Michael Gaither

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(One of the interesting things about revising the web site has been in the editing and dusting off of old posts. This was one of the first blog entries I wrote, nearly five years ago. I had to fix some links, which mean re-listening to these commercials, so I thought it would be fun to move this up top.)

Original publish date: February 6, 2006.

It’s amazing what you can dig up out of an old desk drawer. (And there’s probably a song idea buried in that thought somewhere.) When I was searching for evidence of the jokes that I sold to Jay Leno (see my last post), I found this raggedy-old cassette tape with a bunch of other old random audio on it.

Along with the Leno material, I found a few song parodies that I sold to a comedy service. (Those haven’t aged as well. I’ll post them when I get bored one day). And then I heard found a bunch of my old KPIG ads.

A few years back, I wrote a bunch of commercials for KPIG radio. I even got to add my voice to a few of them. I figure any kind of writing makes you a better writer, no matter what you end up focusing on. In the case of these, it was a nice challenge to try and stick in a couple of jokes, wrap up a story, AND plug a sponsor in less than 60 seconds.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• R&S Erection
  R&S installs garage doors and security gates. This was the first spot I wrote. I based it on the name name of the company and used every instance of innuendo that I could think of. The station received so many complaints that the station had to pull the spot. I was pretty proud of that one.
• Geno’s Import Auto Repair
  With a name like “Geno”, a bad parody was just too good to refuse. That’s me doing a VERY bad Brando impression.
• Cheech and Chong Spoof.
  This was an ad for a Santa Cruz restaurant called The Hindquarter Bar and Grille. They smoke their own meats, so…well, you’ll have to listen. It’s as corny as radio ads ever get, but it was fun to write.
• Halloween Time at Watsonville Square
  That’s me ripping off Arte Johnson ripping off Dwight Frye as Renfield. I’m also doing the bat sound effect, if you’re just that curious.

By the way, the Godfather, Cheech and Chong, and Dracula spots feature the voice of – and were produced by – Bill Goldsmith, aka “Wild Bill”. Bill was a long-time KPIG engineer and once the voice of their 6-10 am slot. He was also a big proponent of Internet radio before it even existed. (During Bill’s tenure, KPIG became the first radio station in the world to both broadcast on-air AND stream onto the Internet full-time.)

These days, Bill runs Radio Paradise, the Internet’s finest Internet-only station, up in Paradise, California.