The Fat Lady Is Ready!
I was having breakfast the other day with Joyce Kaufman a very popular talk show host on WFTL in Ft.Lauderdale that I work with.
She brought along her good friend Dion, yeah that Dion, the Rock and Roll Hall Of Famer.
Can you even imagine what a great thrill it was for me to exchange old band stories with him. Hey he knew Buddy Holly man!
I asked Dion if he ever went through his at his family tree to try and figure out where all his talent came from. He said that so far on he hadn’t found anybody on either side of his family.
I told him that I thought my musical abilities slight as they might be may have come from my Grandfather on my Dad’s side. My Granfather was a band leader of a pretty good band I’m told.
My Grandmother it turns out was the piano player in that very same band whom my Grandfather graciously married when the band was getting all set to tour Europe.
In those days you couldn’t have an unmarried seventeen year old girl touring all over Europe with some band that would have been scandalous.
So the result of that great sacrifice on my my Grandfather’s part was six kids.
My Father Sandy was the youngest of the brood but unfortunately both my Grandparents passed away while my Father was only a child, so I never got to know them.
On my Mother’s side of the family there were various singers dancers and musicians albeit mostly the bagpipe playing types from Scotland.
In my real close family my oldest daughter Candis turned out to be a great singer and everyone assumed it must be from my side of the family but I think not.
Her Grandfather John Boychuk on her Mother’s side, was a very talented opera style singer with a magnificent voice, who I guess couldn’t pursue his great gift because he had a family to feed. I heard him sing many many times at family celebrations and what a voice he had.
But instead of him singing for a living he became a railroad man as did his three sons and their sons.
The unusual thing about all of this as I told Joyce and Dion was that even though I’m the least musically gifted of anyone from our families weird as it may sound I think I may have been the most successful so far.
I was lucky enough back in the day to have four records released with my band The Jury.
I’m not sure having four records released represents any kind of huge success, but hey I can’t find anybody else on my block that even had one record out but it sure makes for good conversation at cocktail parties.
As I think back now about all those great old band days I totally understand where Paul is coming from when he says he is a lot more amazed now about being a Beatle than he ever was when he was a Beatle.
Playing for a rock band for a few years was fun but eventually I moved on from my band days to my radio days.
One of things I got to do in my early radio days was study with The Dean of Walt Disney University.
A thing I learned during that time was that Walt realized early in his career that there were two types of talent … Gifted and Creative.
Each he understood had to be treated and inspired in different ways because both come from two very different places and think about things in different ways.
Gifted your born with … Creativity, thank goodness you can learn.
I think the most interesting thing about all of this is even though they come from two different places when you examine the finished product it is very difficult to tell which was done by a creative person and which was done by a gifted person.
But not to worry, I found out a long time ago that most of us are gifted at something but singin’ & dancin’ just might not be our cup of tea.
With all of this talent stuff in mind I told Dion and Joyce about how proud I am to be the father of my very talented daughter Candis.
Candis was born with the same kind of talent that Dion has,she can sing. Singing of course is one of those things you just cant learn how to do it’s a gift.
When she was going to High School she would always get the musical leads in all the school plays like South Pacific, which wasn’t really a surprise to me because ever since she was born she seemed to be singing all the time.
But knowing how tough show business is the thing I think I was most happy and relieved about was … Not only was Candis a great singer but she was also very scholastic and always got very good grades at school.
One of the kinda scholastic things she did back then was join her school speech team just in time to enter the local school competition.
For this contest you needed to prepare for the first part by reading three books. Then you needed to find some special words that you thought linked the three books together.
The second part of the contest consisted of you coming up with some original prose and poetry.
She banged out the first requirement pretty fast but decided to leave the prose and poetry for later.
I don’t know if it was the singing, the gymnastics, the cheer leading, the track, or boys that got in the way but come competition time she didn’t have any original prose and poetry ready.
At the beginning of the competition she went up on stage and did the prepared with the three books, still hoping that when it came time to do the next part she would have something and it would come to her while she was waiting to go on stage again for part two.
Now it comes time to do the prose and poetry part and she still has nothing written down.
So she goes up on stage anyway and just makes it all up on the spot.
Now as a talent coach, which is mostly what I do now, I preach to all the time to all the morning show talent I work with,that just like the rest of show biz you have to have a script.
