Episode 116 features Bill Childs, host of the radio show Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child, who is here to discuss the importance and longevity of radio, audio, music, and so much more.
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
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00:00:00:03 – 00:00:23:13
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com. Dishonesty and daggers. Mitchell’s column collection is a delight. Bye bye, Barry. Makes me wish for more modern men like Sanders, and I can assure you Stef will be on the show again. This is The Palmer Files episode 116 with Bill Childs, host of the radio show Spare the Rocks, Spoil the child, who’s here to discuss the importance and longevity of radio, audio, music and so much more.
00:00:23:24 – 00:00:39:10
Agent Palmer
Are you ready? Let’s do the show.
00:00:39:15 – 00:00:56:28
Agent Palmer
Yes, yes.
00:00:56:33 – 00:01:16:17
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to The Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 116th episode is Bill Childs Practice of Law by Day and host of spare the Rock. Spoil the Child at night for over 15 years. Spare the rocks. Spoil the Child has been providing the soundtrack to thousands of childhoods around the country.
00:01:16:21 – 00:01:37:04
Agent Palmer
The show plays indie music for indie kids, including the best music aimed at kids but not limited to kids music. We met online when I discovered his show somehow, which I usually only catch as a playlist, but it’s worth checking out. You’re about to hear us discuss the importance and longevity of radio music radio influences in popular culture.
00:01:37:06 – 00:01:59:20
Agent Palmer
They Might Be Giants, generations, NPR, and what Bill does aside from loving music and having his own radio show, all that and more is on your way shortly. But first, remember, if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can find all contact information for Bill Childs and myself in the show notes. You can find more information about Bill and his show.
00:01:59:20 – 00:02:19:00
Agent Palmer
Spare the Rock, spoil the child at spare the Rock. RT.com. Don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. And of course email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:02:19:05 – 00:02:44:36
Agent Palmer
Bill, I have been a long time radio listener. And I’m of the generation that came of age in the Napster era of pirating stuff, but I still was very much a radio person, and I was Radio Club in college, and I, I’m currently involved in the, on the board of directors for my local NPR station. I’m also a podcaster.
00:02:44:41 – 00:03:18:13
Agent Palmer
I’ve been hearing for years that radio is dying, and yet radio continues to endure. I know one of the things you do of the many hats you wear is radio. I cannot explain why radio endures other than like personally to me, like it’s always there and I can always rely on it. That’s all I have. Do you have a better idea from someone who’s more behind the mic on radio than I am of being like, this is why it endures.
00:03:18:18 – 00:03:34:47
Bill Childs
Yeah. So it’s an interesting and really, very central question to my life. I’m a little older, a little bit older than you are, I think. I, grew up slightly pre Napster. And although, I mean, I was, I think in my 20s when it, when it kind of came to.
00:03:34:47 – 00:03:39:49
Agent Palmer
You in a sense, you have a. Yeah. I was in my teens. So we’re very close. Yeah. So what I.
00:03:39:49 – 00:03:41:44
Bill Childs
Would say, so I think there.
00:03:41:44 – 00:03:42:58
Agent Palmer
Are things about radio.
00:03:43:05 – 00:04:00:35
Bill Childs
That, are unique to radio that podcasting does not take the place of. I think podcasting is sort of as close as there is to an equivalent of the core of radio. We can talk about streams and, and playlists and automated, sort of, I kind of things.
00:04:00:35 – 00:04:13:01
Agent Palmer
So there’s an overlap there too, of like, because I know some people on my, in my station put their shows together ahead of time, which isn’t quite podcasting, but it’s also not quite live.
00:04:13:05 – 00:04:34:09
Bill Childs
Yeah. What? Of course, my radio show is not live. I recorded more or less use. It was when we started. We can talk about radio show isn’t a little bit, but I think one of the things that that is unique about radio as it exists is that it is a, one to many format, right? And that for the most people, for the most part, pardon me, everybody’s hearing at the same time.
00:04:34:15 – 00:04:56:11
Bill Childs
So it’s this interesting one to hopefully many, collective experience. And that’s a thing that is not the case for podcast. Right? Because this podcast that we’re recording, we’re doing it now, people. It’ll go out on over the internet in days, weeks, months, and people will listen to it days, weeks, months into years from now potentially.
00:04:56:11 – 00:05:12:14
Agent Palmer
And it’s and and when they do very often it’s a 1 to 1 or I guess for us it’s a 2 to 1. You know, we’re outnumbering the listener because we’re in their headphones or their earbuds or their whatever. And it’s not to whoever happens to be on that dial.
00:05:12:19 – 00:05:44:17
Bill Childs
Right. And whether I mean that that’s a constraint on radio, the fact that you, you only hear people, you only get audience members if they happen to turn on at the right time. But it’s also a feature, a feature bug in a feature. Right. And so I think there’s something particularly, intimate about it for people to say, oh, man, I’m hearing somebody who is sitting in the studio wherever they are, and they’re talking to me, or they’re playing something that is for me, and I think that’s different.
00:05:44:28 – 00:06:04:30
Bill Childs
And then on the on the music side, comparing is sort of thinking about what the alternatives are in terms of the automated streams that Apple Music has or Spotify music has or whatever. All the algorithms that put that stuff together, they can do that stuff pretty well. And there’s a lot of, a lot of radio that is, of course, very much programed within an inch of its life.
00:06:04:35 – 00:06:27:57
Bill Childs
But there continues for me to be something special about hearing, you know, this new CD, which is our flagship station and hearing Lori Gado on in the afternoon and knowing that she maybe didn’t pick all the songs because they have a playlist, but that she picked a lot of those songs and that it is her voice or I live now in the Twin Cities and listening to the current, and Mary Lucia is no longer on that station.
00:06:27:57 – 00:06:43:50
Bill Childs
But knowing that afternoon drive, who knew what you were going to get, but it was going to be something that was in her, in her voice writ large, not her. I mean, it was her literal voice as well, right? But her, her sort of musical selection voice. And, for me, that’s that’s why music radio continues to be important.
00:06:43:50 – 00:07:10:31
Bill Childs
Why radio to to me, why radio continues to be important more generally is that, I think in the music space, I think talk and so on is a little bit different. And I think NPR is a pretty useful model for sort of a parallel to what I’m about to talk about. In the news and information space is that it continues to be a potentially trusted source of, of curation.
00:07:10:31 – 00:07:30:16
Bill Childs
I don’t like that word because it tends to get overused, I think. But it’s it’s a one of the pluses of the Napster era, followed by the streaming era and, and the absolute. This is, I think it’s 100% a good thing that the democratization of the, distribution of music, that the barriers to entry are much, much lower.
00:07:30:30 – 00:07:46:55
Bill Childs
But there’s a downside to that, to the listener in that it’s very hard to find all of the the wheat among all of that chaff. And so radio can be it’s not the only but it can be one of the sources for I mean, it’s gatekeeping, but in a positive way, I guess.
00:07:46:55 – 00:08:10:38
Agent Palmer
Yeah. The, the, I mean, my, my, my local NPR has an afternoon drive called The Blend where you’ll hear music, you’ll discover music if you listen to it for four songs, even if you happen to be the music nut and no, three of them, there’s going to be a fourth one, you don’t know. And I like to attribute that show to being like the record collection.
00:08:10:38 – 00:08:31:53
Agent Palmer
I recently went through, which was collecting dust in my basement, and I inherited it, and I decided, I want to go through this. And I discovered good rats or Good Rats is a band that if you enjoy Aerosmith, if you enjoy the Rolling Stones, if you enjoy Bob Seger, if you enjoyed those three bands, you will love Good rats.
00:08:31:58 – 00:08:33:07
Agent Palmer
However.
00:08:33:12 – 00:08:37:21
Bill Childs
It had like one of those three bands, so I might like a third of Good Rats food.
