Boy and howdy. Following Mike and the Classic Rock Mine each week has been like having a fabulous warm up act. He gets you ready as I slide in behind the microphone.
This week brings us “Sweet Sticky Love.” I have been advised by Mike not to google it. Apparently, he has.
Google Image for Sweet Sticky Love
One of the shows I’ve been lucky enough to sub for in my time is Terminal Whimsy. When the host of the show, Andrea, first started, her plan was to play a lot of Goon Show episodes. That’s when I knew she was someone I wanted to know.
Terminal Whimsy eventually chose to climb a different trellis as Andrea began to forage in the station’s record library. Her unerring ear for music proved a fine addition to the airwaves.
When I finally had the opportunity to sit in for her, I decided to take a Think Tank approach and do a show about music.
As I was pulling together last week’s show, I was searching high and low for comedic references to Eartha Kitt. One that I was having a heck of a time finding the audio for was from the classic Monty Python episode The Cycling Tour.
Not one to give up even after a show is over, I finally found this.
Seems only right, doesn’t it?
Last night’s episode of Bubbles in the Think Tank EAST was cram packed with strange connections brought forth by Belinda’s own style of stream of consciousness programming.
Who woulda thought that Eartha Kitt, Rusty Warren, and the moog could be more connected than just during the show? It’s freaking me out a little bit…
So what comes next?
Finally, your long long wait is over. I know you’ve been fretting about whether or not you’d have this year’s Christmas show available for listening in order to block the more traditional holiday sounds that your mother is sure to want to pipe in to the family festivities. So, worry not and listen now!
Really, you can assure the gathered crowd that there’s a little something in this one for everyone. Kinda like a fruitcake, but yummier.
What happens when you add bubbles to a rock mine?
You get an explosion of heavy mirth!
Well maybe not heavy mirth, but when we added Bubbles in the Think Tank to the Classic Rock Mine on Saturday, December 13, we sure got an effervescent chunk of entertaining radio. Songs, bits, banter.
Listen for yourself and we’re sure you’ll agree that Bubbles in the Rock Mine rocked, in a bubbly sort of way, that is!
…does that mean I don’t have to produce one this Saturday?
I really do think I ought to just save up all my steam for the Heap Big Christmas Mad Lib this Sunday night cum Monday morning on WAIF 88.3FM. I’ll be live in studio with the whole Think Tank family, of course with January Fairy at the head of the table. I’m committed to ensuring that much silliness shall ensue!
In the meantime, get your jollies on with my 2007 Xmas Eve special straight from the archives. Then tune in Saturday night at 11pm on WMFO 91.5FM to see what I decide to do in advance of the real deal on Sunday night.
Upon waking up to the news of Bettie Page’s death this morning, I was filled with thoughts that I didn’t expect. She was a peculiar fixture at Bubbles in the Think Tank for years. Why peculiar? Well, she had no recorded material to speak of, making it somewhat challenging to be a fixture on a radio show.
So how did this manifest? There’s a tradition in Think Tank land that brings listeners, young and old, near and far, past and present, to the studio for the heap big Christmas Mad Lib. All come bearing presents, and we, being the gracious hosts of the show, bring presents for everyone we know will be there and then some. The pile of gifts each year rivals my childhood memories of presents under the tree. Maybe that’s just because these meant so much to me. But I digress.
Over the years, I could not even begin to enumerate the Bettie Page themed gifts given and received in those funky WAIF studios. I’m not really sure how it even happened that items from t-shirts to mugs, playing cards to coasters, calendars to address books, worked their way into the ritual. But it seems like she’s there every single year in some form.
But why was Bettie Page so important to the people of Bubbles in the Think Tank? From my vantage point, her treatment during the Kefauver Hearings investigating pornography and indecency certainly won over my heart given my free speech sensibilities. Especially by today’s standards, those images and films are mighty tame, but then again, I always thought our show was tame. Yet that has never stopped people from calling the show shameful, filthy, or pornographic. You and I both know that it has never been any of those things. Just as Bettie Page’s work never was.
Plus, she loved monkeys just as much as us.
