Radio was a huge part of my Philadelphia childhood. The radio was always playing - in the house, in the car, on the front stoop - someone was always listening to music or news or Phillies baseball on the radio. We woke up to clock radio alarms, and turned on the kitchen radio first thing in the morning. Kids got little transistor radios as birthday or Christmas presents. We bought radio/cassette players and Walkman portable devices with our babysitting or part-time job money. I listened to the radio everywhere.
My childhood and teenage radio favorites included pop music on WMGK or WIOQ, R&B and rap on the great WDAS, and my beloved New Wave on WXPN. I didn’t listen to classic rock radio that much, until around the mid-eighties. By that time, I was out of college (I hadn’t graduated - that would come much later - but I was out) and working as a proofreader and typefitter and layout artist for a small print production company that specialized in display ads for Yellow Pages directories. Yes, that’s right, I helped to make the Yellow Pages.
I worked in a small room with 3 other people. We were all in our 20s, but I was the youngest, and the only one who hadn’t graduated yet. The job usually required a college degree for who knows what reason, but I crushed the proofreading and editing tests, and they hired me. John, the oldest of the four of us, was our supervisor. He was just around 27 or so but seemed much older - he wore a shirt and tie every day, and carried a briefcase, and was very gentlemanly and kind. The company, such as it was, was a bit of a sweatshop, and we complained about our higher-up bosses quite frequently, but we loved John and would have ridden at dawn to defend him.
Steve and Ann were John’s other direct reports. We all got along very well, except for Steve’s music. He’d been there longer than Ann or I, and he had brought in his own radio, and John allowed him to listen to it while we worked, and so we listened to WMMR - Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and Kansas and Boston and the Rolling Stones and The Who and lots of other classic rock bands that had peaked in the 70s - all the livelong day. I wanted to fling myself against that radio every time WMMR played Jethro Tull or Lynyrd Skynyrd, which was pretty much every single day.
Ann and I would complain good naturedly. “Can we find a station that plays music recorded in this decade?" we'd ask. "Like what?” he would fire back. "Devo? Madonna? Whitney Houston?” And yes, any of them would have been better than hearing “Aqualung" for the 500th time. But it was a losing battle, mostly because Ann and I were both born people pleasers and we just didn't bother to push back.
Plus, some of the music was good, I had to admit. I'd loved Bruce Springsteen since I was 12 or so, and WMMR played him pretty often. But the best part of listening to WMMR during workday afternoons was Pierre Robert, the greatest DJ in the history of radio. That is not an opinion, it's a simple statement of fact.
Pierre was very much not what you would have expected a Philadelphia DJ to be. He was a hippie Deadhead with long hair and a peaceful and joyful demeanor. He didn't care about sports. He didn't yell and swagger and brag. Even his catch phrases were different - “Great day in the morning" and “Greetings, good citizens." But people loved him. He stayed true to himself and became a Philadelphia legend.
*****
When a Philadelphia local celebrity dies, as Pierre Robert did last week, the city goes into full mourning. I especially remember when Jim O'Brien, Pelle Lindbergh, and Roy Halladay died - coverage of their untimely deaths dominated all TV and radio broadcasts for days. I don't live in Philadelphia anymore and haven't for years, so I missed the media blitz, but I was still so sad about Pierre Robert. I texted back and forth with my siblings and cousins, and I listened to WMMR’s streaming broadcast at my desk just to feel connected to the Philadelphia diaspora mourning the voice of our youth. The WMMR broadcast team took calls from all over, and tributes poured in. In addition to being a great DJ, Pierre was a legendarily nice guy, and it was lovely hearing stories of his many kindnesses to fans and local musicians and colleagues.
As it happened, I had already planned a short visit home for this weekend. My son had a swim meet near Philadelphia so we spent the night with my sister, and had dinner with my family. My brother said that he and his friends once set up a sound system on the street on bike race day (IYKYK) and an hour or so later, Pierre Robert himself walked by and said “Hey, nice set up! Mind if I take over for a bit?" “I wouldn't have recognized him," my brother said, “but I recognized his voice." Of course, they allowed him to take over, and he played music and chatted with the crowd for an hour. Stories like these are legion. The big joke on Philadelphia social media last Thursday went something like “I seem to have been the only person in the Delaware Valley who never met Pierre Robert.” Although my brother didn’t recognize him right away that day at the bike race, everyone in Philadelphia came to know Pierre’s face as well as his voice because he never said no to a selfie, and the internet contains hundreds of photos of his smiling, bearded face.
*****
As much as I miss summer and as much as I hate a 5 PM sunset, I have to admit that the first few weeks of November are an evocative and beautiful time of year. At this point in my life, when I feel nostalgic, it’s usually something to do with my children - Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, middle and high school band concerts, winter swim meets, holiday family outings to museums and Capitals games. But this year, golden early November is calling me back to my teenage and early adult years in Philadelphia. We had Wawa hazelnut coffee on our way to the swim meet on Saturday, and it tasted like walking from the City Hall subway station to my job at 16th and Chestnut on a beautiful late October morning in 1988, just another good citizen on a workday. It was a completely messed up, imperfect, chaotic, and beautiful time when my friends and I never had quite enough money but we always had enough money to go out on Friday night and we roamed around the streets of Philadelphia scuffing through leaves or stomping through snow and ice, like we owned the place because we did, and if it was afternoon, Pierre Robert’s voice was always in the background somewhere. RIP, Pierre Robert.
No comments:
Post a Comment