00:08:37:24 – 00:09:05:18
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but I I it it astounds me that in all of the algorithms though, I would have never gotten good rats had it not been for this rent. They’re not big enough to to to kind of, I don’t know, somehow break the algorithm. And so I think there’s a, there’s a you need a human element. For me, it was literally inheriting these records from an, like a long lost cousin or something.
00:09:05:23 – 00:09:31:43
Agent Palmer
But I think radio deejays can be that step if you’re not going through an old record collection or going through old CDs. And I think that’s a there’s a, there’s an element where the radio DJ has replaced your, I don’t know, your, your for anybody who remembers High Fidelity as a movie, your record store snob.
00:09:31:47 – 00:09:32:38
Bill Childs
Yeah.
00:09:32:43 – 00:09:57:05
Agent Palmer
And and so there’s and and look, I, there’s an argument to be made that we’re losing that with our, blockbusters and video rental stores going away, too, of the human element of being like, this is something you’re still like. Like it doesn’t fit into the algorithm of whatever it is that you like. Thrillers. It’s kind of a thriller.
00:09:57:05 – 00:10:28:30
Agent Palmer
It’s kind of a driving rock beat, you know, you’ll like it. And I think there’s a part of that. I, I still think radio to kind of piggyback on what you said. The one thing that I think radio and podcasting have writ large is that it is still a deeply personal medium, audio in any form. And I think that.
00:10:28:35 – 00:10:38:43
Agent Palmer
There’s something you just can’t capture with the written word, or with moving video images that you can do in someone’s headphones.
00:10:38:48 – 00:10:57:36
Bill Childs
Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, I think we probably should also note that I think both of us are talking about a relatively small chunk of what is radio today. Right? We’re talking about I mean, it’s not all literally left of the dial anymore, but it is sort of tends to be that stuff down at that end or stuff that’s associated with stuff down at that end.
00:10:57:41 – 00:11:20:12
Bill Childs
So, I mean, others see a Audacy Y, which is one of the major radio station, chains filed bankruptcy today or yesterday. They’re going to come through, they’re going to reorganize and so and so forth. But a lot of the, the, the sort of traditional radio, the stuff that isn’t the NPR stations or the noncommercial stations or the commercial triple stations for that matter.
00:11:20:17 – 00:11:54:52
Bill Childs
The stuff that isn’t the more eclectic end of things is, is struggling and is not representing some of the other stuff is struggling to, but, is not representing what we’re talking about here. The there are a lot of stations that are still playing, you know, the same very small number of songs and are aiming to make it so that if you turn it on for a minute, you’re going to recognize it and you’ll stay on for a second, because that’s how sort of the the stuff that’s driven by ratings, that tends to incentivize that, which is fine, I guess it’s not what I want, but, yeah, it is a form of radio.
00:11:54:54 – 00:12:27:55
Agent Palmer
It’s very weird that I am exactly 40, and the classic rock station that I can turn on today is playing what I would have heard when I was 20. Yeah. And so, yeah, occasionally there will be songs from the last 20 years that will make it in, but generally speaking, it’s still that z.z top appetite for some reason appetite, arrogance and roses and nothing beyond, old Aerosmith, old Rolling Stones.
00:12:27:55 – 00:12:34:28
Agent Palmer
And it’s just like, okay, yeah, that was 20 years ago. That’s. Yeah. And so we.
00:12:34:33 – 00:12:51:47
Bill Childs
Extend that radio is, I think, still vibrant. I mean, you know, those stations are making money and God bless them I guess. But to the extent that radio is still vibrant and relevant to me in the same way that radio was relevant to me, so I’m 52, so I’m a little bit older than I thought, than you.
00:12:51:47 – 00:13:01:26
Bill Childs
But when I was in my teenage years, it’s a, I think a decreasingly, decreasing portion of the radio dial. Yeah. And that stuff.
00:13:01:26 – 00:13:26:40
Agent Palmer
So, I will say, I don’t know where I got my interest from being behind the microphone as such, I know ten year old me went to summer camp and woke up at a god awful hour for being 10 or 11 to trudge to the radio. Hot and and be a radio DJ for, I don’t know what it was.
00:13:26:40 – 00:13:51:52
Agent Palmer
45 minutes or an hour, during breakfast, for four weeks during summer camp. And then that kind of got put on hold until I played with microphones as a teenager with rock bands and stuff. And then it’s not until college that I get behind, the mic in a radio station, but I don’t know where that all started for me, I don’t there’s no answer, I don’t know.
00:13:51:52 – 00:14:11:54
Agent Palmer
I was interested in music, I guess, and I was willing to wake up at 630 in the morning at summer camp like that. The the barriers pretty low. Can you wake up this early and will you are the only two questions you need to answer. From there, it gets a little fuzzy until I get behind the mic of the podcast.
00:14:11:59 – 00:14:12:59
Agent Palmer
00:14:13:04 – 00:14:32:07
Bill Childs
I mean, so it’s interesting because for for people oh, my age, I don’t think this is going to count for you. I although I’m curious, one of the things that I find that a lot of people who end up doing rock radio, broadly defined because what I do is kind of broadly defined rock radio, watched WKRp in Cincinnati, and we’re obsessed with that and love that.
00:14:32:07 – 00:14:37:45
Bill Childs
And that’s how a lot of it came. And I think that probably was, before your time.
00:14:37:47 – 00:14:54:43
Agent Palmer
I mean, I know of it in syndication. I’m kind of in that Mash Mary Tyler Moore block from, like, Nick at night. I will say NewsRadio is formative. Okay.
00:14:54:52 – 00:14:55:45
Bill Childs
I just, you know.
00:14:55:50 – 00:15:06:46
Agent Palmer
Maybe, maybe, maybe a couple news radio comes along around the same time for me as WKRp Comes for you because I think news radio hits in my early teens.
00:15:06:51 – 00:15:13:33
Bill Childs
Yeah. And I actually, I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I think that’s probably about right. I think I was in high school, so it’s it’s still.
00:15:13:38 – 00:15:33:38
Agent Palmer
It’s still that. Look, I will also say for my generation, I remember the Howard Stern television show that was just a static camera of his radio show.
00:15:33:42 – 00:15:34:32
Bill Childs
Okay.
00:15:34:36 – 00:15:49:31
Agent Palmer
And I remember that being like, you know, this is at the same time that MTV is all about TRL. And yet my there were kids in my class that were like, yeah, did you check out Howard?
00:15:49:36 – 00:15:50:06
Bill Childs
Interesting.
00:15:50:06 – 00:16:10:42
Agent Palmer
Which is a it’s a static like I know that as podcasts have kind of merged into video and people just are just talking heads talking to microphones. The Howard Stern Show at the time was just a static shot of people talking on microphones. It wasn’t exciting, right? And yet still there was,
00:16:10:47 – 00:16:11:44
Bill Childs
There’s something neat about it.
00:16:11:44 – 00:16:23:24
Agent Palmer
Yeah, there was something about it. And so you kind of end up with this. I mean, I think for my generation, radio still had a mystique. I might be the last generation to say that.
00:16:23:29 – 00:16:43:57
Bill Childs
So let me let me put this to you. And I haven’t thought this through. I’ve got a couple little facts that will lead up to something that I think is an interesting question. So I was very much, what we might call it, politely, an indoor kid. I was not a popular kid, I was, I did mathlete, I played violin, all that sort of thing.
00:16:43:57 – 00:17:15:40
Bill Childs
Right. But I so sort of take this point, a point b I will tell a brief story. That’s radio related, that that I think may actually be more, motivational to me than I have realized in the past. So I lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma until I was 12, and, my mom was an organizer for the Equal Rights Amendment and for sort of progressive causes more generally, and co-founded a feminist organization called the Women’s Network there in Bartlesville.
00:17:15:40 – 00:17:32:59
Bill Childs
So you can imagine how popular a feminist organization is in northeast Oklahoma. But in any event, they had their meetings at the Bonanza, you know, little state chain steak shop and, and I went there one time and it was in the, you know, the conference room or whatever, the banquet room and the local radio station.
