while we’re there, I’m standing next to George Harrison. He had a lot of dandruff, by the way, on the back of this blue blazer. Anyway, I’m standing next to him at the table. What do you call those?

Buzz Knight 00:13:38

Like the buffet?

Charles 00:13:39

Yeah, buffet table. And I said to him, George, I’m with this really, an underground radio station. I said, and all these other radio stations are there. KHJ and all these radio stations are there. I said, Would you give us an interview? And he said, sure. And so we set it up. Wow. We went downstairs and he talked about each song in the White Album, and we lost the tape eventually, that tape is gone, but we did have a little bit of tape of what he asked me what underground radio was, and then he compared to the pirate radio, the pirate ships that they have out there. Yeah. So we had a great conversation, but I was too nervous.

Buzz Knight 00:14:26

Could you detect that from that conversation, that The Beatles as a group were winding down? No, not at all.

Charles 00:14:37

No. Was that happening, by the way?

Buzz Knight 00:14:39

I think it was starting to, maybe. Did you watch the documentary, the one.

Charles 00:14:44

With I didn’t like? I saw part of it. I didn’t like it.

Buzz Knight 00:14:47

What didn’t you like about it?

Charles 00:14:48

I don’t know. I just didn’t like it.

Buzz Knight 00:14:50

Just couldn’t get interested in it. Yeah, because a lot of people said, part one they couldn’t get into.

Charles 00:14:54

And then I think that’s where I stopped.

Buzz Knight 00:14:56

And then they got into when they went up on the roof and played and all of that.

Charles 00:15:01

I think The Beatles, as far as I’m concerned, their production was the best ever in the world. Sergeant Pepper was such a game changer. But then, after a while that was a long time ago. Was that 67, 65, at least, yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:15:21

If there was somebody that you could conjure up that you always wanted to interview, who would it be?

Charles 00:15:27

You mean whether or not yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:15:31

Or someone living.

Charles 00:15:32

Now, this is a stupid answer, but it’s the truth. Sarah Vaughan, when I was growing up, before rock and roll even came out, this was probably in the early 50s, she had a song called Time that you’ve never heard of, even though you’ve been in a music business for 50 years. I know all the words to it. It went something like time all through the day hours. And anyway, you could find it, I’m sure, on YouTube. And it was a 78. And I love that song so much. And I remember that was one of the first jazz records that I’d ever heard. And I always was hoping someday, because if Sarah Vaughan were sitting at a table at a restaurant, and you and I were there. I’d walk over to her and I would stand up, and she’d look up at me and I’d say, Time. She’d say, you know that song? Do you know that song? I love that song. She would go crazy, right? It didn’t become a hit, right?

Buzz Knight 00:16:40

But anyway, why did someone by the name of Big Mama Thornton not like your, whistling?

Charles 00:16:47

She was superstitious about that. She was like, well, she was great. I mean, she came in this should have been known to get off my lawn cigarette, because she would say, that boy Elvis, he stole my song. He stole Hound Dog. That was my song. And she complained about so many different things, but it was funny, and we really got along. She loved me. She’d like to just yell at me, don’t you whistleblow. Don’t you go making bad luck coming down that hallway. Your voice is a lot stronger than that.

Buzz Knight 00:17:31

But that place, BCN in particular, that era, but all the eras really was filled with the colorful characters that worked there. But people who would come in that were celebrities as well, it was like.

Charles 00:17:46

Yeah, we didn’t think of it as being celebrities, but it was like a.

Buzz Knight 00:17:50

Haven of stories, right?

Charles 00:17:51

Yeah. BCN was sort of divided up into different eras, too. Like you said, there was one era where it started out with the people who started BCN. Joe Rogers, Tommy Hadges, Stephen Siegel, Jim Perry. All those people were the BCN that most people now who think of BCN don’t know. Because BCN became very popular in later years when Norm Winer, Oedipus, Tony Berradini those guys took over. You could either have great radio or good ratings, but you can’t have both. And you probably know that as a station manager, program director, and a consultant, that if you’re going to have great radio, that means you’re going to be able to play John Lee Hooker and c. You’re going to be able to play classical music and mix it with Take Five and mix that with Billie Holiday. You’re going to have great radio, but you’re not going to have great ratings. And people going to work as you know, they want to hear a familiar song. They don’t want to hear a twelve minute John Lee Hooker song that goes on and on and on. They want to hear the Eagles. They want to hear songs they know.

