Jan. 15, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

DISJOINTED JOCKEY

Our swingin' hepcat is told to cool it on his radio gig

"Hey man," I address the 68,000 Las Vegans tuning me in.

I'm aiming for Jack Kerouac with my voice, but hitting Maynard G. Krebs from TV's "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."

I continue: "You were just listening to ..."

A long pause ensues before I find where I placed the cover to Chieli Minucci's "Mr. Shady Eyes" CD and mispronounce the artist's first name (in addition to the last names of Earl Klugh and David Benoit).

So far, no one has called in to wonder what's awry in radioland.

"I don't know why," says disc jockey Ric Gould, 55.

Gould has agreed to let me hijack his "Original Sunday Morning Jazz Show," which airs from 8 a.m. to noon Sundays on KXPT-FM 97.1.

"I'm cool with that," he said during the planning stage.

An hour into the doing stage, he no longer seems so sure.

"Pod it up!" he shouts. "Pod it up!"

Gould darts across the back of my chair to press the button that rolls the commercials, because I forgot where it was. (There are more buttons here than on a Trekkie's denim jacket.)

Big daddy-o ain't diggin' on my persona, either, man.

"Doing the 'Hey man' stuff may work in a public radio format at night," Gould says, "but in a commercial setting, you've got to be yourself. You've got to be real on the radio."

Here's the problem with that: The real me would never host a jazz radio show. I don't know Dixie about jazz — only that Sting started singing it when I stopped listening. And just about the only thing I host well is a virus.

Before the show, Gould administered an emergency jazz-appreciation course. It covered the cool generation, the divinity of Spyro Gyra and the difference between the smooth jazz at KXPT and KOAS-FM 105.7.

At least I'm pretty sure it did. I probably should have paid attention.

"Load your next CDs," Gould says, pointing to one of three Gemini CD 110 rack-mounted machines.

"Unload your current CDs first," Gould adds.

"No, that one's a music bed."

This DJ jazz is even more foreign than the jazz jazz. There are things called legal IDs, station imagers and patter breaks to fake knowledge of. And CD clocks perpetually count down like bombs in "Kojak" episodes.

"A lot of work, isn't it?" Gould asks.

Yes, but the truly astounding thing is how little the reward is. For full-time jocks, a third of whom pull graveyard shifts, yearly salaries start at $7,000 and average about $25,000.

"The higher the charge for a 60-second commercial, the more these guys get paid," Gould explained earlier.

Because Gould isn't full time, he earns $10 an hour.

"But it's about getting the message out," he says. "It's about opening people's minds up to other art forms. It's about making them think outside the box."

My landlord is unwilling to accept any of those things in his monthly envelope.

Gould makes his real living as a lodging and gaming manager for Coca-Cola, where the only boxes to think outside of contain soda and get delivered to casinos. His interest in radio was sparked as a tyke.

"I was convinced that everyone was standing in a hallway outside the radio station getting ready to sing their songs," he says. "I convinced my mom to take me. I walked in and I saw these big turntables and reel-to-reel machines.

"Instead of getting disappointed, I got hooked."

Gould hands me a printout.

"One thing we have to do here is maintain a consistency," he says. "I've spent many, many years building this program and developing a strong advertising following, which is why I had to make you this."

For the first time today, I feel like a real disc jockey. I've just been handed a playlist.

Across both the dial and country, DJ's are losing control over the music they play, which is increasingly being determined by algorithms and automation techniques.

"The reason we're as successful as we are is our playlist," says Gould, even though, minutes earlier, he reported that his favorite thing about the job is "the freedom to play music that I love."

"I want you to be spontaneous," Gould continues, "but there still needs to be a flow to the normal course of the broadcast."

Gould became a news reporter on the radio in his hometown of Farmington, N.M., launching his first jazz program in 1990, which he moved to KXPT and Las Vegas a year later.

"I decided I was going to make a difference on the radio," he says, "give people something different than they were used to hearing during the rest of the week."

I'm guessing that a sudden reconnection with that passion — which seems infused with a younger man's beat-inspired belief that art should never bow to commerce — is what causes Gould to cave in and let me select the music I want. (And he's lucky, because I was about to become as unglued as my Van Dyke.)

Of course, I'm only allowed one track per hour, and only from Gould's crate of jazz CD's. So it's not much of a free-form selection. Still, the little guy has won. (And this guy is little.)

I prepare to play Nelson Rangell's "All I've Hoped For," a selection I made on the basis of sound — of Rangell's name, of course, not his music, which I've never heard (or heard of).

First, though, I blow my listeners' minds with some inside info about Klugh's "Four Minute Samba" — that the tune is four minutes long, and that his last name is pronounced like something I don't have about jazz or radio (clue).

About 11 a.m., the callers emerge from their brass-induced comas and begin noticing.

"There's been a couple of errors," Jesse says in a real voice not unlike my fake one. "You know, like, you'll be talking and it sounds like you'll want to cut to a commercial and they'll just be this blank air."

According to caller Robert Lepore, I sound "a little confused."

Gould laughs to conceal his growing anxiety.

As I figure out how to play the Rangell track, about 15 seconds of dead air ensues.

Gould darts in behind me, clicking and dialing furiously.

"Is it on the air?" I ask.

Yes, and so is the question I just asked.

"Hang on," Gould says. "You hit the wrong CD player."

My inside info was wrong. On my show, at least, the "Four Minute Samba" runs 4:23. Gould slowly fades out its second consecutive airing.

"I think the jig is up," he announces, revealing my identity to his listeners at 11:20 a.m.

"Great job, Corey," he lies.

"When is this story running again?"

Fear and Loafing appears every Monday in the Living section. Levitan's previous adventures can be found at www.fearandloafing.com.