Noted in Passing

I was listening to an old "Best Of Don Vogel" CD lent to me by a reader. It's a bit of forensic audio done by KSTP-AM in the mid-nineties, to commemorate Don's passing and to raise money for a few charities.

There are about twenty cuts on the CD. Since it was put together by Don's last producer at KSTP (Don was at KSTP twice - I worked with him in 1985-1987, and he returned in 1992-1995, after I left the radio industry. However, before I left I introduced the consultant that eventually hired Don to his tape - so I can say with all honesty I played a role in both of Don's stints at AM1500), it's not only understandable the disk is light on stuff from Don's first hitch. Recordkeeping at KSTP was slapdash at best in the eighties; it's a miracle any tape survived at all.

So there are three cuts on the CD where I appear at all - the classic "Dare Line" from the Southdale 30th Anniversary broadcast, live from the old Atrium, which was one of the best times I ever had on the air; the song L.I.B.Y.A., which I co-wrote (with Don and Dave Elvin), on which I play guitar and sing background vocals, and the final track, "Killing Off Characters". On Don's last day at the station in 1987, we figured the perfect sendoff would be for us to machine-gun all of Don's characters (a talented impressionist, Don populated his show with a series of hilarious characters, some fictional, some based on real figures; he did the best Howard Cosell and Keith Jackson ever).

My persona on the show was a "crazed gun nut", so I had the honors of dispatching Cosell, Jackson, and then-WCCO personality Ruth Koscielak with an (audio rendition of an) HK-21 machine gun (which was actually a stapler and a tape of gunfire).

And the thing I noticed the most was...

...I did a bitchin' Tim Russell impression back then!

(Russell, currently on the company of Prairie Home Companion, was Koscielak's on-air partner on WCCO back in the eighties).