Buzz Knight 00:19:12

What was your secret sauce? What made you so special?

Charles 00:19:17

Because it’s Boston. Everybody in Boston, I guess everybody everywhere, they like the idea that the guy on the radio is a total fuck up. They say, hey, if he can be on that, I can do that. I think a lot of people you.

Buzz Knight 00:19:34

Think was the everyman approach.

Charles 00:19:36

Yeah, whatever you want to call it. The point is, I wasn’t as classy. I wasn’t a Robert J. Lertzma. So any classical music listener would know who that is. Mark Parenteau was great because he went from Top 40 radio, you could call it, or at least going over to FM underground radio. He had a great voice. I didn’t have that. And he did great interviews. I don’t do that. I don’t do great interviews. And I just go up there, and I just sort of screw up. But people love to hear that. I made a whole altar ego about that. And he was even more popular than I was called. Duane Glasscock.

Buzz Knight 00:20:17

That’s right. Where is he now?

Charles 00:20:21

Dyane and I are not on speaking terms.

Buzz Knight 00:20:26

Poor Duane. So you had that stunt involving Arbitron that was Duane. Duane did. And that was as a result of, I think, correctly.

Charles 00:20:46

No, I’ll correct you already.

Buzz Knight 00:20:48

I haven’t even said anything.

Charles 00:20:49

I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say it was a result of the ratings. Yeah, and it wasn’t. The ratings were great.

Buzz Knight 00:20:54

Okay.

Charles 00:20:54

But Duane Glasscock went on the air, and he said we didn’t have anything to do that day. So that’s where Duane decided to go. And he said, there’s all these rich guys. These fat rich guys are smoking cigars and Cadillacs, driving all around down in Beltsville, Maryland. And they have this company called Arbitron ARB. And they just go around and they tell radio. These guys decide they make decisions about how many people are listening. And they have this stupid technical way of deciding. And they said that our radio station, that our district is only got a four and that I only got a 13. And I looked out the window because we’re at the top of the Prudential looking out the window. There are 13 people out there right now, and the phones are all lit up. So these guys are lying. And here’s what I want you to do, everybody. You get a bag of crap of feces and put it in a plastic bag so that the mailman won’t get it on his fingers. And you mail it to Arbitron Research Bureau Bix 11 in Beltsville, Maryland, 87251. Three. And he just kept going every break, every single time, using music play like Stevie Nicks or Sit On My Face, Stevie Nicks, whatever he played. And then at the end of the song and say, don’t forget, you got to send a bag of and we bleep it out. This address. I kept doing it. So now comes that was on a Saturday. So now comes Monday morning. And the manager of the station at the time, his name was Klee Dobra. And so Klee goes in my studio when I’m doing a show, the morning show, and he says, Charles, can I see you after your show? And I said, yeah. So I go to his office after my show.

Buzz Knight 00:23:08

Never a good sign, right?

Charles 00:23:09

You don’t go to the manager’s office. So anyway, I don’t know what it’s going to be about. I didn’t realize. Anyway, he said and he’s got this big cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, and he’s stirring it with his finger, and it’s like he’s steaming hot. And the veins on his neck he was a really white guy. The veins on his neck were protruding. And he says, you know, Charles Laquidara is a professional, competent, great radio announcer, and Charles well respected and does a wonderful show, but Duane Glascock is a fucking idiot. Duane Glascock is not going to work on this fucking station. Not on my station anymore. Do you understand? Duane is fired. And I said, Cleave, Duane had ratings of a 13. That’s unheard of in Boston. Like, a four is great. He had a 13 every Saturday. And he looks at me and he goes, are you playing with a full deck of cards? You’re acting like Duane as somebody else. And I said, you just fucking fired Duane. And you kept me.

Buzz Knight 00:24:28

Well, I know one of the happiest moments was when somehow maybe I helped with this. Maybe somebody else helped with this. You were able to validate from someone inside Arbitron then, that a lot of people sent those bags of oh, manure.

Charles 00:24:49

Put it this way. Duane had a 13 unheard of ratings. I don’t think you can ask Carter Allen, but I don’t think anyone’s ever got a 13 ratings in radio in Boston, but maybe Howie Carr. your sound alike. No. So if a guy with a 13 is telling people every break to send a bag of shit to Arbitron, they’re getting a lot of bags of shit.

Buzz Knight 00:25:14

You were very happy when you heard that, actually, that there was a lot there.

