Whats on my mind? Ever since I read that my old friend Marty Zivin is hanging it up here on Facebook, I cant help but reflect back over the decades of our acquaintance and I think you know whats coming...Ever since the real early Eighties, almost everywhere Ive gone, its seems like Marty has been there first! We first met years ago when I was doing weekends at album rock WDEK in DeKalb and Marty was running the student station at NIU. A friend of mine by the name of John Reid was teaching there; John also had a vision that Contemporary Christian Music/Christian Rock was a coming thing and was looking for a local radio station where we could produce and possibly air such a program once a week for an hour. The show had previously aired in Chicago on WXFM, the forerunner of WCKG and would go on to air on WLS in the wee hours of Sunday morning. My station said no but Marty said sure, come on over and use our studio for free for as long as you need, a generous offer that has never been forgotten. No long after, I remember ending up over at Martys apartment, viewing his long running personal version of pirate radio. I mean radio was so deep in his blood he couldnt go home without it! I knew then that Marty was no ordinary guy... In the summer of 87 when I arrived at XRT for weekends and then for fulltime work a year later, Marty was on the other side of the building at their foreign language day timer WSBC and we renewed our friendship. If you needed a hand with a technical issue, you could call on Marty...or just some above average conversation on any number of topics. A couple of years into the Nineties when I found myself exiled to a rickety building on the outskirts of Arlington Heights called The Bear, days of little sleep and young children to watch the next morning, Marty was again already there! Was this guy leading me in some strange way? His longtime Zecom Communications was handling the broadcast lines for night time sports broadcasts of Loyola Basketball and Chicago Wolves Hockey with Judd Sirott and I was there from mid evening until late either playing music or engineering ballgames or brokered shows for people who bought radio time... that is how I met Scott Hammer of Hambones Blues Hour fame. Marty was there on the other end of the phone line to help test out the lines before game time and helpful as always. Finally when I discovered internet radio and social media, Marty was already there too, realties in narrowcasting that he had anticipated in some ways decades earlier in the spare room of his student apartment. And now, Marty what next? Playing in my head earlier was Nils Lofgrens ode to the Glimmer Twin, Keith Dont Go. But go Marty must for now...take care of your health as best you can and then discover the next adventure for us my friend. Well be waiting.... PS...the picture of me on my timeline was taken by Marty years ago in DeKalb, Hes another guy who never throws anything away...
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 06:23:02 +0000
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