Raymond Bannister passes

Raymond Bannister, half of KROQ’s (106.7 FM) morning team of Ramondo and Evans and later Ramondo and The Blade (after Richard Blade replaced Mike Evans) in the early (pre Kecvin and Bean) days of new-rock KROQ (106.7 FM) passed away December 24th from a brain tumor.

Bannister was at KROQ just shy of a quarter century, from 1980 to 2004. He had tremendous musical knowledge, a sharp dry sense of humor, and knew the audience well. It was on those early days of the morning show when Jim “Poorman” Trenton got his first radio gig … as a surf reporter along with Rockin’ Fig.

He had been fighting his tumor for a while and was mentally strong in his fight, but it was too much. Don Barrett has some nice tributes from his many friends, which you can read at LARadio.Com.

Morning Changes

Speaking of KROQ mornings, the Kevin and Bean Show has remained The Kevin and Bean Show even though Gene “Bean” Baxter left over a month ago for England.

Until now. The new show is … Kevin In the Morning With Allie & Jensen.

OK, a creative name is not in the cards. Kind of sounds like it was named by a station consultant who came from out of town and never heard KROQ before he arrived. But that couldn’t happen because, as one observer quipped, station owner Entercom is too cheap to hire a consultant.

Regardless, Kevin Ryder remains the main guy, with assistance from Allie Mac Kay, Jensen Karp, Dave the King of Mexico, Beer Mug, and DJ Omar Khan. Hear it 5 – 10 a.m. weekdays.

Boss Radio

Radio won big in the Golden Globe Awards held Sunday night.

Wait – radio? Aren’t the Golden Globes awards given to the best movies? Well, yes, but this year’s nominees included Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which starred an unlikely entity: 1968 and ’69 radio station KHJ (930 AM).

Anyone who grew up in ‘60s or ‘70s Los Angeles knows KHJ. It was the dominant radio station with an unheard of 40 share of the teenage audience during some shifts. To add to the feel of the era the movie is built around, Tarantino included actual recordings of the station … some of which were proved by friends go mine (my brush with greatness).

One Upon a Time won three Golden Globes, the most of any film this year, including Best Screenplay, Best Comedy or Musical, and Best Supporting Actor for the work of Brad Pitt.

I like to think that the spirits of former KHJ DJs Robert W. Morgan, The Real Don Steele, and Charlie tuna had something to do with that …

ReelRadio Player

I received an email asking about the files on Uncle Ricky’s ReelRadio.Com, a virtual museum of radio air checks focussing on top-40 stations across the country. The main question? How do you play them?

I honesty didn’t think I had a good answer. Most of the files were encoded with RealAudio, at the time an amazing way to stream audio on the internet. Back in the dialup days. Now the files are basically outdated, as the current Real Player for both Macintosh and Windows cannot play them. 

But while the volunteers work behind the scenes to re-encode the recordings so they can be played using a more modern program, it turns out you CAN still play most of the older recordings by downloading the older versions of Real Player or alternatives available right on the site via the technical Support button. I never noticed the button! The only caveat: The newest version of the Macintosh OS won’t run the old Real Player … which is why I am still using MacOS Mojave …

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