Smooth Jazz Now.com :

John - Let me start by saying, damn that Dave Koz he stole that R&R Smooth Jazz Broadcaster of the Year award from you too many times. (Laughing)

Ray - (laughing) You know he actually won with my old co-host Pat Prescott. You know I'm the Susan Lucci of the R&R awards. I think I've been nominated seven times in a row.

Ray - (laughing) Yeah. Pat and I did mornings together and I never thought she'd leave New York but she left to do mornings with Dave. Pat is one of my favorite radio people in the business and just one of my favorite people in the world. I remember she took the free ticket to L.A. and visited some friends and I was thinking she's never going to take that job. Well, she's there and she loves it. Also hats off to Dave for doing such a great job. He's a guy who really didn't do the radio thing, it just wasn't his gig and here he is doing such a great show with Pat.

John - The first time I heard Dave Koz as a host I instantly found him very refreshing. He's very real, conversational and excited to be there.

Ray - He's definitely the energizer bunny. I get tired just listening to how up and fast he is but that's him and Pat somehow matches it. Hold on a second I have to turn the music down…

John - Oh yes, "Confidential." I don't know if I told you last time we talked but we're going 'White' for April. You are our 'Behind the Mic' subject and Peter White is our "Artist of the Month."

Ray - That's great. You know what's funny is he and I and Peter's brother, Danny, always miss the opportunity to get a picture taken together. The same thing with Barry White I'm striking out with those. Peter and I have been in a bunch of pictures together but just not the two of us.

Ray - Yes at WLIR which was really great. We were really progressive and free form and all I had to do was keep it under one hundred and fifty albums. I was the Music Director and the afternoon drive guy.

John - What do you mean by keeping it fewer than one hundred and fifty? Do you mean distinct?

Ray - I had to keep the bin down to one hundred and fifty albums. So the jocks could play at least a cut probably up to three cuts per album. We played the Cars and the Clash. This would have been 1979 to 1982.

Ray - It really was. I was doing Pat Metheny interviews and the next day Ozzy Osbourne was coming in two days after he bit the head of the bat. (laughing) The Grateful Dead were always welcome so it was an open door and we love music. Eventually we got kind of beat up by a number of rock stations so we knew we had to make a change. So we decided to go punk and alternative and we ended up going new wave. I remember Billy Joel used to listen to us and he called because we helped break him. His new album was "52nd Street" and Billy thought there were some up-tempo songs that would work but Denis McNamara, our Program Director at the time said, "Billy, it's you, you're Billy Joel, that's what these are anti Billy Joel ." So Billy was so pissed off at us. It was a great time Joe Jackson did club dates with us. U2 and the Police did club dates with us. We were one of the first stations to play U2.

Ray - I actually did voice-overs for TV for about six months and then I went to WNEW FM which was the big rock radio station in New York. I was there for about five years but then I got tired of playing the same ten 'Who' songs. Across the way though there was this new station CD101 which had a jingle by Bobby McFerrin. I wasn't there for their first 6 months but they went from twenty-third place to number seven in the book. (Ratings) I remember Miles Davis was on their, add Manhattan Transfer, Spyro Gyra, Pat Metheny and it was all put together by the guy who launched the MTV campaign. So they kind of came to me and said, "We don't know if you know the music or like it but your delivery would certainly fit." I told them what I told you John the other night that I used to do these Japanese radio shows featuring a wide format of Talking Heads to (Peter) Gabriel to Yellowjackets to Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. Id' do these three shows a week and sending them to Yokohama. So I knew the music really well and so I told them talk to my agent and that I'm interested. Within a couple of weeks I quit WNEW which totally floored everybody because it was one of those great destinations in radio, it was a sign that you had made it. For me it just wasn't fun anymore. CD101 to me sounded like a lot of fun. I was reading the interview you did with Carol Handley of KWJZ and she was mentioning that she was going back and fourth between two formats and for me it was kind of similar. These two stations for me WNEW and CD101 were the same subway stop for me. One was literally around the block from the other. So I had the same subway stop, the same bank and the same coffee shop.