I don’t know if this is one of those the exception makes the rule moments or not, but maybe it has something to do with gifted people just being so different that the normal rules don’t apply.
But I do know this Candis discovered she had another gift that day. She discovered that not not only could she sing, but she was also a gifted song writer.
The result of her winging it on stage that day was she blew the room away with her original prose and poetry. Oh yeah she also won the whole competition because of what I like to call her spoken song.
Her speech teacher is so excited about Candis’ performance that she entered her in the city wide competition. Now she will be up against the best from all the San Diego schools.
Her teacher of course has no idea that she just made her winning stuff all up.
I think you all kinda know where this is going.
Yep she wins the San Diego competition with yet another instantly made up piece that came to her while she was standing on the stage.
Now she’s off to the State finals and her speech teacher is very excited about her new little star and just how well she is performing.
But even though things couldn’t be better, she says to Candis … I notice that you don’t use your script for the original prose and poetry part of your speech and each time you do your speech I have also noticed you seem to change it a lot.
Do you think that it is wise to rewrite it all the time and then memorise it again. Why don’t you just read it and take the pressure off yourself
Candis, reluctant to tell the teacher that she’s just making it all up says … I like to change it around a bit so it’s fresh each time, because then I don’t get bored performing it.
Candis by now figures there is no sense in changing horses mid stream so she decides to just rely on the muses to give her more great copy as they have done in the other competitions. They do and she wins the State finals too plus a trophy as big as she was.
What Candis discovered through all of this was not only was she a great singer but now she was also a gifted song writer and soon melodies along with words would be filling her head with song.
Turns out all along all she was doing on stage was just writing songs which is just another form of poetry anyway, I think.
I bet to this day if you asked Candis to start singing a new creation right now, I think she could do it instantly.
In fact when she went to NYU for a couple of years, she joined their speech team. They traveled everywhere first class and she had a great time.
Her favorite moment though was when they went to Harvard for a competition and she had to face off against all those over prepared brilliant Harvard folks.
The competition was pretty tight until they got to the part where the judges just threw out a word and you had to make up a story right then using that word.
Harvard didn’t have a chance, Candis was so good at this part she won the whole competition
I think about all the stress though she must have been going through while waiting for the muses to give her something as she stood on stage all by herself with nothing but an open mind ready to receive.
As I was leaving the breakfast with Dion and Joyce I was still thinking about Candis’ dance with the muses which brought back memories of a similar experience I had with them.
At one time my Brother Reg and I owned Fairwest together and we had client stations in about Forty markets.
In those days before the accountant period of radio we have now, you did it all. The owners kinda turned most of the radio station over to you.
So you had to recruit all the Jox, pick and schedule the music, create all the promotions. etc. etc.etc.
As fun as all that was it was very time consuming and because of all the time it took to do all this it was becoming very difficult to visit everyone as often as they wanted so Reg came up with the plan to have them visit us.
We started our own seminars!
The fact that we lived in San Diego and had spectacular offices hanging over a cliff just above the blue Pacific Ocean in La Jolla kinda helped out the sign ups. Having the seminar in January didn’t hurt either
So the first seminar is on and it’s sold out. My job was to act as MC and simply introduce the very talented speakers we have lined up. Legends like Jim Hilliard, Jack McCoy, Ron Chapman, Hugh Heller, Jerry Bobo etc. etc.
The first morning we all gather together about 8:30 for some quick coffee and maybe a danish, the sessions slated to start at nine.
Reg finally gives me the final line up for the days activities which I desperately needed so I could come up with some cute introductions for our very special guest speakers.
But as I look at the list the first thing I notice is that there is no speaker listed for the 9 am start. So I say Reg, hey you forgot to write in the first speaker who is it?
He says you are Bro!
What are you talking about I don’t have a speech prepared what the hell am I going to say for an hour ?
He says c’mon George you talk all the time and nobody can ever get a word in, so just go up there and do your thing man.
Now there I am on stage staring at the big crowd of broadcasters from all over America who are staring back at me quietly, waiting for me to say something brilliant and I have nothing for them. Talk about an empty suit.
I have to do something so I quickly come up with a stall technique that goes something like this … Hey everybody welcome to Fairwest’s first of what we hope will be many informative seminars. We’ve got some legendary speakers lined up whom have promised to share some of their secrets with you.
