Subscribe to Our Blog
Follow Us
Now on the Stitcher Radio Network!
Be Baba’s Friend
Visitors
Category Archives: Classic Chris and Dave
Season 2 – The Shopping Cart Lady (03.24.84)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
There once was a “shopping cart lady” who frequented many retail outlets in the area. I spotted her on several occasions in different stores in my area, just walking aimlessly around the store for hours and filling up her shopping cart with miscellaneous merchandise. When she was finished, she would just leave her shopping cart behind for the store personnel to unload and restock the merchandise. One Saturday afternoon while working at my first job at Disc Jockey Records in Bolingbrook, the shopping cart lady came into our store and filled out a job application. This recording has me reading her application on the air. It’s not clear from this bit, but I can assure you that the shopping cart lady was not hired by our record store.
Share this:
Season 2 – Date Line (03.03.84)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
This is the bit that could have had me thrown off the radio for good (or my dad thrown in jail), if Mr. Moore our General Manager had only heard it while it was going on. I decided to have my girlfriend and her best friend on the show one week to guest DJ for an hour. They ended up taking calls, and boy did they ever attract an audience! Somehow the show evolved into a date line. The caller in this bit is actually my dad who was 43 at the time, but that little detail was not revealed to anyone. During the call he is trying to pick up these girls who are both about 16 or 17. This is seriously risky stuff. The second voice you hear on the phone at the end of the call is that of Peet, who was living with my dad and me at the time. The other voices you hear in the background in the studio toward the end of the bit are those of a few WDGC staff members who heard this going out over the air while driving in the area. They came in to yell at me for what I was doing. They couldn’t believe I was letting this dirty old man try to pick up these girls. I tried to explain it was my dad, but they wouldn’t hear it. They ended up describing this to Mr. Moore on Monday morning, but somehow I went unpunished. Go figure!This is from the Smorgasbord Saturday Night program where I teamed up with Geoff Beran for the season.
Share this:
Season 2 – Call to Iran (12.31.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Admittedly, we stole this concept from Chicago Radio’s Steve Dahl where he tried to call the U.S. Embassy back during the hostage crisis in 1979. I remember when Fred Moore got the bill for this phone call. International calls were pretty expensive back in 1983. Somehow he knew it was us and made us pay up. I remember having to save several weeks’ worth of allowance to pay for this. What a way to spend New Year’s Eve. Dave Jackson fills in for Geoff Beran on this episode from Season 2.
Share this:
Season 2 – Talent Line (12.03.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
This was always a great way to run out the clock on a late-night show. One of the more popular features of Season 2 (Smorgasbord Saturday Night) was Talent Line. It wasn’t anything too original, but it allowed our listeners to call in and have 15 seconds of fame. Co-hosting this season with me was Geoff Beran.
Share this:
Season 1 – Wayne Lela for President (07.15.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Here is a really rare gem. Wayne Lela, Downers Grove local and resident of the Tivoli Hotel, made a run for President of the United States. He didn’t do so well in the New Hampshire primaries, but he began his campaign on the Chris and Dave show. This is an exclusive interview with Wayne during a summer broadcast of the Chris and Dave show. Wayne also had a classical music radio show on our radio station late night Sundays. A 33-year old “moral conservative”, Mr. Lela would regularly tune in to high school station WDGC-FM to monitor rock and roll lyrics, language, and program content. He would then submit a list of complaints to Fred Moore (and quite possibly to the FCC). Surprisingly, Wayne never gave Chris and Dave a hard time – and there were certainly opportunities for him to do so! He even made an appearance at our Tivoli Bowling Alley remote broadcast and played the drums. It’s funny listening back to this broadcast now at age 41. At the time of this broadcast I was 16 and I knew next to nothing about politics or what a “conservative” or “liberal” really meant in terms of policy.Wayne considered himself a conservative, yet now knowing a great deal more about politics, there is very little conservatism in Mr. Lela’s 1984 platform described during this broadcast. You can occasionally find some of Mr. Lela’s social commentary out there on the internet. Funny how it all started back on the Chris and Dave show. By the way, Ronald Reagan went on to win that election.
Share this:
Season 1 – Call to KYDZ-FM Wyoming (04.06.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Dave and I ended up doing a Wednesday morning show during spring break 1983. Dave had a directory of all the high school and college radio stations in the country. We thought it would be cool to call a station in Wyoming and talk to one of the on-air talents there. We ended up reaching a young gal by the name of Tracy Blake who worked at station KYDZ-FM. She was a pretty cool sport about it and that conversation is presented here. I wonder what she is up to today.
Share this:
Season 1 – Chris and Dave Live on KCLC-FM (04.06.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Chris and Dave speak with Bear Bryant from Lindenwood College Radio Station KCLC-FM in St. Louis Missouri. It was pretty cool being put on the air on their station as well. This was from a special Wednesday edition broadcast of the Smorg show which we covered during spring break. Dave had a directory of other high school and college radio stations in the country and we spent the morning calling around and talking to other deejays.