00:17:32:59 – 00:17:52:44
Bill Childs
Quinn. And it’s a 1400 a m I still remember the the call signs and numbers and all that. They, every week would play. Casey Kasem was American top 40. And every week they would give away the actual LPs that were sent out to radio stations for that, because that’s how okay, how Casey Kasem was distributed, because they, you know, there’s no internet.
00:17:52:44 – 00:18:13:18
Bill Childs
No, they didn’t have satellite or anything like that. And you would enter in a drawing there, to, to get entered. And I was bored. I was at this meeting, so I entered, I don’t know, 30 times and I won it. And so I was in fifth or sixth grade at the time. And every Friday in whichever class I was in, you could bring music in to play.
00:18:13:18 – 00:18:29:19
Bill Childs
And I grew up, my parents listened to mostly classical and jazz, so I didn’t have any rock radio records in the house, which is what everybody really wanted to listen to a rock or pop. And I never had anything interesting to bring in as, like, I’ve got literally the top 40 songs in the country. I’m going to bring it in.
00:18:29:24 – 00:18:50:29
Bill Childs
And people went nuts. They were like, oh, this is, this is all we should play. And it and I wonder sort of how much of that made me be like, oh, this is how I can connect to the cool kids. Is by being like the, the radio guy. Like I never had. It wasn’t until much, much later that I thought at all about doing radio as as a job.
00:18:50:29 – 00:18:58:53
Bill Childs
And I still don’t do radio as a job, just so that’s clear. I thought for a while about that is when I was in college about trying to do that as a career path. I’m glad I did it. Yeah, I that is, I.
00:18:58:53 – 00:18:59:46
Agent Palmer
Went.
00:18:59:51 – 00:19:00:57
Bill Childs
Crazy with it. Make a living.
00:19:00:59 – 00:19:16:09
Agent Palmer
I will say this. There is a Harry Chapin song that makes me feel like I should never go into radio, as a radio DJ. Yeah, I think it’s old for anyone listening.
00:19:16:09 – 00:19:17:25
Bill Childs
Right. I don’t know, it.
00:19:17:30 – 00:19:43:36
Agent Palmer
It’s literally just him saying, like it? It’s him. It’s him writing as a DJ, trying to remain hip like, but not being right. Okay. And so yeah, yeah, every time I think about a career in as a DJ, not in radio, but just as a DJ, I think of that for some reason. That song is a barrier to entry for me.
00:19:43:41 – 00:20:01:35
Bill Childs
It’s fair. Yeah. Well, I mean, mostly it’s just no matter what you do and where you are, your station might flip at any moment, you might lose your job, and you might either either lose your job or suddenly be like, well, now you have to play like new metal or whatever it takes. Nobody’s going to be playing new metal now.
00:20:01:40 – 00:20:16:12
Bill Childs
And, and for me, a big part of doing radio and one of the things I love about the show I do is playing stuff that I like and not really having to, to answer to somebody else about it. If, if the station doesn’t want to play my show, they just don’t play my show and that’s fine.
00:20:16:12 – 00:20:45:11
Agent Palmer
I wonder what the I wonder what the dropout rate is, because that my camp and college experience is literally what you just described. You get an hour or a half, you get however long your time is, and you play what you want to hear and then anybody who goes from that kind of a setting into the the real world, if you don’t end up at the station you like, is going to be told, what do you do if.
00:20:45:11 – 00:21:00:54
Bill Childs
You’re at a station that you like? I mean, I was a part time radio station I like very much in Western Mass that still airs my radio show, but I was a part time, just regular DJ there as well, and I wasn’t programing anything. I it was all it was music I liked. And the, the music director would sometimes put in stuff that he knew I liked.
00:21:00:59 – 00:21:18:24
Bill Childs
But I wasn’t choosing what order I was going to be in or anything like that. It was all voice track. So I would go in on, you know, Friday afternoon to record my Sunday shift. Okay. And it none of it was sort of what I had in mind of what radio was. It was still fun, but it sure isn’t what I would want to do as a, as a job for the rest of my life.
00:21:18:24 – 00:21:18:47
Bill Childs
Sure.
00:21:18:49 – 00:21:41:07
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I haven’t listened to your show, but I haven’t heard some of your playlists. And you feature one of my favorite bands of all time. However, I think given the show you do, I don’t listen to their those albums.
00:21:41:12 – 00:21:43:30
Bill Childs
Okay, so it’s They Might Be Giants clearly. Absolutely.
00:21:43:30 – 00:21:47:59
Agent Palmer
It is. Yeah. I don’t listen to the kids albums as much.
00:21:48:04 – 00:21:49:29
Bill Childs
Yeah.
00:21:49:34 – 00:22:08:27
Agent Palmer
You know, I, I still have an argument with my father on going about which of us discovered they might be giants first, because it would have been at the same period of time, like it would have been flood. Yeah. My argument is that I discovered them on Tiny Tunes.
00:22:08:32 – 00:22:10:24
Bill Childs
Oh, sure.
00:22:10:29 – 00:22:37:25
Agent Palmer
And immediately jumped into stealing his CDs, but I don’t know. I don’t know when he discovered it. And for anyone listening, who’s following along with this, my favorite They Might Be Giants album of all time is John Henry. And I know they keep putting out albums, and it still remains my number one. It was close as Apollo 18 will get as my two.
00:22:37:27 – 00:23:00:49
Bill Childs
Yeah, I mean, Apollo 18 is often in the mix for me. I love flood and and I sort of unironically love the children’s records especially. No. And the most recent fly y is also really, really great. The here come the are good albums. But but yeah, I mean and they do continue to put on put out remarkably good stuff book was a really, really good record.
00:23:00:53 – 00:23:16:13
Bill Childs
So but yeah, I, they were so big. The radio show is called Spare the Rocks by the town’s a kids radio show or a family radio show. Music for kids and their grown ups is what I like to say. And from the jump we had, well, we always start in on every show where they might be giants.
00:23:16:18 – 00:23:35:36
Bill Childs
And when we started, this is, I think, our 18th or 19th year. My daughter, who’s now doing her PhD, was like five when we started the radio show, and she wanted to start in and every show starting and every show, not just whether they might be giant sound, but with Doctor Worm as the start and finish it, which like, no shade, like that’s an entirely fair position.
00:23:35:36 – 00:23:43:29
Bill Childs
I said, we can’t we probably can’t do that. That’s probably not the approach we’re going to take. And she’s, she’s come around on that eventually. But but.
00:23:43:29 – 00:23:45:53
Agent Palmer
That was off of severe tire damage.
00:23:45:58 – 00:24:10:07
Bill Childs
Right. Which so the live album was one, one, one new album, one new song, which remains one of their greatest songs, I think. Yeah. But, but yeah, I mean, that is a, sort of. They have always been representative of what I want to do with radio, which is to be sort of all over the place and be smart and weird and, and pretty varied.
00:24:10:07 – 00:24:16:39
Bill Childs
I mean, you know, they maybe don’t song sounds like a no, maybe giant song, but but what that encompasses is pretty broad.
00:24:16:46 – 00:24:31:10
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Yeah, I, I think it’s, they’re a, they’re not an acquired taste necessarily, but I do think that your entry point into them will determine your taste for them.
00:24:31:15 – 00:24:32:05
Bill Childs
I think that’s right.
00:24:32:10 – 00:24:54:39
Agent Palmer
For the for the record, it’s unlike some other bands I think like there are a lot of I’ve I’ve been falling back in love with the concept of the album as an art form, and I’ve been going back through and listening to old albums, and I think, you know, as a lost art form.
00:24:54:44 – 00:25:10:19
Agent Palmer
I know we’re talking about radio, but like, you know, part of music is finding those deep cuts and it’s being able to call out Doctor Worm from severe tire damage, which, by the way, how many people can name a song in an album these days?
00:25:10:23 – 00:25:11:23
Bill Childs
I mean, yeah, you.
