For the second time in the past ten years, my Wife and I attended a live broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion". You may very well be aware of this program, with the amazing Garrison Keillor at the helm. Now, I know that tastes vary widely and some may find this to be completely not their cup of tea, but nonetheless as radio minded people you have got to appreciate this program.
Mr. Keillor has now been doing this program weekly for decades. It's a Minnesota Public Radio program and is carried on 600 radio stations across the nation, as well as the Armed Forced Radio Network, along with other outlets. LIVE mind you.
This program is done LIVE on stage, every week, and the broadcast originates LIVE. Many stations of course opt to run playback at different times, but it's a live broadcast to millions of people.
This program brings together Garrisons amazing story telling abilities, live musicians, live radio actors, and a LIVE sound effects man who literally creates ALL the sound effects live at his sound effects table into his mic.
Musicians on this program range from country, bluegrass, blues, polka, rock and roll, and just about everything else you could imagine. Last nights performance featured Elvin Bishop, who you may remember from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, or for his big hit "Fooled Around and Fell In Love" back in the 70's. He's a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The amazing thing is to watch this all happen live. Of course everything happens on time. The show starts at the top of the hour with the music theme and Garrisons introduction, and runs straight through until intermission for 5 minutes 60 minutes later.
There were at least 6 tall racks of broadcast and sound equipment off to the right side of the stage, and technicians and stage people moving about like cats in the night making everything happen smoothly without a sound or interuppting what was going on within the program. There must have been 50 or more mics on stage. It's just amazing to watch.
Sadly this will come to an end within the year as Garrison is retiring. The good thing is he's left us a legacy of hundreds of shows available for download, on CD's, albums, cassettes, and heck probably even 8-tracks.
You can actually listen to the show we attended last night at:
It's truly amazing to see how it all happens live on stage.
In a smaller way, our local public station KAXE has started a program called the "Great Northern Radio Show" which is produced locally by them, also a LIVE on stage performance, and carried live on two 100,000 FM stations here in Northern Minnesota, one in Grand Rapids the other in Brainerd. Also a very well done show featuring local talent and local writing. It's also worth checking out:
http://kaxe.org/programs/gnrs.aspx
Both these shows move from venue to venue. Garrison's show moves all over the country (but usually is in Minnesota) and the GNRS moves around our region.
I'll tell you now, neither of these programs would ever be available for us to broadcast on our Part 15 stations. But as radio people who can appreciate talent and the concept of LIVE radio, they're worth listening to. One word of caution -- both these programs are full of Minnesota based humor, but for some reason have gained millions of fans around the world. Because for the most part, the humor is us laughing at ourselves -- it's REALLY like this living up here.
TIB
In the 1970s I was working at an NPR station when "Prairie Home Companion" began.
In those early days Bob and Ray were still alive and appeared as guests on the show and also signed on to do a series of NPR shows under their own name. Bob and Ray were another amazing radio legend.
One afternoon while watching CSPAN, the government affairs cable channel, Garrison Keillor spoke to the National Press Club luncheon and it was a marvelously brilliant humorous talk making anyone who saw it feel very good just for having been included.
At one point Garrison fell in love (in real life, not part of his show) with a woman from Denmark, and he married her and moved to Denmark. After awhile he returned and said, "Folks in Denmark don't get jokes told by Americans."