Share this:
Season 1 – Jerry Malauskas Loses Radio Show (03.19.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Jerry loses his radio show after being required to re-audition for a program. This is Jerry calling Chris and Dave to explain what went down.
Share this:
Season 1 – The Saga of The Bell (01.01.83)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
There is a story behind the infamous bell that you hear on the Chris and Dave show. It actually started in late 1982 shortly after the HPs came on the show and did their “Mr. Brown Can Moo” tune. Chris went over to a band member’s home to watch them rehearse. Chris saw a bell that someone had as a part of a board game. Chris mentioned that it would be nice to have a bell for the show whenever we did our game shows. The HPs then donated the bell to the show. But after a few weeks, Chris and Dave wanted to move on and not have the HPs on the show anymore, but they kept calling us. When we were a bit more forceful about it they demanded their bell back. I’m not exactly sure how it all escalated from there, but apparently somebody’s mom became involved. Due to the hassle of wrapping, getting to the post office and paying shipping costs to mail the bell back, there was a standoff in getting the bell returned. Eventually another devoted fan of the Smorg Show donated her bell to Chris and Dave – and that one was for keeps! This recording is a series of snippets highlighting the on-air banter about the bell.
Share this:
Season 1 – Bad Bodily Odor Warning (12.11.82)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Another classic excerpt from late 1982, the first season of the Chris and Dave Smorgasbord. I believe Dave was attending a Rush concert on this particular Saturday, so I asked Jerry to fill in for Dave that evening. Earlier that week, Jerry had found a memo in the radio station that someone on the WDGC staff had typed up as a joke to the rest of the staff warning everyone to be on alert for a “man in red hair seen spreading a disturbing odor across the area”. I realize about half way through the reading of this who they were referring to in the memo.
Share this:
Season 1 – Pee on Hat (December 1982)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
This was one of the earliest recordings I have on record of Jerry doing his own radio show. Jerry had accidentally left his hat behind in the studio one day and I learned that someone on the staff had gone “number one all over it”. I phoned Jerry to tell him about it. The next weekend, I turned on his radio show and he was actually talking about this incident in great detail. Fortunately I had a tape recorder on hand and I captured the bit. I love how at the beginning of the story Jerry says he doesn’t want to “name any names”, but he pretty much reveals everyone’s identity as the story unfolds.
Share this:
Season 1 – Baba Gonesh Thought for the Day (10.02.82)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Baba Gonesh and a double feature – “Thought for the Day” and “Comedy Camel”.
Share this:
Season 1 – Judy the Child (10.01.82)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Dave learns to cook with Judy the Child. This is the first show that used pre-recorded material after Fred Moore imposed new rules on our program. This was recorded in Chris’s home studio.
Share this:
Season 1 – Acid Flashback Bit (09.25.82)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
This is the bit that got us in big trouble toward the end of our 3rd show. Listening to it now, it is quite tame relative to the other things we did, but I don’ t think Fred Moore had warmed up to us quite yet. Plus, this predates all our other questionable bits so maybe we were still operating at a low baseline. I had created a 7-second delay system to prevent any profanities from going out over the airwaves when we put callers on the air. I created the delay system using two reel-to-reel tape decks. The first tape deck recorded the on-air comments live. I then fed the tape from that machine over to the second tape deck that was used for playback on the air. It took about 7 seconds for the recorded tape from the first tape deck to reach the playback heads of the second tape deck. This allowed us to take phone calls live on the air by recording it. If the caller swore or said something inappropriate, we would be able to stop the tape before it got on the air. Well, we abused the technology and this is what it sounded like. This is actually a re-broadcast of the original bit during our final show on the air. We followed it with a re-enactment of Mr. Moore calling us to deliver his 9 commandments.
Share this:
Season 1 – Mr. Brown Can Moo (09.18.82)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Classic Seuss
This is a clip from one of our more favorite on-air moments from Season 1. This enthusiastic bunch of pre-teens called up on our second show. Their band was called the HPs (abbreviation for Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss). This gave us the idea that the phone should be used more during our shows making the program more interactive with the audience. It was strange many years later when I had a child of my own, I would read this story to my daughter and I found myself delivering the lines in the same rhythm as this band’s delivery here.
Share this:
Season 1 – Homework Hotline (09.11.82)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
This bit is from Chris and Dave’s debut broadcast. “Homework Hotline” was designed to help our listeners with their homework assignments. During our first broadcast, we received a call from a sophomore student at Glenbard South High School. She phoned in with some tough Algebra problems. Nothing was too tough for Dave Jackson who had already completed Advanced Algebra the year before. A bit of Smorg trivia: This caller ends up making a significant contribution to the Smorgasbord radio program: For starters she donated the game show bell that you hear repeatedly throughout all three Smorg seasons. She was also one of the two girls on the “Date Line” broadcast from 03-03-84 who chats with the 43-year old man. Oh – and Chris ends up dating her for the next three years.
Share this:
