When I was 16 I spent a weekend at Sacred Heart Seminary at a retreat for men who were considering the Priesthood. Sacred Heart is an old collection of buildings on the west side of Detroit with an alabaster statue of Christ on one of the corners of the property. During the riots in '68 someone painted the face of the statue black, and it was still that way 3 years later when I arrived. The overall effect was that of a white man in black face, and so an uninformed visitor might get the impression that we were worshiping Al Jolson. Everyone was talking about becoming a Bishop except for one long haired dude in the corner who I realized was Dan Carlilse of the legendary radio station WABX. Me and Dan ended up cruising around the neighborhood drinking brandy and talking about how fucking cool David Bowie was. Neither Dan, nor I ever became priests but I did (years later) end up on the air at WABX. I was too stupid to know that you couldn't get a job in a major market with no commercial experience, so.... I got the job. The Program Director who hired me was a five foot six ex top forty jock named China Jones. After I did a live audition for him, he took me in the hall and said: "Ok, I'm gonna give you the job, but remember that I keep my DJ's under my thumb". I almost asked him if he stood on a phone book when he did , but in a rare instance of good judgement I kept my mouth shut and got the gig. My first show was on New Years Eve (they let the new guy do the midnight shift so the rest of the crew could party) and I thought I was doing OK until about five minutes to midnight when a very drunk China Jones called me on the hot line. China was at a very loud bar calling from a payphone and shouting instructions to me as I held the phone up to one ear, had my headphones on the other ear, and tried to deliver his New Years message word for word like some bizarre UN translator. I'm sure I sounded like a complete fucking moron, but I learned as time went by that the average 'ABX listener was usually way too stoned to notice. ( Let alone on New Years Eve!) Our nickname for the station was "narcotic radio" ..and if you can picture a set of offices with really really loud Iggy Pop music playing, and Scarface size mounds of blow on the General Managers desk.. well you begin to get the picture. We even had some whacked out lesbian cheerleaders that would come to our softball games to chant: " A Root, A Root, A Rooty Toot Toot..." Anyhow the WABX slogan was "The Station Of Your Wildest Dreams" And it was.
Years later I was in New Orleans on my birthday and as we walked around the Vieux Carre wham..right in front of me was the big statue of Satchmo, which for all the world reminded me of that west side Jesus in Detroit. That same day I got a call from my partner to get on a plane to Toronto for a video shoot. As it happened ( CBC pun intended) Pope JPII was in town and a TV station in LA had hired our company to provide a crew at the last minute for a Popeload of cash. The plan was that the crew from MoTown would meet me at the Holiday Inn with the gear. I reluctantly said goodbye to my N'aw lins girlfriend and hopped on a flight to Chicago then connected to T.O. Since it was my Bday and all, I figured what the hell, and hit the in flight booze pretty good... insuring that by the time I got to airport customs that evening I was pretty well smashed. The Dudley Do Right dude asked me the purpose of my trip to Canada (eh?), and I answered: "We're here to shoot the Pope". Whoops. The only thing I could have possible said worse would have been to call Don Cherry's mother a whore (who was busy sucking off Tim Horton). The Mounties thought they had their man, and for the next two hours I sat in a small windowless room trying to explain why I lived in Detroit, but was coming from New Orleans on a plane from Chicago with no crew and no TV gear to do a "shoot". When the RCMP eventually figured out that I was harmless, they cut me loose about midnight. My day was capped by the cab driver singing "Happy Birthday" all the way to the hotel in his thick Pakistani accent hoping for a tip..while all I could focus on was the plastic Jesus on his dashboard. I almost asked him if he had a black magic marker......
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