I know. I have missed two weeks on "The Soundtrack of My Life". We will get back on track soon, I promise. Something else has kind of taken my focus tonight, and I thought this would be a good place to get it out there creatively.
For those of you that have known me, even for a little while, what I am about to say will not shock you: I have been deeply rooted in music and audio broadcasting since I was VERY young. Some would argue that I am borderline obsessed with it. (Not arguing with that.) Even when I wasn't old enough to grasp what doing radio was, I was doing voices for friends. Being smaller than everybody else (seriously, I was... I know for those of you that know me in this phase of my life, this is hard to believe), I had to find something that would make up for my utter lack of athletic prowess or knowledge of handyman-type things. I found that this was my niche, and I kind of kept up with it as time went on. I was always fascinated by radio, and thought being a DJ on the radio would be the greatest thing EVER.
When I was a junior in high school, and had amassed quite a collection of tapes, I would make mix tapes for friends (and maybe for a lady or two...), and kind of became known on certain class trips as the guy to bring the music. It really gave me kind of a rush to find that place where you could entertain people and liven up a bus trip simply with the music you played instead of trying to get everyone to agree on a radio station that would play three songs and then do ten minutes of commercials. (Some of those memories have fueled the project I am doing here this year. I can hear certain songs that take me to SPECIFIC PLACES AND TIMES, and even smells in some cases. Like The Fresh Prince said, "... how a smell from a girl can strike up nostalgia...".)
I got my one and only shot at radio when I was in college, when in my Freshman Spring Semester, I got a three hour shift on Friday mornings on the USF Campus "Radio Station" WBUL. I put that in quotes because for all intents and purposes, we could claim to be a radio station. However, to hear us, you had to tune your TELEVISION to Channel 30, where you would be treated to some "hi-res" graphics that I think came from a Commodore 64 or something of its ilk, with our audio. (Editor's Note: I was supposed to play alternative music. I played whatever I was feeling at that time. Even then, I wasn't going to let The Man dictate my playlist. :-) ) My next door neighbor in the dorm, Matt Landeed (who is still a friend to this day) was my co-host, and it was AMAZING to do. Sure, nobody listened, but the point was: WE WERE ON THE AIR. I taped every show to cassette (which I foolishly got rid of before I left Florida), and I was incredibly proud of it.
As a result of that, I kept on making mix tapes and playing music at parties for friends, and the occasional wedding. Before I knew it, I actually had another DJ job for a place some of you might remember....
Incredible Universe.
For the uninformed, imagine an electronics store that was infused with a roller rink. Each department had it's own mall store type area, there was a full-blown karaoke studio that recorded audio AND video (so for those of you that don't know, now you know how THAT started in 1994), and an awesome multimedia open-aired DJ mini-studio where I could control every television and speaker in the building. It was truly me in my element. I was even able to transfer to a store in Dallas when I moved from South Florida, and even changed the game up a bit here. My first day, the first song that I played was "Thank You" by Boyz II Men. I will never forget that because my phone started ringing off the hook. What I didn't know was that the head cheese of that store would not let any other DJ play anything but '50s and '60s music. The REALLY odd thing was that in the about a year and a half that I was there, he never told ME that. I guess he just trusted me. What a great feeling THAT was.
It was about that time when my mobile DJ career really started to take off, doing weddings, birthday parties, Halloween stores (did that, and had a lot of fun), and other things of its ilk. This would end up leading to the karaoke career that would come next, and the DJ career that would take me up until 2010. All of this is leading to this...
About four years ago, everything changed.
I was sitting around talking to one of my closest friends, Chad Womack, and he introduced me to this thing called a "podcast". I already was on my third mp3 player (my first was an old lunky 40GB Creative, then an 80GB iPod, and my current 160GB), and didn't really have an interest in talk radio on my iPod. I was more interested in having my entire collection in something the size of a credit card and the thickness of a pocket Bible. He kept on me and met quite a bit of resistance. And then, he invoked the two words that got my attention:
Kevin Smith.
At this point, he was just getting the original Smodcast off of the ground (even before the Smodcastle), so I thought, "I will try this, and if I don't like it, I can bail." After one episode, I was hooked and listened every week. At one point, I was listening and subscribing to more podcasts than I could make time to listen to, and still could not get enough. Sure, I have over 33,000 tracks I could listen to, but why, when I could listen to people talk about stuff that I cared about, like pop culture and geek stuff?
And then, in the immortal quote from "Despicable Me,"... Light Bulb.
I already had the equipment sans a RCA to USB converter to record on my computer, so I used what I had to form a makeshift studio in my office at the house, just to see if I could actually do this. Chad had been putting a bug in my brain for months to try it, and I was really gunshy. Who would listen? Why would they care what I think? What could I talk about that we don't all talk about sitting around hanging out?
His answer? "Just do it. Stop thinking about it."
Fast forward to 2013. The Clubhouse Podcast has almost completed it's third full season (and we don't take a hiatus of more than one week at a time, kids). Sure, we don't have Kevin Smith numbers, but we do have a lot of fun. The Fox & Hound live shows have grown to a level that none of us knew were possible. We are on iTunes, which is just kinda cool to be able to say, and some friends of the show have been kind enough to give us some great reviews. And the total genius of it is that anyone can be a "radio star" now, so the true variety instead of flooding the marketplace, makes it that much more awesome. There is a show for anything that you can think of (and even some stuff that you haven't). Now granted, the "quality" can vary whether you speak of production or content, but the true students of the form use all forms to help make their specific craft even better.
Would I like it if you would indulge me and listen in and/or subscribe to the show on iTunes? Of course. Check us out at least once live each Sunday night at 7PM Eastern/4PM Pacific or subscribe and check it out wherever you go. But, just knowing that I live in the age where I can feed a dream that doesn't require having millions of dollars and massive numbers of employees to just put on at all is enough for me. The show has evolved. It will continue to evolve. Each and every listener, host (Cody started co-hosting with me which I am thankful for... and Chad has stepped in and stepped up), guest host (there are WAY too many of you to list... you know who you are), contributing member (Big Don from RaceTalk 39X was HUGE here getting it started), and those of you that have helped this word-of-mouth campaign stay alive (The Empire itself), makes this thing more and more fun with each episode.
Chad: I can't thank you enough for pushing me to this. It has affected me more than you will ever realize on multiple levels. You have been 100% committed to this thing from the get-go, unwavering when I waffled, understanding when I have been enigmatic. No matter where this thing goes, all of us can say that we did it our way, in every incarnation of the show, even when the only way to hear it was to go to the Library of Congress website. And trust me, the dream is JUST. GETTING. STARTED. The dream is bigger than anyone realizes. I got plans, kids. It's just a means of how we're going to get there. And all of you play a part in it. Other facets of my life play a part in it. The Empire one day will be exactly that.
And for those of you toying with doing your own? Just do it. Stop thinking about it.
Rob