Charles 00:25:18

No, I knew it was going to happen. Duane knew.

Buzz Knight 00:25:21

Duane knew.

Charles 00:25:22

But here’s the thing about arbitrary next rating period. The BCN’s ratings were still good. I’m sure after the first bag of shit, they probably said, okay, something’s going on. There’s some terrorists out there. They probably didn’t even know what it was about. Once you get one bag of that stuff and then one thing well, if you see another one coming, you know there’s something going on here. And so you have to sell the full service. Hey, no more of that. But I don’t know if they knew and they just didn’t care or whatever, but there was no lawyers. There was no litigation, nothing.

Buzz Knight 00:26:01

Well, lawyers did get a hold of the radio business at one point in time, and I think at times it’s fair to say they really took a lot of the fun out of it, didn’t they?

Charles 00:26:13

Yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:26:15

I mean, they’re doing their job, but they really did take the fun out of the business. We’re walking here in the center of Concord. I just want to point out we’re going by the Concord Book Shop, and this is one of the great local bookstores that we don’t have enough of. These days, so I just know you being a voracious reader of books.

Charles 00:26:39

Oh, yeah, I love books. I read a book a day. What are you reading right now? I’m reading Catcher in the Rye. Oh, wait, that was the last book I read. That was, like, 40 years ago.

Buzz Knight 00:26:54

That far back.

Charles 00:26:56

But I do read a lot of magazines and I read a lot of emails.

Buzz Knight 00:27:02

So let’s get to the next day. Do you want to?

Charles 00:27:06

Yeah.

Buzz Knight 00:27:09

You seem like you were hesitant.

Charles 00:27:12

Well, it was fun. We’re doing a lot of walking here.

Buzz Knight 00:27:17

It was fun.

Charles 00:27:18

If we could sit down, we’ll sit down. So then do you have to change the name of the show?

Buzz Knight 00:27:24

No, we could saunter here or take it a sit.

Charles 00:27:28

What’s the show called? Walk with Buzz.

Buzz Knight 00:27:30

Taking a walk.

Charles 00:27:31

No. Taking a walk. This is called taking a sit.

Buzz Knight 00:27:33

Taking a sit. Actually, I was eyeing that chair back there.

Charles 00:27:38

Oh, yeah. What about that one? The Main Street Cafe

Buzz Knight 00:27:42

We’ll find some way to take that over as long as we can cross the street. So coming to ZLX was a bit of a culture shock. Yes.

Charles 00:27:53

For them and you, too.

Buzz Knight 00:27:56

No, for them, yes. I would be considered part of them.

Charles 00:28:02

Yeah. But you sort of knew it was coming.

Buzz Knight 00:28:04

I did.

Charles 00:28:04

Other people didn’t.

Buzz Knight 00:28:05

Right. But you had gone from a place we can go up there.

Charles 00:28:12

Perfect.

Buzz Knight 00:28:13

You had gone from a place where there were very few rules, and then you came to a place that had a lot of rules, so that was a big change. Right?

Charles 00:28:27

Yeah. At BCN, the girls that worked in the office, they go, hey, Charles, how are you doing? Are you having a good day? You’re just glad to see me? They make all kinds of sexual things. And the guys did, too. We did, too. When I went over to ZLX, it was like the person who was doing the news or public affairs, whatever, it was very Pretty woman. I said, hey, can we go hang in the manager’s office for half hour or so? And she said, no, I don’t think so. Whatever. And I thought it was funny. It wasn’t like that. It was more lighthearted, it was more funny. But right now it sounds like I’m one of those predators. And it wasn’t. It was just kind of just going back and forth with a little kind of like, innuendo or whatever. So the next thing I know, about three days later, you’re calling me into the office, into the manager’s office.

Buzz Knight 00:29:25

We won’t mention him by name. You’ll say, he who we shall not name.

Charles 00:29:29

Right, okay. And there’s this guy there that I never saw in my life, and they asked me to sit down. And this guy says to me he gets introduced to me as a lawyer from New York, a high powered lawyer. And he says to me, I’m just paraphrasing now something like, you’re harassed or something like that, one of our female employees. And just know that it doesn’t matter how high your ratings are. It doesn’t matter how much money you’re making. If you do that again, you’ll be terminated. And I’m sitting there. Okay. There was my culture shock with me finding out, oh, the St WBCN is not the same. In a way, that turned out to be a good thing, because she eventually came to visit me in Hawaii. But the point is that I learned something like, it was a learning process, and I think a lot of guys right now who don’t get it are feeling the pain of what it means not to get it in a culture that now is much more respectful. I remember we had a sign for the kids that said no is a complete sentence. It was for the kids when they were teenagers. Now it’s a sign that every guy should understand the word no. It’s not like she really does want to. She’s just being polite. It’s like no means no. So anyway, you learned that over the years, but right now, I’m too old to be any kind of a threat anyway.

