OBSERVATIONS AND RAMBLINGS FROM A CRANKY OLD GUY -By: Jeff Spaulding

Hi once again, hope you, like me, are enjoying the (slow but sure) return of freedom and normalcy. 

That’s not the topic, just wanted to say it for a “Yay Us” moment.

In reality, it’s celebration time!

Three years of RadioradioX, and well over two years of this publication.

Not to mention RadioSoulX in that time as well, plus some great community events, which unfortunately got held up last year due to the pandemic.

Guess what bitches…we’re back and bigger than ever!

Thank YOU for listening, thank YOU for reading, thank YOU for sticking with us, there’s MUCH more to come!  

If you’re new to the station(s) or the paper, I’d like to give you a reintroduction to who I am and why I act the way that I do.

Number One, I am a LOCAL guy, while born in Florida, I started the young life in Hudson, then Albany, then a move to Loudonvillle where I became a proud graduate of the Class of 1974 of Shaker High School (GO Blue Bison!).

After time in the Buckeye State my professional broadcasting career (and by that, I mean the fools payed me) began in 1977. I have physically worked in radio stations in Ohio, Indiana, Vermont, Massachusetts as well as the home base of New York.

My Capital Region broadcast career began in 1986, thanks in part from stealing, I mean borrowing the words “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…” (if you fill in the blank you’ll get it).

I have worked at a number of different formatted radio stations, Top 40, Country, Jazz, Easy Listening, hell I’ve played polkas on the radio before and LIKED it!

It was at one of these stations, a News Talk station (my current home), where I first met Art Fredette.

It took me a while for us to talk, I would see him skulking around the station with his little beanie, an unlit cigarette in his mouth and an F-Bomb on his breath.

I knew right then we would be the best of friends.  

It was when Art and I first started talking, naturally it was about music, this is not meant to be a suck up line, but I truly was impressed with his musical knowledge.

Even back then he spoke of his vision of a kick ass radio station, a variation of what we old farts used to call “Progressive” or “Old School,” a station that plays music because it’s good and not because it sells a lot of copies.

A station the people want, not the consultants.

A station with a format not the same as a number of other stations around the country.

To paraphrase “My Fair Lady,” I think he’s got it, by George he’s got it.

That was three years ago, and the same philosophy was used in creating RadioSoulX as well. 

While I have a minute, I want to mention a moment in the past when I met another member of the RadioradioX staff, the Living Legend Jim Barrett.

To show you how old I am (and by coincidence how old Jim is), the first meeting was sometime between 1972 and 1974, another Shaker classmate, Ken Haverly (unfortunately I can’t remember his “on air name”) was working at the little college radio station in Troy, where I first heard the show “Kaleidoscope.”

In fact, the first time I ever heard FM radio was Christmas 1968 and I was 12 when my parents got me an AM/FM radio, the first time I heard the little college radio station in Troy I heard The Mothers of Invention do “Help I’m a Rock,” It might have been ON “Kaleidoscope.” I was all alone and became frightened and hid under my sheets.

But that was the moment I discovered Rock and Roll, and I needed much, much more.  

And “Kaleidoscope” still lives on RadioradioX. 

For that reason and that reason alone, you need to listen.

So, if we’re celebrating three years, imagine what the next three will bring.

I for one am glad there is a choice.

If you haven’t listened for a while, do so, you’ll be glad too.

Finally, thanks to “The Powers That Be” for allowing this old fool the opportunity to get my thoughts out.

It’s sparked my creativity, it’s given me a voice, and it’s cheaper than paying a shrink to prove I am truly bat sh*t crazy.

Be hearing you