I’ve got a bunch of new exciting stuff that we are going to be doing with you this year that I can hardly wait to tell you about.
But first of all seeing as we are all basically doing the same kind of format I thought before I get started I would like to get everyone to individually introduce themselves to all of us, with Call letters and the city your station is in.
I don’t think many of you know each other and maybe if you get to know each other we can develop a system in the near future where you guys can communicate with each other about upcoming situations that some other folks might have already been through.
I figured while they were all introducing them selves this would buy me a little time so I could quickly jot down some notes to talk about that would take me through the hour. You know the brilliant stuff they expected.
The first broadcaster gets up and introduces himself and for some reason a funny story about him pops into my head. After he finishes I go ahead and tell it and get a couple of much needed laughs, in for me a tense situation.
The next guy gets up and another story just pops into my head so I also share it with everyone.
The same thing just keeps on happening again and again and I’m thinking to myself, this is going real good and if I can just keep it up a little bit longer most of my time will be gone and wont have to say much because so far I still have nothing.
As I look over at Reg, for some reason he’s giving me the wind up sign. I look up at the clock and discover an hour and a half has quickly gone by.
I can’t believe it so I take the blank piece of paper in front of me, on which I was hoping to write some brilliant broadcasting stuff, crumple it up, throw it on the floor and say … Well I had the meaning of life all prepared for you guys but it looks like we’re out of time, so with out further ado let me introduce to you broadcasting legend Jack McCoy.
Whew got away with that one, but just barely.
Talk about being stressed out, man I think I needed to change my shirt a couple of times during that first session, I was sweating so much.
Come the next seminar though the following year now I am totally prepared nobody is catching me off guard this year. I’ve got stuff man, this is going to be hot. I wasn’t sure how brilliant any of it was but I’ve got it and It’s all written down. I’m ready to rock babe!
I go through it all slowly, carefully making my points. I’m taking my time and even remembering to breath every once in a while because even though I’m prepared, it’s still very stressful.
As I near the end of my notes thinking I’m glad I did this because it’s going so smoothly. I look up at the clock thinking I don’t want to go over like the last time, because it screwed up the whole day what with when lunch being served late and everything.
We wanted to let them all go early in the afternoon to enjoy the California sunshine
To my astonishment when I looked at the clock only 15 minutes had gone by. Surely that clock must be off, yeah that’s it, so I look at my watch, oh oh same story
What do I do now ? Only one thing I can do I have to go back to last years premise so I just apologised to the crowd for weighing in on my topic so quickly, which I said wasn’t very polite of me. I asked them to please forgive me and promised to continue with some more good stuff right after we all introduce ourselves so we can start to get to know each other which will be very beneficial to all of us in the near future
Wouldn’t you know it the same thing happened as happened at our first seminar. Funny stories of everyone popped into my head as soon they introduced themselves to all the participants. I just had to share them with everyone.
It wasn’t long before Reg was once again giving the wind up sign I was longing for, and I was done.
From now on I knew what I was going to do at future sessions. I was going to go with the copy the muses give me, a very stressful way of doing a speech I know, but as long as they were kind enough to provide it I guess I should use it, don’t you think.
The strangest thing though happened at the next seminar and it totally caught me off guard.
By now as I said I had totally dispensed with even bothering to try and come up with something brilliant to say, and went straight to the fun introductions.
By now I was very excited and in fact could hardly wait and see what kind of stuff the muses had planned for me this year.
But this time as I introduced them, the attendees turned on me as they all got up to introduce themselves. I guess they had all done their home work before hand because before I could pop in with a funny story about them, they all told funny stories about me.
Talk about payback is a bitch, color me embarrassed. I certainly wasn’t ready for any of that. But all of it it was very very funny and the best part was not only didn’t I prepare anything, I didn’t even have to say anything because once again we were all out of time.
There is still a lot of gifted and also a lot of creative people left in radio. Occasionally I have had the privilege of working with gifted people who have added creativity to their arsenal. These people are almost unbeatable, and most of them make well over a million dollars a year.
All you can hope for is that they get lazy and go back to relying on their gift. When this happens they are very vulnerable to creative people.
I would venture that 9 times out of 10 a creative person will beat a gifted person.
But once a gifted person adds creativity to the project … The fat lady starts singing!
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George A. Johns
office 954 315 1509
cell 954 868 6759
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