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Big Mo Pod Show 006 on KCCK Radio Iowa!

I got an update to the Big Mo Pod Show on Iowa’s only jazz and blues radio station KCCK 88.3 in Cedar Rapids (translator 106.9 in Iowa City). Last Friday on the Big Mo Blues Show, host John Heim (aka Big Mo) played a lot of tunes, which he gets quizzed about a day or so later on the Big Mo Pod Show.

He gets quizzed about the name of that tune, the artist, and why he picked that tune for the show. He got them all except for one; he said “East Coast Blues” instead of “West Coast Blues” as the song by Blind Blake. He was almost perfect.

I was listening that night, but the Seasick Steve number I missed. It’s misspelled on the KCCK website on May 5, 2024 as “Internet Coyboys,” but it’s “Internet Cowboys.” Maybe by the time you read this, it’ll be corrected. It’s all about spending too much time on the internet. We need to disconnect. I’m sort of a fan of Seasick Steve, ever since I heard him do “You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks.” It means something special to old dogs like me.

The Big Mo Pod Show on KCCK

There is a new show on the KCCK radio station at FM 88.3 broadcast out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa (106.9 in Iowa City). It’s called the Big Mo Pod Show, which is keyed to his previous Friday night Big Mo Blues Show which starts at 6:00 PM.

The show generally quizzes the DJ, Big Mo (John Heim) on some of the tunes (name of artist, name of the song, why he played the song) he played the previous Friday night. A good example was Friday, April 19, 2024. You can access the show on different platforms, which are announced at the end of the show.

Big Mo did alright. He got most of the answers right, including the one by John Primer, “Crawlin’ Kingsnake.” I also like John Primer’s song “Hard Times.”

Remember, the Big Mo Pod Show is recorded and based on the Big Mo Blues Show from the previous Friday night. You can hear it by going to KCCKdotorg web site and click the Listen tab to find Shows on Demand to find “BigMoPodShow.”

Biggish Events in Iowa in 1982

We’ve been watching for the house finch eggs to hatch sometime soon here. Remember they’re the ones who are nesting in the artificial Christmas tree on our front porch.

The 2023 edition of the book Birds of Iowa Field Guide, written by Stan Tekiela says the house finch was first seen in Iowa in 1982. That makes it a big year for house finches and for Iowa.

It got me to wondering what other big things happened in Iowa in 1982. A number of events as it turns out.

Terry Branstad was first elected governor of Iowa in 1982. He was 36 years old and at the time was the country’s youngest chief executive. After that, it seemed like he never stopped being the governor—even when he wasn’t, which was seldom. He was governor for 22 years. He was notable for being the nation’s longest-serving governor in history as of 2016.

In 1982, the University of Iowa Hawkeye football team went to the Rose Bowl—and lost to Washington 28-0. Coach Hayden Fry was not happy. The biggest thing about it was the long running party before the game.

While we were in Ames in 1982, there was evidently a big fire that destroyed the Iowa State University Alpha Iota chapter fraternity house. We don’t recall it. One of the members of the fraternity named Steve Shamash, wrote a five-page story about it. One quote (author unknown at the time by Shamash) is worth sharing about how the fire affected the fraternity:

I hunted for the author of the quote and I think it’s by Orison Swett Marden who wrote How to Succeed or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune. The full quote is:

“Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager.”

One of the biggest things was the Grateful Dead concert at the University of Iowa Field House. We never went because we were living in Ames at the time. I was an undergraduate at Iowa State University. You can hear the songs at the Internet Archive. The only one I recognize as being by the Grateful Dead is “Truckin.”

Sena surprised me by reminding me she bought me a colorful Jerry Garcia necktie while I was a resident in the Psychiatry Department at the University of Iowa in the mid-1990s. I don’t remember that at all, probably because my brain was fried from being post-call most of the time.

KCCK Big Mo News and More

Well, ever since last fall, the Iowa jazz and blues radio station KCCK has been available only on channel 88.3 FM on our radio dial. Channel 106.9 has been out for months. We just found out that 106.9 is now working again and has been for over 3 weeks. It has been a translator channel that broadcasts in addition to 88.3 FM out of Cedar Rapids so that people in Iowa City can have better reception.

The story about why KCCK 106.9 has been out is complicated and traces back to when the Daily Iowan reported in early October of 2023 that because the Iowa City campus of Kirkwood Community College closed, the antenna for KCCK in the area was shut down and other arrangements had to be made for KCCK radio reception in Iowa City.

We never really lost KCCK reception, except on 106.9. It always came through just fine on 88.3. But just a couple nights ago, I heard John Heim aka Big Mo who broadcasts the Big Mo Blues Show on Friday nights starting at 6:00 PM say, as usual, that KCCK is on 88.3 in Cedar Rapids and in Iowa City by translator channel 106.9. He has been saying that for months but nothing came through but static mostly.

And now KCCK 106.9 is back, just like that.

The other news from KCCK is that Big Mo has a Pod cast show now. It just started in recent weeks also. One of them reminds me of what turns out to be a comedy bit he does about May Ree’s hand-battered catfish. He always says she is one of the sponsors for his show. I’ve had my doubts about it but enjoy it anyway. I was evidently one of the many who contacted him asking whether or not the hand-battered catfish story is real. He just advised me to “keep listening.”

It’s not real, but it’s funny. It’s one of a few “Sponsors de faux” comedy bits he has done for a long time. I remember wondering about May Ree and her hand-battered catfish at least a couple of years ago. He has a couple of others which I’ve never heard about: Shorty’s Adult Diapers and Big Furry Shaving Products. I’ve blogged about May Ree a few times. Just search “hand battered catfish.”