Buzz Knight 00:31:10

But one of the things that I’m most proud that I was part of, and I think I hope you’re proud of, is you left number one in the entire market when you finally quit. When you had finally quit, at that point, and I think I made a promise to you. I said, Charles, you will be number one when you leave. And lo and behold, you were.

Charles 00:31:41

And that was number one. But not in all demos.

Buzz Knight 00:31:45

Not in all I think you were at that point.

Charles 00:31:47

No, not at Howard Stern.

Buzz Knight 00:31:49

Yeah, you beat Howard when you left, and that was early in Howard’s ultimate morning rein, if you will. So he had been as you remember, he was nights at BCN.

Charles 00:32:03

He was nights at first. That was mornings. And he used to always say, when is Laquidara going to die? But he’s a nice guy. Actually, that whole radio thing he does is just baloney. He’s just really a super guy. I mean, I don’t know him, but I’ve talked to him a few times.

Buzz Knight 00:32:19

Well, he speaks highly of you because you have the school up here, right?

Charles 00:32:23

Oh, well, see, here’s this other thing that’s really funny. Apparently, I’m in the Boston New England Hall of Fame, one of those halls of fame, and I’m in that, and every couple of years, somebody decides to bring me up as a nominee for the radio. This happens, like, every few years. So every few years, that happens. And I think, Boy, that would be really cool. But each time, because of whatever the process is, I haven’t gotten in. I haven’t gotten enough votes to get in. So I made clear not to you, but I’m making it clear to you now that the last two guys that. I talked to, they had set it up and said they were going to nominate me. Was there a guy named Gleason?

Buzz Knight 00:33:16

Kraig Kitchen

Charles 00:33:18

Yeah. So I said to those guys, I said, look, you can nominate me this time, but here’s one thing you got to promise me, because I’ll come back and haunt you if it takes till after I die for you guys, for them to put me in the hall of Fame. I said, I want you to know that I refuse to accept the afford. I’m not trying to sound like Marlin Brando, but I want that thing when I’m alive so I can enjoy it. Don’t do that bullshit like you did with Len Zakim and make a bridge after me after I’m dead. Do it while I’m alive. So remember, Buzz, if I happen to die before you, okay, then you better not nominate me for that thing because I will turn it down, posts some mortem or whatever the expection is, all right? I got to go.

Buzz Knight 00:34:07

I promise. Let’s take a walk back to the car. I got to thank you for taking a walk, but I got to thank you for a couple of particular things, and I just want to acknowledge it. First of all, I go to the Consumer Electronics Show out in Vegas. I try to go every year to take in the show and the new innovations and gadgets, and there’s a few people who have motivated me to go. You’re one of them because you were so early on being intrigued by new devices. You couldn’t work them, by the way, but you were intrigued. So your curiosity inspired me and your passion for creating things as well. You don’t really think about it that way, but I look at you as you had left Radio, and you just kept being out there. Some of it was lifestyle, some of it was probably politics, but you were out creating things, and I so admire that, and I thank you for inspiring me with that as well. And then the last thing, I’ll never forget this sitting in the office at ZLX. And I remember I think you came in and wanted to talk to me about something. And I probably.

Charles 00:35:32

I don’t know.

Buzz Knight 00:35:32

Rolled my eyes or whatever. And you shut the door and you said. I just want you to know you should take this as a compliment that we want to come in and talk to you because in so many cases. That would never be something we’d want to maybe do with the person in your position.

Charles 00:35:52

Because you are easy to talk to as a boss. You always were more of a boss friend.

Buzz Knight 00:35:57

You level set me on that thing as well. So I’m eternally grateful. I’m grateful for taking a walk, and I’m grateful for our friendship.

Charles 00:36:07

And you’ll always be my boss by the end, my friend. Thank you so much. We’re shaking hands now, by the way, today. Take care. Thanks a lot.

Buzz Knight 00:36:16

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.