Broad Cast
The news came to the Pitch office last Thursday that American Chrome, known for most of its nine-month life span as Johnny Dare’s, had declared bankruptcy and closed without notice. Our editorial staff was hit hard, shifting into a pronounced state of mourning. Tuna sandwiches went uneaten in the fridge at lunchtime, Diet Coke cans were tossed recklessly into the trash instead of the recycling bin, and several employees outside smoking in the parking lot had to physically restrain our copy editor when he doused his ’97 Harley-Davidson softail with gasoline and was about to set it on fire. “I don’t believe in anything anymore!” was his anguished scream as co-workers held him down, kidney-punching him to make him stop kicking.
We’re doing much better now. Besides, anyone who still wants to be associated with Johnny Dare can listen to him in the mornings on KQRC 98.9 (the Rock).
As anyone who listens to morning shows can attest, the best thing about commercial radio isn’t the music. In fact, it’s a big lie that commercial stations are “all about the music,” a slogan employed by the wanton likes of many a right-of-the-dial enterprise.
What local station managers may not know is that there’s a local radio show with, quite possibly, more listeners than all other shows in town combined, including Dare’s. And — get this — it plays mostly local music made only by unsigned acts. Trouble is, almost no one in Kansas City has heard of it.
That’s probably because the Big Dumb Fun Show can only be heard online here. (Add .com to the name — listen from 7 to 10 p.m. Monday nights.) In the one and a half years the webcast has been running, it’s been picked up by small FM stations in Los Angeles, New Jersey, a Chicago suburb, Germany, the Netherlands and some part-15 (read: small-ass) stations in Indiana. Conservative estimates indicate that the show attracts around 2.8 million online listeners every week, the majority of whom tune in to repeat broadcasts on weekend nights. (Draw your own conclusions, please.) Even though Internet fame is easy to achieve with very little work (Google: Nick Denton), the BDFS has done amazingly well for a morning-show-style music-and-chatter program hosted by largely inexperienced jocks who started broadcasting from an attic in Merriam with a couple of computer microphones Y-cabled together.
Apparently, folks in Amsterdam are having water-cooler conversations about the latest exploits of BDFS hosts Frank and Venkman, perhaps proffering opinions on the acoustic, in-studio performance by a local rocker fresh from Club Wars, when hardly anyone in Kansas City even knows these guys exist.
That’s where American Chrome comes in. The Big Dumb Fun Show wants to be heard in Kansas City, and to raise awareness, its producers have teamed with a promotions company (the KC- and Florida-based 621 Entertainment), started building a professional studio and begun broadcasting live from various venues. They’ve hit Grinders and Clancy’s in Blue Springs so far.
On Monday, June 6, they set up their computers, microphones, mixers, monitors and PA — part of a $14,000-plus investment — to broadcast their 99th show from Westport’s bike-themed bar.
At 6 p.m., an hour before broadcast time, Venkman (real name Jeff Hirst) and Dr. Cheetoh (real name unknown) sat under the BDFS banner against the back wall behind the equipment table. The bar’s front windows were open, and it was easily hotter than 80 degrees inside. Venkman and Cheetoh are big dudes — together they might outweigh a Honda Gold Wing — but they didn’t seem to be sweating as the clock ticked toward start time. Also present were Frank (last name Arena) and Dirty Dave, the show’s wild man, a muscular, tattooed guy in an Allen Iverson jersey, sporting earrings and a hardcore-partyin’ shaved-head-and-beard combination. A young, quiet dude named Aaron sat behind the controls, and away from the board, waiting at a table, was goateed sports commentator Chris.
Ten minutes before 7, the PA began blasting (with simultaneous broadcast) what would become a steady stream of music tailored for the American Chrome set — modern metal by the likes of Penumbra and Civella — interspersed with professionally recorded station breaks (techno beats with dialogue snippets such as a woman moaning, “That feels good — that feels real good”) and brief segments in which the BDFS boys held court, chattering confidently, running down weird news reports and cracking big, dumb jokes about how it was “Catholic schoolgirl night” at American Chrome, just in case there were still people in the world who didn’t know how the waitresses at that bar were forced to dress.
At almost 8 p.m., Jeff Wood, frontman for the Sound and the Fury, brought his acoustic guitar to the mike, donned headphones and began rattling off tight solo versions of his band’s metal tunes. Then came Grasshopper (the band and the man, evidently) and Patrick Spurgeon of Pull, who is among the jilted former bandmates of Wes Scanlin embroiled in lawsuits with the Puddle of Mudd singer. All three weathered the wisecracks of Venkman and the softball interview questions of Frank and the others between songs, plus the indifference of a slowly building crowd of regulars. Before the night was over, a waitress had acquired a band sticker on her skirt-clad ass, all three bands had received free publicity, and the hosts of the BDFS couldn’t have declared the night anything other than a success.
Overall, the Big Dumb Fun Show is way more sophomoric than assholic, so the man whose personality was plastered all over American Chrome — pictures on the wall, personalized Aerosmith platinum albums and motorcycle parts, even a small card signifying his membership in the National Association of Large Penises — namely, Johnny Dare, needn’t feel threatened that he might soon be toppled from the top of the morning-show dung heap. Not yet, anyway.