Anyway, I thought I’d just pass this along. You can have a lot of fun listening to KCCK radio out of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa. I guess now only newcomers will ask whether the May Ree’s Hand-Battered Catfish story is real or not. KCCK of Iowa welcomes new listeners, so…keep listening.

The Big Tomato On The Vegetable Hamburger, Please!

Sena bought a pretty big tomato at the grocery store the other day. When she picked it up, she said to a store employee that she was going to make a huge “vegetable hamburger” with it.

Evidently, the guy didn’t know what to make of the name “vegetable hamburger” because he asked her why she wasn’t going to use any meat.

This was the same situation when she tried to order a “vegetable hamburger” at Wendy’s over a year and a half ago. Nowadays everybody seems to think that means “meatless.”

I checked the internet again and I still can’t find a definition of a “vegetable hamburger” that corresponds to what Sena and I grew up with. Everybody seems to think that lettuce, tomato, etc. are no longer parts of a vegetable hamburger.

I think we need to bring this concept back-because I doubt Sena is going to change what she calls it.

All in favor say, “Vegetable hamburger, please!”

How About That Rad Composer and Bird Watcher Antonin Dvorak?

I thought I would share a couple of ideas about the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. I’m not a music expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy listening to classical music on the Music Choice Classical Masterpieces channel.

Music Choice always have interesting bits of biographical information about the musicians. The items about Dvorak are very interesting. For example, a couple of them mention that he had idiosyncrasies. One was that he stole all of the pencils at a place where he was supposed to be working because the pencils were “perfect for composing.” Another factoid is that he was fascinated with the trains in Prague and, in fact, had memorized the entire train schedule.

This makes me wonder if he was something more than eccentric and might have had some form of autism spectrum disorder (formerly Asperger’s Syndrome). On the other hand, I’ve always been a little suspicious of the Music Choice channel’s little biographical blurbs. I couldn’t verify from a quick internet search whether or not he had the disorder or not—and probably he didn’t.

On the other hand, Dvorak did visit Spillville, Iowa during the summer of 1893. There’s a short video which tells about his visit. One of the images shows a picture of a scarlet tanager, and the voice over mentions that Dvorak was often inspired by birdsong. In fact, there is an online reference to an anecdote about Dvorak basing one of his compositions, String Quartet in F major (op. 96, the ‘American’), on the song of a bird.

There was some controversy about whether it was more likely he based it on the song of the red-eyed vireo or that of a scarlet tanager. But after an extremely long article, the authors of the reference conclude that Dvorak’s composition was based on the song of the red-eyed vireo, which doesn’t resemble a scarlet tanager at all (McKone MJ, Beccue DA. The Iowa Bird That Inspired Antonín Dvořák’s American String Quartet in 1893: Controversy over the Species’ Identity and Why It Matters. Nineteenth-Century Music Review. 2021;18(3):521-537. doi:10.1017/S1479409820000282).

I’m an amateur bird-watcher and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard or seen a red-eyed vireo. I have seen a scarlet tanager but I can’t remember what its song sounds like. I’m pretty sure Dvorak didn’t mistake either bird’s song with the well-known howl of Bigfoot, who may have been sneaking around Spillville, hunting for beef jerky.

Let’s see Music Choice channel try to add that to the anecdotes about Dvorak.

Black History Month: James Spaights Concert Pianist

I was thinking about my time as a student at Huston-Tillotson University in the 1970s (then Huston-Tillotson College) and remembered somebody who was a student there. His name is James Spaights. In honor of his stature in music as it connects to the Black History Month theme of African Americans and the Arts, I just want to make special mention that Mr. Spaights is a concert pianist. I have not found his obituary (you know already about my habit of checking the obituaries) so I’m not going to talk about him in the past tense.

When I met him, Mr. Spaights was straightforward about his life goal, which was to be a concert pianist. Little did I know that he had already achieved that by the time I met him at H-TU.

He gave a fantastic performance for the faculty and students. I’m pretty sure we gave him a standing ovation.

I found some news clippings and other items about his career (unfortunately I couldn’t find recordings of his performances), which deserves to be better known. He was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and a fraternity news letter shows his photo and bio in the 1977 issue of the SPHINX:

“Brother James Spaights, pianist, whom New York critics acclaimed “a virtuoso pianist and technician of the first rank” after his New York debut at Town Hall in 1965, was presented in concert on March 20, 1977 in Carnegie Hall, New York City, by the Behre Piano Associates of New York. Spaights is a former student of Madam Edwine Behre in New York City, also Freda Rosenblatt, Bronx, N.Y. and Emma Slutsky, Brooklyn, N.Y.

For three years Spaights served as Ambassador of Goodwill for the United States’ State Department as a concert pianist touring throughout Europe, parts of Canada, and the United States.

On his most recent United States tour, Spaights was presented by the Music Department at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland, and Goddard College in Montpellian, Vermont.

Spaights holds his B.A. Degree in Music from Howard University and a Master of Arts Degree in Music from Columbia University. He is a member of the Lechetisky Association of America, The Behre Piano Association of New York, and a member of Gamma Eta Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity in Austin, Texas.

He is presently serving a post in the Music Department of Huston-Tillotson College of Austin, Texas.” (The SPHINX, Fall 1977, Volume 63, Number 3 197706303).

I guess I misunderstood what Mr. Spaights was doing at H-TU when I was an undergraduate there. I thought he was a student! He never mentioned his career or accomplishments (at least to me) and he had a great sense of humor. I was in the presence of a music luminary and never knew it.

Ref: The SPHINX Volume 63, Number 3, October 1977.