There is talk about the replacement couch that is in the studio and that is a piece of crap. The old couch is sitting in the hallway.

Enjoy!!

This is our final post in the July 1982 series. Here is 40+ minutes from the Friday, July 23 show. Steve is still home sick and the couch has been removed from the studio. It is a beautiful day in Chicago and Garry is down on Wacker Drive. Across the street there is a crew filming I Was a Mail Order Bride starring Valerie Bertinelli. Garry does talk with Steve on the phone and takes phone calls. There is also another playing of E.T. at the end of Part 2.

This audio is in 2 parts below. Enjoy!!!

Part 1

Part 2

Editorial commentary: July 1982 was obviously a weird month for the Steve & Garry Show. This all came less than 3 months after the passing of Marcus. I can’t speak for Steve, but I can say from personal experience that dealing with grief can completely consume your life. I think that dealing with the death of Marcus played a huge role in the overall demeanor of Steve and contributed greatly to these incidents.

The Couch Incident
When Steve & Garry moved to “LS-FM” there was a leather couch in the hallway that SD had moved into their studio. Steve would do the show from the couch. Many times reclined and hungover. But most often it was just a comfortable way to be.

I will let most of the audio speak for itself here. But this piece really shows what a bunch a Dickheads management at WLS really was. It may also be pretty easy to extrapolate that to all radio management in general. Artists and those in authority don’t usually mix well.

Part of this aircheck features Program Director, Ric Lippencott, who was inaffectionately referred to as “Lipshitz.” In his 11 year career with ABC, Lippencott went from PD to Operations Manager to GM. The other name you hear often is “Scum”, which refers to John Garren who, at the time, was the Manager of AM-FM Operations at WLS. Steve had almost continuous run-ins with management at every level. They tried to control the Steve & Garry show. And the more they tried, the more S&G resisted. As Steve would say, “they are very top-heavy around here”. And my favorite “Scums of the Earth”.

So, just a quick set-up…Steve is at home sick and management decides to remove the couch from the studio. This aircheck is in two parts and was broadcast on WLS-FM on Thursday, July 22, 1982. The audio seems to be a tad speedy.

Part 2 below begins with one version of Steve’s song E.T. and his Adventures in L.A.

Enjoy!!

Part 1

Part 2

Unfortunately, this post has nothing to do with any of those topics. But because it was broadcast on Wednesday, July 21, 1982, it sits right in the middle of this series so I thought I would throw it in. And hey, who doesn’t want to hear about a guy who gets his “unit” cut off in a vacuum and another wacky story? Sorry, it is a little over modulated.

The AM & FM simulcast at 7pm. At the end of this tape the AM comes in a little early much to the annoyance of Steve.

Enjoy!!

The song “E.T. and his Adventures in L.A.” is taking off. In this aircheck from Monday, July 19, 1982; Channel 2 correspondent Bob Sirrot is in the studio doing a “news” piece on the song. As always, Steve can’t help talking about the behind the scenes things at WBBM and taking shots at Walter. You will also hear news with Margaret.

Steve & Garry intro E.T. from the couch for the piece. Steve loves that couch (shameless teaser). Sirrot is off-mic for the entire piece.

So here is the 22:16 piece…

Here is a clip of the piece that ran on WBBM (Channel 2).

Over several posts we are looking at the Steve & Garry Show during the month of July 1982 when S&G were on WLS-FM. This series will cover several weeks and include The Steve Dahl Meltdown, E.T. and The Couch Incident. To go to the beginning of this series go here.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was a 1982 science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. It was the blockbuster summer hit of 1982.

Steve wrote an original composition called “E.T. and his Adventures in L.A.”. This aircheck (21:43) is from Wednesday, July 14, 1982 (4 days after the Meltdown) and SD has just finished writing the song and wants listeners to guess that the song is about.

Also as part of this aircheck there is an old clip of Steve Dahl and Company (with characters), another set of panties that arrived in the mail and a clip from the local Emmy show where Steve & Garry won a local Emmy for “Greetings from Graceland”.

Enjoy!!!

FYI – you can hear the song E.T. in these two posts… here and here.

The Meltdown
This aircheck is from July 10, 1982. The day before (7/9) SD had a mini-meltdown on the air. Steve did not show up for work the next day. Garry is in the studio and replays the incident with commentary.

Awkward does not even come close to describing how uncomfortable this “bit” is. This is one of the most awkward radio moments I have ever experienced. Things get very (very) uncomfortable at a few points and the Steve & Garry break-up could have happened on this day.

After Garry replays the events from the day before there is a discussion, phone calls and GM continues on with the show.

It is presented in two parts. There are a couple of intermittent signal noise problems.

Part 1

Part 2

Now, for chronological perspective, the next day was July 12. The third anniversary of Disco Demolition. We previously posted the 7/12/82 show here. There is a point about 2 minutes into the segment where Steve snaps at George (the engineer) and says “Now everybody’s thinking I’m not going to show up tomorrow”.

More July 1982 fun coming soon…

Enjoy!!

This week we are putting as many things related to DD in one place, right here. In the final post, we will wrap this up with a few Odds & Ends.

To start from the beginning of this series, go here for Part 1.

We couldn’t finish this week without acknowledging that the war on disco also came with a song.

Do You Think I’m Disco was a parody of the Rod Stewart song Do Ya Think I’m Sexy which was #1 on the Billboard charts in 1978. Stever actually did several parody songs to that Rod Stewart song. Do You Think I’m Disco actually cracked the Billboard Top 65 and received national airplay for a couple of weeks.

So here is the 3 minute and 38 second gem (read next paragraph first):

Finally, here is great slideshow that is on the Steve Dahl You Tube channel. It also contains the song Do You Think I’m Disco. So if you only want to hear it once, do it from the slide show.

I hope you enjoyed our week-long celebration of Disco Demolition. July 12, 1979 will always be in the history books. If you liked it please post a comment or tell a friend.

Just one more thing… DISCO STILL SUCKS!!!

Buy the 25th Anniversary of Disco Demolition DVD at the Dahl Store.

To start from the beginning of this series, go here.

Our first air-check is from the morning after Disco Demolition. Steve can barely talk. His voice is shot. I’m sure that on the inside Stever is freaking out. His Coho Lips get-together that he thought would be lucky to draw 5,000 people was now national news.

At this point, Garry is in transition from being the “news guy” to becoming promoted to “sidekick” status. I left in his news pieces for perspective. When Steve started at WLUP-FM, Garry was the overnight DJ broadcasting under the name Matthew Meier. He would stay on the air after his nighttime shift to do the drive-time news for the first couple of hours of Steve’s show.

So here is about 30 minutes of audio from WLUP-FM from Friday, July 13, 1979.

On the third anniversary of DD, Steve read some articles that were in the newspaper in ‘79 and tried to clear up a few “inaccuracies”. This was previously posted on this blog and can be found here.

Our friends over at the YouTube site The Original Shock Jock previously posted the 10 year Anniversary show that you can listen to here.

Enjoy!!

This week we are putting as many things related to DD in one place, right here. To cover all the bases, let’s go back and look at photos of the event.

To start from the beginning of this series, go here.

There are a lot of photos on the net and I’m not going to post many of them here. Rather, here are links to two of the better collections I have found…

The Tribune posted a nice 30th anniversary photo gallery here.

This guy was there. His photo album is here.

Buy the 25th Anniversary of Disco Demolition DVD at the Dahl Store.