i don't know why i keep going back to what i did in elementary school when i'm hurting for a post, but the more i think about it, the more i realize just influential those days were in shaping who the modern day moe berg is.
for instance, the reason i do what it is i do these days can probably be traced back to this man...
captain frank reed - heavy hitter on the murderer's row disc jockey lineup put together by the mighty 66 WNBC radio back in the 1980s.
captain frank was the first celebrity i ever interviewed.
it was fourth grade and i had taken it upon myself to sign my class up to guest edit "kidsday", the weekly color children's section in my local paper. i did this by filling out a coupon and sending it in, not allowing myself to believe for a second that they wouldn't choose us to participate.
they didn't choose us to participate.
but that didn't stop me. i figured it was just a matter of time until we got the call, and when we got the call, we would have to be prepared. that meant having a celebrity interview ready to go.
part of the allure of kidsday - at least to this fourth grader - was the opportunity for kids like me to fire questions at an honest to goodness rock star or actor or new york islander or something like that. every week four lucky kids from the lucky class would be put in a room with, i don't know, pat benatar or boy george or mike bossy
and they would walk away a little wiser and clutching an autographed picture.
i knew we would need a hell of an interview when the word eventually came down that it was our time. what i didn't know was that newsday set up those interviews for the kids.
if i my class was going to shine, i was going to have to land that interview.
first, i narrowed my choices down to two potential interviewees
don imus
who was at that time mr. big shit on the radio - which to me was a huge deal..
(quick backstory: for some reason, at that point in my life, i was obsessed with WNBC. as in OBSESSED. i listened to WNBC every chance i could. i wrote fan letters to the whole on-air staff - even roz frank, the woman who did traffic.
i sat down in front of my tape recorder for hours upon hours recording my own radio shows. i even wrote "listen to 66 WNBC" on a huge piece of oaktag, glued pictures of the jocks all around the edges and stood on the service road to the long island expressway shouting at cars to tune their radio to 660 am. luckily, this phase didn't last that long.)and the rolling stones
who were riding high on the success of tattoo you.
i figured the stones would be eager to talk about the new record, so i tried them first. i looked up their record company on the back of my LP, got the phone number from information, dialed it and announced that i was a student whose class was going to be in kidsday soon and needed to interview the stones as soon as possible.
whoever took my call was polite and gently explained that the stones were very very busy but thanked me for calling.
not deterred in the least, i dialed WNBC - which was no problem because i already knew the number by heart. i also knew from experience that if you called up and just asked for a disc jockey's office, most times they would just put you right through, a trick i used whenever i wanted to request 'i love a rainy night' by eddie rabbitt. this being the case, i had my answer from whoever answered imus' phone that day almost immediately.
no. imus doesn't do interviews.
0 for 2.
i was panicked.
then it dawned on me. ask the captain.
the way i saw it, the captain wasn't so famous that he would be too busy to talk to me
and he had enough connection to imus (he would narrate the i-man's notorious moby worm segments a la orson welles in 'war of the worlds') to make it interesting to readers.
the switchboard put me through to his office immediately and before i knew it, i was talking mano a mano to captain frank reed.
i explained that my class was going to be in newsday and we needed to interview a big star. he agreed immediately. we set the date - election day, when i was off from school - and the place - his office at NBC. i was all set.
almost 25 years later, i can still see the captain sitting across from me, eating an entire roast chicken with his hands while i asked him how he got started in radio, who named him "the captain", and what imus was like. it was a hell of an interview. the captain even took a call from kinky friedman while we chatted. 'kinky,' he told him proudly, 'i'd love to talk but i'm doing an interview for kidsday right now.'
little did he know that the only people who would learn anything from my probing questions were the lucky few to actually hear the cassette recording i made of our engaging discussion, which still exists somewhere in my parents' house - unlistened to for two decades.
i still kind of feel guilty for never telling the good captain that he was never going to be in print. for years, i pictured him running to his driveway every sunday morning, grabbing the paper, tearing out kidsday and breathlessly looking for the interview, only to trudge back to his home in resignation once he realized that this wasn't the week people would get to know the real captain frank reed.
here's to you captain...wherever you are.
if this was at all interesting to you, i can ask my folks to dig up photos of the big day. oh, and remind me to tell you about the time my next big celebrity get -
joey demaio of manowar -
made a man of me during my early days at WKWZ
(and thanks to whoever's in charge of http://imonthe.net/66wnbc/logos3.htm#reed - for sticking those photos up there. hope you don't me poaching them. remember, it was done with love.)
anyhow, this man makes his way down the line ready to enjoy his meal. he takes a little of this, samples a little of that...until he reaches the bowl full of butter. it is at that point when he pauses for a second, reaches into the bowl and helps himself. once he's got his butter, he holds it up, examines it for another second, slowly and deliberately unwraps it, and then pops it into his mouth. he chews it with great regard and swallows it with a labored gulp.
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