00:25:11:23 – 00:25:24:15
Agent Palmer
Know it, you know, I mean, like, we are in that kind of like, I’m not going to say I’m the most music lover of all music lovers, but I have to be in some percentile because there’s a lot of people out there who will name a single, and that’s it.
00:25:24:20 – 00:25:41:52
Bill Childs
Yes, I think that’s that. That’s right. And I think a lot of it I mean, artists understandably, are going are focusing more on singles because that’s really all that matters, right? Because it’s you want to be the music bed for a TikTok, you want to be in the background of a YouTube video or whatever. It’s it is not a lot.
00:25:41:53 – 00:26:01:37
Bill Childs
There’s some album listening for sure, like my kids are. My son’s in college, my daughter’s in, grad school. They both listen to albums. They’re both weird in that respect, I think, but they’re not, but they’re not completely, in on their own, in their demographics. In doing so, I don’t want to become too much of the cranky old guy who’s talking about how kids these days.
00:26:01:42 – 00:26:19:50
Agent Palmer
Do you share music with them back in very much. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I, I have that relationship with my father where I, I’m the one who told him, you you need to listen to Hackney Diamonds because the Rolling Stones have found what used to make them great. Right?
00:26:19:50 – 00:26:23:56
Bill Childs
And it’s a weirdly good album. I haven’t listened to it a ton, but it is, it was unexpectedly good.
00:26:23:58 – 00:26:58:14
Agent Palmer
But I but I get to. And I get to share books with him, too. But music is kind of one of those things that we’ve always shared in my family. And I think that that is from an early age, fighting over They Might Be Giants albums and many other things like, I know at one point, shortly after my father retired, he was going through his CD collection and he was digitizing it into a he had a Bose stereo that had internal storage so he could move stuff in, and I would get calls.
00:26:58:19 – 00:27:23:01
Agent Palmer
Hey, I seem to be missing flash point. The The one Rolling Stones live album. Do you have that one? And I would be like, maybe, you know, so there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of, back and forth stealing that happens between or used to happen, before the streaming era. And I think it was, good for our relationship.
00:27:23:06 – 00:27:23:40
Agent Palmer
It’s what I’ll say.
00:27:23:40 – 00:27:44:30
Bill Childs
Yeah. It’s interesting. It was, my dad was. He passed away 15 years ago now, but he was not a big music guy. He grew up in South Arkansas. He listened to some clear channel, not clear channel Radio company, but Clear Channel Am signals that the very strong signals coming over the border from, New Orleans. So he grew up listening to some jazz, and he had the Time-Life box sets of jazz.
00:27:44:30 – 00:28:03:13
Bill Childs
You listen to some of that? But not that was not a big part. And music was a big part of our lives, but mostly just the NPR classical station. And and we were sort of expected, encouraged to, to play instruments, but not anything from rock. Rock came into our lives relatively late.
00:28:03:17 – 00:28:25:52
Agent Palmer
But but but I guess I, I guess a delineation here. Music is one thing, but was radio important because, and when I say that I’m thinking specifically of even in the mid to late 90s, sitting down with my folks and listening to A Prairie Home Companion.
00:28:25:57 – 00:28:41:23
Bill Childs
Yeah. So that was actually the example I was going to give. So I remember listening to that and the NPR station coming out of Tulsa when we lived in Oklahoma then, and then coming up to Twin Cities when we moved up here was on quite regularly. Okay. So we heard a lot of classical and that was right.
00:28:41:26 – 00:29:00:25
Bill Childs
Sounds like kind of what your station is. It was a combination music and news information station in the Twin Cities. Now those are split into actually three. There’s a news and information station, a classical station, and the current, which is the the equivalent of your afternoon show. Okay trip noncommercial triple air station. But yeah, a lot of that.
00:29:00:25 – 00:29:21:59
Bill Childs
And then, you know, some of listen to Queen which was that am station I mentioned. But there’s much more sharing of music with my kids, which I guess is almost inevitable, right, in that they grew up literally on the radio with me. They, they were co-hosts when they were little. They like the show I recorded today. My son is home from college, so he was on.
00:29:22:12 – 00:29:46:14
Bill Childs
So they’re still on the radio now. And he does a, college radio station, college radio show on the same station I did a college radio show on, which is kind of wild. But, so yeah, it’s much more album and song sharing and radio sharing to some extent than I had with my parents. And that’s not a criticism of them, is just sort of a different, different, different relationship.
00:29:46:23 – 00:29:46:43
Bill Childs
Yeah.
00:29:46:43 – 00:30:10:56
Agent Palmer
I, I think that, you know, there has to be, a generation out there who think that, more than NPR, that Garrison Keillor and the way he delivered stories is the way you talk on radio, because I just, I, I, I mean, it’s me.
00:30:10:58 – 00:30:13:45
Bill Childs
I’ve got to get closer. Go. Just start breathing. Really.
00:30:13:46 – 00:30:46:11
Agent Palmer
I gotta hear your breathing because I that that’s still the the mental audio I hear when I think about it, despite the fact that, like when we talk about news and information, like I remember being in the car with my father listening to Fresh Air. And so I, I very much grew up with NPR, but A Prairie Home Companion is the, the mental audio of NPR for me despite everything else.
00:30:46:11 – 00:30:47:14
Agent Palmer
And what I.
00:30:47:19 – 00:31:06:40
Bill Childs
Saying because, because there’s nothing else that listens. That sounds like that right. Yeah. I actually just saw that he is, doing a small tour of Prairie Home Companion shows again, very carefully not mentioning Minnesota Public Radio since they fired him. You know, talking about it, this is sort of a random aside, but I think that’s part of what this is all about.
00:31:06:40 – 00:31:30:39
Bill Childs
Yeah. Talk about the stern show having the the single camera when there was on TV. Program Companion, I’m pretty sure was the first radio show to do a live webcast, and it was a single camera that would update, like, every five seconds just from the from the balcony. But I thought that, like, for being a show that is, was emphatically not about technology.
00:31:30:44 – 00:31:38:47
Bill Childs
Yeah. I thought that was an interesting thing for them or for Minnesota Public Radio more likely to say, oh, we did it. We need to figure out what this web thing is going to be.
00:31:38:52 – 00:32:03:49
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I, I, I wrote an article about this for my blog, and I was amazed to have found at the time a YouTube feed of it. But I remember watching Aerosmith live from Holmdel, New Jersey streamed through their website in about 97 or 98.
00:32:03:50 – 00:32:04:53
Bill Childs
Oh, wow. Interesting.
00:32:04:53 – 00:32:18:27
Agent Palmer
At the time, I remember sitting in my bedroom with my dial up internet and one of my best friends who was also into the band watching this. What had to be a postage size video of the couple?
00:32:18:27 – 00:32:19:39
Bill Childs
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it was terrible.
00:32:19:39 – 00:32:37:19
Agent Palmer
Yeah, the sound was decent, I’ll be honest, for for that time period. But it’s just. I, I think there’s a part of me that will always be willing to forgive. Bad video for the audio.
00:32:37:24 – 00:32:59:28
Bill Childs
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that’s been one of the things that was an interesting, thing to see in the early era of the pandemic as bands tried to figure out how to substitute, you know, replace some of the income from, from shows. And so, you know, lots and lots of live streams where it was just like somebody sitting in front of a, in front of a, you know, a sure 57 microphone and, and their iPhone or whatever.
00:32:59:33 – 00:33:20:12
Bill Childs
But then there were some very elaborate and very nice setups, that, I’m curious about whether I mean, I know some venues are still using it on like First Avenue here in Minneapolis at Purdue, spent a lot of money investing in a really nice live streaming setup that I don’t think they’re using anymore because they’re back to just full on shows.
00:33:20:17 – 00:33:28:32
Bill Childs
But it’s an interesting thing to see how quickly people evolved to figure out how to do really good quality live streams with nobody in the room.
00:33:28:37 – 00:33:49:37
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I the, the only thing that really took it away from me was not having an audience. It’s very weird to not for that particular kind of a thing. Like if I’m listening to oh, the Tiny Desk Concert series or whatever it is, I know there’s no audience or there’s like three other people in the room and they’re all engineers.
00:33:49:37 – 00:34:03:05
Agent Palmer
I’m not expecting, like applause at the end of a thing, but yet, like when somebody advertises that this is a live concert, even live to the internet, like, I don’t know, I expect a crowd, I expect.
00:34:03:05 – 00:34:28:40
Bill Childs
Yeah. So there was one model that I thought was interesting. So my favorite sort of current bands is the Hold Steady. I see them a ton and they, do every year in Brooklyn the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend, they do a fortnight run at the Brooklyn Bowl. So nice venue there. And in the fall of 2020, what they did was they did a live stream three nights, I think, you know, a multi-camera shoot.
00:34:28:40 – 00:34:54:13
Bill Childs
Nobody there. So it’s all pretty weird. But the thing that they did that was interesting was they had a, in addition to the, the, the stream you could stream, they had a zoom call without, don’t know, hundreds of people. Just fans on from home. So I watch it. I’ve got a TV down here to my right where I’m sitting here in my stereo system, and I was down here with my daughter because she was home from college, because they were all remote.
00:34:54:18 – 00:35:11:16
Bill Childs
And we had the zoom going on my iPad next to it, and they had that zoom up on the monitors in the room so the band could see, and they would just be switching from person to person. Everybody would wave or hold up signs or hold up their dogs, or hold up their babies or whatever. And there was also a chat going on did not replace being in the audience.
00:35:11:16 – 00:35:27:48
Bill Childs
Like, like Frank Turner has a line like, you was missing the times where you can, close up the gaps between us like that, that being in a room with an audience is really important to me for seeing live music, and the pandemic continues to be tough on that front for me. Because I get very anxious about it.
00:35:27:48 – 00:35:46:25
Bill Childs
I still go to a lot of shows, which gets me anxious, but that’s a separate conversation. But that stretch where nobody was doing anything really was, was painful, but that was as close to a replacement for that, and I was deeply skeptical of it. When they announced it. Like what? I don’t want to be on a zoom call with people during a I’m on zoom calls all day at work.
00:35:46:25 – 00:36:05:56
Bill Childs
Yeah. But it was actually pretty great to see people all literally all over the world watching this experience at the same time go back to the way we started this conversation to have, knowing that all these people were experiencing this, this, this music at the same time was pretty special. And to know that the band was seeing us as well was kind of cool.
00:36:06:01 – 00:36:32:53
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I think I, I want to ask, what do you do then? Because like, I, I’m currently just a free agent, when it comes to marketing, I had a job and it ended right before the pandemic, and I’ve never really gotten a full time employment since then. It’s kind of just been gig to gig to gig, and being behind the microphone has always been a passion for me.
00:36:32:58 – 00:36:33:25
Bill Childs
Yeah.
00:36:33:30 – 00:36:47:14
Agent Palmer
But it’s it’s remained a passion. And I think it’s is very nice to, you know, have that delineation. And I think that, you know, spare the Rock is your passion. But it doesn’t pay the bills.
00:36:47:19 – 00:37:04:18
Bill Childs
No, no, I, it is a, it is a, it cost me money overall. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I could probably, I could sell sponsorships for the show if anybody is listening and wants to buy a sponsorship, be happy to talk to you about it. I, I’m a lawyer. I, I’m an in-house lawyer for a manufacturing company here in Minnesota.
00:37:04:18 – 00:37:21:35
Bill Childs
That is what I do. Okay. For a job, I also. So when we before we started, talking for the actual show, I was telling you I wasn’t even sure which thing we were coming on to talk about, because I also, and a, adjunct law professor as a full time law professor for eight years, that’s when I actually started the radio show.
00:37:21:40 – 00:37:36:32
Bill Childs
And I teach as an adjunct. I teach created a class that I teach that’s about, amusement park litigation and regulation and accidents and things around that. I have a casebook from that coming out that is, again, not the thing that pays the bills, the thing that pays the bills is I’m a lawyer for a big company.
00:37:36:37 – 00:37:59:47
Agent Palmer
I, I only find it interesting. And I’m going to say this, I don’t remember what episode it was, but I had a buddy of mine on Rob. Who the heck knows? At a certain point, all these episodes run together. I’m going to say sometime in the 70s or 80s of. But whatever. And Rob was telling the story about how he went to law school.
00:37:59:47 – 00:38:18:18
Agent Palmer
It’s where he met his wife, and he got out of law school, and he was a lawyer for about a year and a half or two years, and he hated it. And he called up his old professor and his old professor when he learned he was unhappy, said, how long have you been doing what you’ve been doing? I don’t know, two, two and a half years.
00:38:18:18 – 00:38:50:00
Agent Palmer
And he goes, yep, that’s about the time you either remain in it or don’t. And so every time since then, on this show and in my private life, whenever I run into somebody who’s still a lawyer, who’s still doing law, I always have to ask, like, did you have that? Will I stay with it? Won’t I? Moment? Because it seems like, I mean, you know, for the people I’ve talked to you off the air, everybody’s had that moment.
00:38:50:04 – 00:38:57:27
Agent Palmer
It’s just some people like Rob actually leave and then go into teaching or whatever else they do. And, and some people like yourself stay in it.
00:38:57:32 – 00:39:18:36
Bill Childs
Yeah. So, I have always, for the most part liked what I do as a lawyer, but I have done a lot of different things. Is the other part. So I I’ll start with, with, I think that sounds like a joke, but it is probably not. We moved around a fair amount when my kids were little, and I actually, until they were my little two.
00:39:18:51 – 00:39:36:08
Bill Childs
And whenever anybody asks my son why he moved around, as much as he did because he was born in Virginia, DC area and then lived in Western Massachusetts, then lived in Austin and now lives in Twin Cities. He says, oh, my dad has untreated ADHD and, and like, it means it as a joke, but kind of not right.
00:39:36:08 – 00:39:52:59
Bill Childs
I mean, it and like, there you have it. And, I probably do, and I’ve never bothered to get diagnosed, so I’ve, I’ve changed paths a fair amount all within sort of the world of law. Right. So I started off I clerked for a judge that was always going to be a two year job, but it was a two year job as a lawyer.
00:39:53:04 – 00:40:07:42
Bill Childs
And then I practiced law with a big firm in DC for four years. Then I became a full time law professor for eight years. Then I went to another law firm. Firm. I was there for seven years at a pretty wide variety of stuff there, and now I went in-house to the job I have about four years ago.
00:40:07:47 – 00:40:18:00
Bill Childs
So the longest I’ve had a law related job was eight years, and even that one when I was a law professor. Three of those years, I was associate dean. So it’s been a lot of sort of, you’ve.
00:40:18:00 – 00:40:21:15
Agent Palmer
Shifted without four years of the shifting.
00:40:21:20 – 00:40:26:51
Bill Childs
Right? Without changing it, leaving it entirely. It’s a lot of different angles on the same thing. How.
00:40:26:51 – 00:40:31:28
Agent Palmer
Long have you had, the, spare the rock?
00:40:31:33 – 00:40:32:38
Bill Childs
18 or 19 years.
00:40:32:38 – 00:40:33:59
Agent Palmer
So that’s that.
00:40:34:09 – 00:40:37:50
Bill Childs
That’s the thing I’ve done long other than being married. That is the thing I’ve done longest my.
00:40:37:51 – 00:40:55:13
Agent Palmer
Life, okay? I mean, and that can’t be a coincidence. I mean, music has to be. I mean, you said it. You know, it’s been around for since you won those records, so it feels like. Like, was there ever. Was there ever a, Hey, I should get into music law? You. No.
00:40:55:18 – 00:41:11:06
Bill Childs
You know, people asked me that when I was, when I was interviewing at firms, people, like, sometimes they would go, this is before I had the radio show. Just. I was just obsessed with with, music. They’d kind of be nudging me like, oh, you know, this this person represents a bunch of of of, record labels or whatever like that.
00:41:11:07 – 00:41:14:37
Bill Childs
That’s not what interests me about music.
00:41:14:37 – 00:41:15:39
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:41:15:44 – 00:41:29:07
Bill Childs
And so I have, I hope this is going to sound more negative about my career than I intend it to, but I, I think of it as a means to an end. Like, I like what I do, and that’s why I say it sounds more negative than an intent. I really, genuinely do. I like I’m a litigator.
00:41:29:07 – 00:41:44:53
Bill Childs
I like being a litigator. I like the writing aspect of it. I now get to lead a lot of teams. I like that aspect of of it. I think I’m pretty good at it. And I have fun with it, but it is. It would not be a thing I would do if it wasn’t. Also what made it.
00:41:44:53 – 00:41:56:21
Bill Childs
So I get to do the radio show, I get to go to see a lot of live music, and I get to support a lot of music, and I get to do all of those other things that are, more important for sort of my soul. If you’ve.
00:41:56:22 – 00:42:27:09
Agent Palmer
Got. Yeah, it I think that there are not you are working to live instead of living to work. And I think that that’s an important delineation because I’m surrounded by people. And I think a lot of us are that are living to work, which is not what we want. I mean, I don’t even want that for people I don’t know, much less my friend, where I’m like, yeah, it’s like, just put it, put it, close the laptop, just close it, you know, like, just don’t get it.
00:42:27:09 – 00:42:31:01
Agent Palmer
It’s not enough to put the movie on in the background. Like just watch the movie.
00:42:31:01 – 00:42:31:58
Bill Childs
Actually watch the movie, you.
00:42:31:58 – 00:43:03:10
Agent Palmer
Know, and I yeah, I is there I, I’m this is a hard shift but I really want to ask this talking to a microphone is not something that comes naturally to everybody. And I think there’s a lot of people who definitely can’t talk to a microphone by themselves. Were you comfortable the moment you got, I guess, two questions.
00:43:03:10 – 00:43:14:00
Agent Palmer
One, were you comfortable the moment you got in front of a microphone? And two, were you comfortable the first time you were in a microphone talking to no one in particular?
00:43:14:05 – 00:43:34:53
Bill Childs
Yeah. So, so I’ve always been reasonably comfortable speaking in front of people that that’s. I’m, outgoing. I’m an extrovert. I get a lot of energy from that. I like that stuff. The the talking to nobody in particular being on radio. So I did college radio. I was at McAllister College in Saint Paul small liberal arts college, just down the street from where I live now.
00:43:34:58 – 00:43:57:00
Bill Childs
And, I was comfortable, but not very good at it. I actually behind me on there, I’ve got a bunch of tapes from, from when I was on. I occasionally go back to, like, this little rough, like, I had listened to a ton of radio, so I knew what I liked. Like, we had a pretty good commercial alt rock station here called CK 104 was one of the early alternative rock stations.
00:43:57:00 – 00:44:16:11
Bill Childs
That program director there went on to be in Chicago and hired me in Ohio, and now is at KSP and Seattle and just great, great role model, great radio people on there in general. So I knew a lot of what I liked. And so I started off doing a lot of copying, which is not a bad way to start.
00:44:16:11 – 00:44:16:56
Bill Childs
I mean, that’s
00:44:17:01 – 00:44:20:23
Agent Palmer
I think that’s the way everybody should start. Yeah.
00:44:20:28 – 00:44:38:50
Bill Childs
And then I didn’t do radio again until when I started the show, and I started, started the show on a little community, low power FM station in western Massachusetts. And then about it, I never remember once a year and a half or two and a half little ways in, the commercial station 93 nine, the River WRC in, in Northampton.
00:44:38:50 – 00:44:52:01
Bill Childs
This is all in western Massachusetts. Said, hey, would you like to come over and do the show here for a little bit of money and I mean a little bit of money? I was like ten bucks an hour, and then there was a pay cut. Where. So it was 950 an hour. But I said, sure, that sounds fun.
00:44:52:01 – 00:45:13:11
Bill Childs
You know, much better signal and much better equipment. And the program director there, for many years, a guy named Marty Belmonte, he, And if you ever listen to John Hodgman, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, Monti is the summer bailiff for that show. And he now is over. He moved maybe a year ago to, the NPR station in Western Mass.
00:45:13:11 – 00:45:28:40
Bill Childs
So he’s now doing he was doing mornings for, I don’t know, 15 years. Waking up at three in the morning moved over. But he was the program director, and I would do air checks with him, and I didn’t. If ever do all that many. But he was just so good at saying, here’s how you need to think about it.
00:45:28:46 – 00:45:44:05
Bill Childs
And you know, when you’re doing a break, I know you have five things you want to talk about. You’re going to have chances to talk about all of them eventually talk about one of them. And then the next time we play that, that artist, you could talk about the second one, and the next time we could play the third one.
00:45:44:19 – 00:46:02:31
Bill Childs
And just just like the the little tools that he gave me, were great. And to think about it, to, to figure out sort of who I was, and, you know, doing it for 18 years, you either get good at or you don’t. But I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it. And to the extent I’m not, at least it sounds like me.
00:46:02:36 – 00:46:26:10
Bill Childs
Yeah. And doing it with my kids was really fun and also an adventure, right? Because if you’ve got a six year old on or a seven year old, you have no idea what the hell they’re going to say. And, and, and so that made got me a lot better on my toes in terms of sort of adjusting the conversation and and shifting it.
00:46:26:15 – 00:47:07:56
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I, I’ve never done improv. I’ve been around people that do improv. And I feel like in this setting me, you, I’ve found my voice, I and I obviously I do my opens and closes technically in the dark by myself. Right? I’m not you know, so I’ve gotten used to talking to no one. But there was a while where I was recruited by the executive director for one of the former executive directors for my local NPR to do a show because he knew I was in podcasting.
00:47:07:56 – 00:47:29:49
Agent Palmer
So he was like, you could talk on a mic. Like, it’s not that, you know, it’s very hard to get people that are comfortable, that don’t clam up or just the moment the red buttons on and you do this and there’s something about live, this is edited. I don’t make any bones about it, but it’s live to tape.
00:47:29:49 – 00:47:42:05
Agent Palmer
And, you know, the less editing, the better, the more natural it sounds, etc., etc. there’s something about having that and that that makes me fine.
00:47:42:10 – 00:47:44:53
Bill Childs
And so have you done other than.
00:47:44:59 – 00:47:47:44
Agent Palmer
No, not in college. Yeah, I, I give it a.
00:47:47:44 – 00:47:58:10
Bill Childs
Shot and it’s like and like, I mean I pre-record now, but I went back and I’ve done occasional live shows. It’s really fun. I mean, it is scary, but it’s fun.
00:47:58:15 – 00:48:28:03
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I, I, I think the, the one thing that makes me think about doing it more often than not, like the one pro that outweighs most of the cons, is the potential for actual feedback. You know, we have all these outlets, regardless of what radio station uses, whether it be a social platform or a website or whatever. But you have this influx that as an on demand guy, I get that.
00:48:28:03 – 00:48:49:11
Agent Palmer
I, you know, I’ll get that later. I don’t get it. And now I don’t get somebody saying, of course that’s that, that’s me too. And me going like, thanks, thanks, John in Salt Lake City that, you know, this, this, this next song goes out. You know, I don’t have that. And so I think that’s I think it’s the only pro for me right now.
00:48:49:16 – 00:49:16:09
Agent Palmer
I, but I’m, I’m too much of a fact. I need to come up with a show concept. I don’t think I can be thrown right in and just pick up and go, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, it it’s definitely something I’ve got in the back of my head. And I think the more I spend time around the board of directors, I think it’s probably inevitable I’ll end up on there at some point.
00:49:16:09 – 00:49:48:58
Agent Palmer
I just don’t I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know how many excuses I can have there enough. Yeah, I, I did want to ask, though, when you’re putting together your playlists, how much of it is and I, I guess I’m going to ask for a percentage because I’m, I know nothing’s exactly black and white, but, like, how much of it is, how much you feel in the moment you’re making it and how much is it?
00:49:48:58 – 00:49:53:41
Agent Palmer
I’ve come up with a theme that I want to hit.
00:49:53:45 – 00:50:18:22
Bill Childs
Yeah. It’s interesting question. So I usually start off so the show is it I mean, it times out to an hour, it’s actually about 54 minutes because people drop in promos and so on and so forth. Yeah. In three segments and I have sort of a general way, trajectory of the show each, each week. The middle segment is the one that I play a little bit harder rock stuff that’s called the are you prepared to rock set?
00:50:18:36 – 00:50:45:53
Bill Childs
And then the, other stuff sort of varies. First segment tends to be a bit quieter. Third segments is tends to be a little bit more varied. I start off, I try to have, oh, maybe a third of the songs that I play be relatively new. I get a lot of new music and every week and I try to feature some of that I tend to, and that tends to be sort of the seed around which themes can be developed.
00:50:45:58 – 00:51:01:17
Bill Childs
But not always. Sometimes, like, I think themes can be, can be fun. They can be a little bit goofy, like the show that I did for this weekend when I when we’re recording this, I picked one song that happened to be about zebras. I was like, I can come up some other zebra song. So I came up some other zebra songs.
00:51:01:17 – 00:51:21:51
Bill Childs
I’ve got a pretty big collection at this point. I also in one of the things that is unusual about this show for being a, show that is sort of formally for kids is that I probably a quarter of the stuff I play is not actually music that was made for kids. So I play a lot of They Might Be Giants that isn’t from their kids albums, for one thing.
00:51:21:56 – 00:51:40:05
Bill Childs
But there’s a bunch of other stuff as well. And so I will often I think of it as sort of the classical station in Austin had as part of their mission statement that they would we’re going to be gently educational, which I kind of think of as being a good, good mission statement because I don’t want to be over the top.
00:51:40:07 – 00:52:02:36
Bill Childs
I’m not a, you should listen to this or hear, like, not very heavy handed, but if I’m playing like a kid’s hip hop song from Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, maybe I’ll find a Run-DMC song to play next to it, that sort of thing. Because I want, I used to have a promo that talked about the goal as being sort of creating the next generation of radio nerds, and I think that’s going back to our very first conversation.
00:52:02:36 – 00:52:21:20
Bill Childs
One of the things that radio can do really well is show those connections between artists and between and among eras of music. So I kind of build it out from that as well. So it tends to be little seeds that I say, oh, I like. I think that song sounds a little bit like a big song or whatever and sort of build it out from there.
00:52:21:20 – 00:52:47:49
Bill Childs
So there’s not a very clean answer to your question. And then sometimes it’s, there is certainly stuff where, something in my life will say, I’m going to do that. Like, I’ve, I’ve had like when my dad died, that was, I was doing a radio show, and I did some stuff about grief, and I had my, my best friend from, high school in college passed away from ALS, gosh, probably six years ago now.
00:52:47:49 – 00:53:08:29
Bill Childs
And I, I talked about friendship and I talked about how sort of losing friends and stuff like that, which is a little bit heavy to do on a, on a children’s radio show. And I did it with sort of a light touch, but some of that stuff, will come in or like last week, my daughter and her girlfriend and I and my wife went and saw large and Grace play, and the opener for that show was somebody I really liked.
00:53:08:34 – 00:53:28:34
Bill Childs
Me, I forget her last name. And so I playing something from her on this weekend show and talking about that show, and, so sometimes it’s just, I just heard this new band and here’s a song that’s appropriate. I really like.
00:53:28:39 – 00:53:52:04
Agent Palmer
As you may have guessed, my interest in radio is for many reasons, but it was for me, as it was for Bill and many of you listening our first introduction to the audio space for both music and talk. And it endures today for reasons we spoke about at the beginning and probably for many more varied reasons that are so numerous as the many types of radio that there are that exist.
00:53:52:08 – 00:54:18:06
Agent Palmer
Audio has always been about connecting. It connects us to what we are listening to and to those who are listening with us, whether they are listening around the country or around the block or around the couch. Bill show spare the Rock, spoil the Child seeks to engage a younger audience on their own. Though his show is not limited to a younger audience to foster their love of music and radio with more than just.
00:54:18:18 – 00:54:41:25
Agent Palmer
I listened to what my parents listened to, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Music. And by extension, radio and audio is a medium unlike others because it can be shared and engaged with at any age. Sound is sound. If you can hear it, then it can trance and entertain you, even if the meaning isn’t there. A good rhythm is more universal than a good rhyme.
00:54:41:30 – 00:55:03:43
Agent Palmer
So tune in and turn on. Enjoy the radio and audio once more. You’re already listening to me, are you? Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 116. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can find all related ways to contact my guest, Bill Childs, and myself in the show notes.
00:55:03:48 – 00:55:31:55
Agent Palmer
There you can find more information about Bill and his show. Spare the Rock, Spoil the child at Spare the rock.com. The music for this episode was provided by Henno Heitur. Email can be sent to this show at The Palmer Files at gmail.com. And remember, you’re home for all things. Agent Palmer is Agent palmer.com.
00:55:32:00 – 00:55:39:52
Unknown
You.
00:55:39:57 – 00:56:07:40
Unknown
See? You.
00:56:07:45 – 00:56:09:58
Agent Palmer
All right, bill, do you have one final question for me?
00:56:10:09 – 00:56:30:26
Bill Childs
I have what’s probably going to turn into more than one final question for you, but I’m going the first question is can you give me the ID as you gave it when you were doing college radio, when you were setting identifying your show and your station and yourself, how would you do it? And I’ll do I’ll do my college money.
00:56:30:26 – 00:56:40:01
Agent Palmer
No, you know what the worst part about it is? I cannot I can’t remember the fourth call letter. Because it well, I think, oh, God.
00:56:40:02 – 00:56:41:53
Bill Childs
Invented it for a reason.
00:56:41:53 – 00:56:42:35
Agent Palmer
I’m gonna just.
00:56:42:35 – 00:56:43:04
Bill Childs
Lehigh.
00:56:43:13 – 00:56:57:07
Agent Palmer
College. No no no no no, this was I went to I went to Keystone College, this very small station. And I know they’ve changed their call letters since, which is horrible. I want to say you’re listening to Casey X.
00:56:57:12 – 00:56:59:02
Bill Childs
Casey V is what it is now.
00:56:59:02 – 00:57:26:42
Agent Palmer
Okay. I think it was Casey at the time, but if it was that, it was I. So, this is a funny story. I and this is the saddest part of the whole thing. I don’t remember what I called myself. And I remember this being a problem, because when I joined the Radio Club, I had a nickname on campus, and my nickname wasn’t necessarily radio friendly.
00:57:26:54 – 00:57:44:05
Agent Palmer
It wasn’t a bad word, but people called me Jesus, and I was told as a nickname that I did not give myself. I could not. You couldn’t be, I couldn’t be. You’re listening to Jesus on TV, right?
00:57:44:05 – 00:57:47:12
Bill Childs
There’s a hip hop artist, M.C. 900ft. Jesus, you could have been that I.
00:57:47:15 – 00:58:07:30
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I don’t think it was that I. I believe I stole from at the time, one of my favorite. And, you know, a lot of people, when they can’t come up with anything like myself style. So I believe I went with Master Shake. I believe you were listening to Master Shake from Teen Hunger Force. I just I didn’t change a thing.
00:58:07:34 – 00:58:24:16
Agent Palmer
It was, you know, it went out to the campus. I think it hit factory ville down the road. I would be surprised. So it was literally just. You’re listening to WkbW. Agent Palmer plays you what he feels like. And that was my spiel.
