"A long time ago, some senior mentor of mine gave me some really good advice. When you turn on the microphone you are not talking to thousands of people, you are only talking to one person. If a person is listening to you, they may alone, or with lots of other people, but you are truly only talking to that person, not the people with them. There is no one inside their head with them. You are their friend, and most of the time, they trust you to entertain them, console them, make them smile, and most of all, they expect you to tell them the truth. You may be their best friend today. I have been in radio for over forty years, and it never ceases to amaze me how many good friends I have that I have never met." Tom Brenner - Veteran Broadcaster - WJOD

"Pilot of the airwaves
Here is my request
You don't have to play it
But I hope you'll do your best
I've been listening to your show on the radio
And you seem like a friend to me"
- Charlie Dore, Pilot of the Airwaves

I've loved radio all my life. As a young boy and a teenager I listened to my "pocket-sized" transistor AM radio with the leatherette case. It ran on a 9-volt battery. Later I got a larger table-top model that had two speakers and sat by my bed for years. You pulled out the knob and waited for the tubes to warm up and picked up stations from everywhere. In central Wisconsin, when I got tired of the farm reports and corn futures and the current price of feeder pigs, I would tune in Appleton or Green Bay. Nighttime was the best, however, because I could get a trucker's station from Tennessee and another one from Texas. Later I got into short-wave and tuned in stations from everywhere in the world. This all came back to me because one night a while back I turned on a local Christian station, KCBR 1040,but they had signed off and WHO from central Iowa was on!

I almost became an OJT disc jockey at the local station in my hometown. There was a situation with me working without pay and potential claims, blah-blah-blah which stopped me from it. My friend Tom, quoted above, who works at WJOD in Iowa these days, was a big part of my instruction. He taught me how important it was to record commercials that didn't sound over-dramatized or just plain stupid and how to spin records, cueing up the next record before the last record ran out and "walking the ramp" or talking in between songs, timing it exactly right so you were done when the song started. He introduced me to some of his other friends who had a popular morning show in one of the bigger towns of the area and I got to see some of the things they did to prepare for it.

Technology may have left me behind on most fronts but I did learn a couple of lessons that will never change and which have been useful in other areas of life as well. One is, "Treat every mike as though it were on." (When I started writing this piece certain political figures had not yet made their faux pas in front of a hot mike.) If you have ever been in charge of any kind of meeting or emceed any affair (remember I was a Cubmaster and Scoutmaster) this is important. Same is true for another rule, which in radio can get you sent to the deepest, darkest pit and if you are a Scout leader will almost certainly result in restlessness and eventual pandemonium, which is you must never, ever, ever allow "dead air."

I told you all that because I like good radio. I enjoy and appreciate good broadcasting technique as much as content and if you like listening to real music on real radio stations (and/or over the net, I have readers of my regular site locally and around the world) then the station called " Legends" is for you. On the local dial it's AM 1530 KCMN and on the Internet it's http://www.1530kcmn.com/. If you listen locally, you should note that they broadcast in HD, which makes AM sound like FM if you have the right receiver. A set of speakers on your computer produces beautiful results, too. The cool thing about listening on the computer is that if you have one of those "OH! Who did that song?" moments, it tells you (I get the best results with Internet Explorer, but it works with all browsers). I have also been told that HD radios have this capability, but I don't know yet.

This is a station I recommend for whatever kind of music you like. If you like 30's and 40's Big Band, Swing or Jazz; Fabulous Fifties, 60's Pop and 70's stuff. Do the names Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Alan Sherman or Spike Jones ring a bell? How about Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and/or the rest of the Rat Pack? Nat "King" Cole, Bing and Bob; Elvis, The Beatles and The Bee-Gees; Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard, Charlie Daniels, Jerry Lee Lewis; Neil Diamond, Dinah Washington, Doris Day, Barry Manilow, or Englebert Humperdinck; Les Paul and Mary Ford, Paul Anka teamed with Jon Bovi (not sure of the category for that); Montovani, Herb Alpert...Show-tunes, Musicals, One-Hit Wonders and Novelty Songs; just about anything you can think of and many you probably can't or have forgotten including many patriotic songs, the (real) National Anthem and pieces by John Wayne. It's not merely "Standards" or just another "Oldies" station. It's not "Pop" or "Big Band" or "Country" alone, but is, in truth, " Legends." I like the name and it fits the legendary music they play.

If you listen in the morning (6:00 - 11:30 Colorado [Mountain] time), you will hear a contagiously high-energy guy named Tron Simpson who does frequent giveaways of books, DVDs, music CDs and occasional assorted oddments. He interviews all manner of authors, musicians and strange people in between playing requests. I have heard him interview Charlie Daniels, Bill Cosby, Tim LaHaye, Suzanne Somers and a variety of lesser-know, occasionally weird ones as well. Sometimes he calls his brother in New York or his mom and just talks to them. He takes calls for his give-away games from anywhere in the world and has shipped stuff all over at his own expense because he likes getting the Internet crowd along with the local listeners and he treats everyone the same. He has, rightly so in my opinion, won a " Best of the Springs" award from the local newspaper two years in a row.

John Michaels is the afternoon guy from Wednesday to Sunday afternoons and if I did have a complaint about this station it would be that they just can't give this guy enough air time. Oh, he does some celebrity birthday stuff and news and weather and things, but mostly what he does and does well, with insight and knowledge, is play music. He is a DJ like you remember Disc Jockeys being and besides all of the Legendary music on the station's play-list he will also dig into his own huge and esoteric collection to find just the song you requested (if it exists), often having every known version by every artist that ever did that song. On his show you will hear some tunes from the "Novelty File" as well as selections from "One-Hit Wonders" with just enough mental oddments about things musical to entertain you all day. He is just an all-around amazing guy to talk to, too. Of all the radio personalities I have heard or met, he really fits that quote I opened with and makes you feel like he is broadcasting just to you. Not only that but he is pleasant and down-to-earth.

Both of these guys are wonderful examples of how radio broadcasting is supposed to be done and what it's like to have real, live people making choices and taking input on which part of their giant, eclectic and widely diverse collection you want to hear. Listen for at least an hour or two and you will want to leave it on all day. A last thing is that these guys have a clean moral outlook and never purposely play anything crude or offensive. Good, clean fun for the whole family. There is another station in town that says they are "Safe for the whole family" but it could easily be these guys' tag-line as well.

Add to that some of the other programming they have to offer. Big Band Jump, Sounds of Sinatra, Saturday Night Sock Hop with Cruisin' Al and an inimitable program called "Europe Today with Hermann Bockelmann." The guy's accent is unbelievable, but he came to zis country to be a citizen, yeah, undt vants to share zome muzik wiss you und entertain you baby, yeah. Yes, his accent (which is real) is that thick. He talks about news and plays European pop along with American music or whatever strikes his fancy. I have never heard anything like it before. The other day he played Englebert Humperdinck's "You Make My Pants Want to Get up and Dance."

So, my suggestion to you is that you should point your browser to http://www.1530kcmn.com/ and click on the "Listen Live" button right now. Today is the "All-Request-All-You-Can-Eat-Finally-Friday" show, so tune in!