00:58:24:16 – 00:58:25:41
Bill Childs
Like mostly what did you play?
00:58:25:41 – 00:58:53:36
Agent Palmer
So at the time it was a it’s a bunch of They Might Be Giants stuff. But I also was this was in a time where I was very much looking backward a lot. So I was listening to Floyd and Zeppelin a lot. I always had guns and Metallica, and I was very much not where I am now or now.
00:58:53:36 – 00:59:26:18
Agent Palmer
I’m very much like. I’ve been listening to a lot of Dylan lately. And I’ve gone even further and further back and the and like the band. Yeah. At that time, if I played any song before 1976, I’d be shocked. Because it was very much like the, the, I remember one of the go tos was, if I needed a break was, the Zeppelin stairway from the just then released, BBC sessions.
00:59:26:23 – 00:59:28:16
Bill Childs
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:59:28:21 – 00:59:50:09
Agent Palmer
And so it was a lot of that, a lot of rush. So it was, it was in that kind of vein, but at the same time, you were never going to hear the hits from me. Sure. Yeah. Like, you were like, I would play stuff from appetite, but it was like you would never hear welcome to the jungle, Paradise City or like that.
00:59:50:10 – 00:59:53:08
Agent Palmer
Those were not things I was going to play.
00:59:53:13 – 00:59:55:12
Bill Childs
Mr. Brownstone, maybe instead. Or maybe.
00:59:55:12 – 01:00:05:31
Agent Palmer
But I mean, one of my favorites gun songs to play at that time was the the cover from the Spaghetti Incident of since I Don’t Have You.
01:00:05:36 – 01:00:11:59
Bill Childs
Which I don’t even know that, and I appetite for destruction is kind of where I get my beginning and end of the very.
01:00:12:02 – 01:00:22:32
Agent Palmer
Last guns N roses album they ever released together before they just reformed and before Chinese. The of the original song was called, The Spaghetti Incident, and it was. Yeah, I.
01:00:22:32 – 01:00:23:36
Bill Childs
Remember it came out. I was it.
01:00:23:36 – 01:00:43:56
Agent Palmer
Was nothing but covers and they are great covers, by the way. But since I don’t have you doesn’t it doesn’t belong, but it very much belongs. It’s kind of like any time, like a band, like bowling for soup takes a song from, like, the 70s that’s slow and sappy and goes, what if we put it on?
01:00:44:01 – 01:00:45:53
Bill Childs
But maybe this song, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:00:45:53 – 01:01:17:03
Agent Palmer
So it’s kind of that thing. Yeah. So it was very much whatever. And here’s the other thing. I was, playing in a, I was playing bass in a metal band. I never played anything we would play. I was in a two man band where I played guitar and I never played anything. We played there. So like, there was some Skinner and some, like Sex Pistols and stuff and Green Day things that I could actually play and that you would hear me play on the little stage with the bands you would never hear from my from my show.
01:01:17:08 – 01:01:36:06
Bill Childs
So. So that’s the thing that that sort of clearly distinguishes the age here. Is that so while I was in college, I took a year off and opened a record store and, in Minneapolis, and the first time Green Day ever played acoustically in front of people was in that store. Oh, no, this is back when they Dookie was, no, Kerplunk was had just kind of.
01:01:36:10 – 01:01:57:05
Bill Childs
So they were still on. Still on, on the lookout record. So way, way back in the, in the day. So anyway. Very nice. Well, I, unfortunately, I can’t figure out what the call letters were before I was poking around, and they usually they’ve got the history, but yeah, it’s cvx LP, so it’s a low power FM station now, which was not a formerly, I believe.
01:01:57:05 – 01:02:36:45
Agent Palmer
It was Casey at the time. Because that’s what’s in my head. And I was it was at the time it wasn’t on all the time like it was. It was very much like a club. Club. Not like, we’re going to do this all the time, right? I think I might have, taken it a little bit more seriously, but we had off air times like there for, for for the time it was, it was great to have a show where you could say things like, while you’re downloading that stuff on.
01:02:36:49 – 01:02:57:14
Agent Palmer
And this was post Napster, but like during the Kazaa LimeWire era of pirating, where you could say things like, hey, if you really like this song, it’s on They Might Be Giants, John Henry, and you can get that on LimeWire whenever you’re ready. Like, it was a very like, I’m and I’m not proud of it. Right.
01:02:57:14 – 01:02:58:33
Bill Childs
But like it’s what it is.
01:02:58:33 – 01:03:13:40
Agent Palmer
It’s what we said. It was the era of the time and if there was a an album or a thing or if, you know, whatever. And so yeah, it was, you know, yeah it would dude, that was, that was my experience of just like, this is what I feel like.
01:03:13:45 – 01:03:23:05
Bill Childs
And what did you like about doing radio? I realized it was only supposed to be one more question, but I but since you since you don’t want to go back and do live radio. Now I’m wondering what what was the biggest thing you got out of doing that?
01:03:23:10 – 01:03:52:53
Agent Palmer
You know, I, I think it was access, it was still a bunch of CDs. Right. And and there were records and tapes and eight tracks like this was very much at the this was pre-digital, but it was at the crossroads where CDs hadn’t completely taken over. And you could play, you know, something from moving pictures on the vinyl.
01:03:52:53 – 01:03:54:26
Bill Childs
On the vinyl. Yeah.
01:03:54:30 – 01:04:29:58
Agent Palmer
And so I, I think it was almost more personal. I think you, the audience was secondary to my experience sitting in that booth and having access to this massive collection of music that even with I mean, I think it goes back to, you know, it’s not curation, but there is something to be said for going to the library versus searching the internet at a library, you can browse on the internet, you have to search.
01:04:30:03 – 01:04:51:29
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And if I just look at that shelf and go, that looks interesting, I can play that or like, oh, I haven’t heard anything from Alice Cooper in a very long time. Let, let let’s play something from that. It’s very different than just sitting down like we were doing in the dorms and being like, I don’t know, name of album I can look for.
01:04:51:29 – 01:04:53:29
Agent Palmer
It’s like, yeah, there was something about it.
01:04:53:29 – 01:05:15:18
Bill Childs
I so I’ve, I’ve visited my son when he does his radio show a couple times, which is again in the same studio, same station. I was on how many, 30 years ago? Yeah, 30 years ago. And they still have a massive vinyl collection, a big CD collection. A lot of the CDs are from when I was there, and they still have the notes on them from the music director when I was there, and those notes were like the oh, way to find out.
01:05:15:18 – 01:05:28:44
Bill Childs
Oh well, I’ve Dave Gardner, now an amazing mastering engineer in San Francisco, says this song is awesome. I should probably play this song on my show and I just like how I found out about Superchunk. I mean, anyway, so yeah, I’m with you, I agree.
01:05:28:58 – 01:06:03:08
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I, I will also say for, not to be underrated as a place for music, but from about 1985 through about 1997, we would rent the most ridiculous movies. But a lot of them, even if they were crap, had great music. Sure, I don’t know what it was about that era of filmmaker, whether they could shoot a movie well or not.
01:06:03:08 – 01:06:41:58
Agent Palmer
A lot of them had great taste in music, and you would find bands by waiting through the credits of a crappy movie that you would just never have discovered in any other way. Yeah. And so that was a way, again, to kind of fuel, maybe not the radio station so much because some of those were not available, but right to, you know, expand songs to learn, songs to play, etc., and so yeah, I, I don’t know, I’ve, I guess the other the other answer, which is the truth and maybe more to the truth than anything else, I’ve always been music adjacent.
01:06:42:02 – 01:06:57:36
Agent Palmer
Yeah, sometimes I’m playing in bands, sometimes I’m not, sometimes I’m listening to music and sometimes I’m playing it for others. But I’ve never been too far away from it for sure. So. Yeah.
01:06:57:41 – 01:06:58:03
Bill Childs
Cool.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).