Ray - No, at CD101 I did afternoon but my whole routine was almost the same. (Laughing) Sometimes I'd have a frustrating moment at CD101 because the management was kind of naive with this format and during those times I'd walk by WNEW and look up at the window and it would be like looking at an old girlfriend thinking, "Maybe we could go out again." (Laughing)

Ray - Exactly. I told myself I had to stop or I would make myself crazy. I was tight with Peter Gabriel and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd at the time and I explained it to both of them and they got it. You make a decision and you still love music but it's like you're playing with another band. So after about eighteen months I was satisfied and I've never looked back.

John - I think there's a big misconception that because we play Smooth Jazz on the radio that we don't like Elton John's "Captain Fantastic" or "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. All of us are here with a huge past in Rock or Pop. The people who call me Mr. Smooth Jazz are always really surprised when they come to my house and half of my CD collection is Bruce Hornsby, Toto, and Pink Floyd.

Ray - That's very true. You know the new song from Marc Antoine, the title song to Mediterraneo sounds like B.T.O. 'Let it Ride at the beginning.' To me it's just Bachman Turner Overdrive. Next time you listen to it check it out. So I went on the air here in San Francisco the other day and said, "If you know your rock music you may notice that a little bit of this sounds like Bachman Turner Overdrive (laughing). Those kinds of things I don't have a problem doing because this is the home of the Fillmore there is such a history in the music here. I remember in the day seeing Bill Graham walking in the aisles trying to get people to put out joints and I had a chance to thank him. I told him that his line-ups more than anything did so much to open my world up. I remember seeing the Youngbloods at the Fillmore East doing 'Get Together' and on the same bill Chicago and Frank Zappa. You can't go to a show anymore and hear that kind of line-up.

John - As much as many people know who Bill Graham is, he is truly still one of the most underrated people in Rock n Roll history.

Ray - You're right, very true. In this town they know what he did but in the rest of the world I don't think they do.

John - What music are you enjoying outside the Smooth Jazz world right now?

Ray - I bought a new Saab a few years ago and the first thing I asked about was the stereo and I was relived to hear I was getting 400 watts. So I have a great stereo in my car and my commute is fantastic. I went from a subway commute in New York to going to work here in San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge through the city everyday. I listen to a lot of stuff in the car. On the Jazz side I'm listening to everything with conga drums like Poncho Sanchez. I love the new Youssou N'Dour it's called "Nothing's In Vain." I got turned onto him through Peter Gabriel. I love the new Gabriel collection. It has two CD's, one side has the hits and the other side has all the other songs and of course Gabriel can do no wrong.

John - I love Genesis, both incarnations or I should say the first two incarnations. I didn't love the Ray Wilson side of Genesis. The Gabriel solo stuff is all groundbreaking. Steve Oliver got me into a really underrated musician named Kevin Gilbert who was also a huge Genesis and Yes fan. He died in May of 1996 of accidental asphyxiation. He was in cover bands before getting into his own thing and one of our engineers here at the Breeze just handed me Kevin doing "The Carpet Crawlers" and "Suppers Ready." It was just another reminder of how great that band was. I hadn't heard these tunes in a few years.

John - Sometimes hearing someone else do the tunes that's also in that musical genius area is kind of cool. I hear he did some of the "Selling England by the Pound" stuff as well.

John - Let's talk about drumming. Let me see if I have this right, you were a guitarist first?

Ray - I think your interview with Carol (Handley) hit on this that we're all frustrated musicians. (Laughing) Robert Christgau once said to me, "You're a pretty nice guy for a radio guy because most radio guys aren't music guys." He said that music people in radio just sort of got separated at one point other than the public stations. So he put something in my head that I thought about for a long time. This would have been 1979 or 1980. In some ways he was right because what was really going on in the streets and what was being played on radio were two different things. For me I just loved music. In the early years I was into Bob Dylan and the Kingston Trio and so radio turned me on to all this music and I thought that's what radios job was. I think what I do now is just being the middle man. I have caught it ahead of everybody else and I introduce it but I still think of myself as a music fan. That's the way I've approached my show forever. So Christgau has sort of said to me that radio was getting away from music and that it had nothing to do with music anymore. I was kind of lucky I was working at a radio station that was still playing new music. So that's always been my deal in that I have to love what I'm doing. That's why I got into radio I'm not personality driven, I'm not talk radio. The music is always the star. Once I actually had the balls to tell a General Manager, "You may think your commercials are exciting and I may be putting myself in a weird spot by saying this but I'm not the star of the afternoon drive show, the music is." George Benson, David Sanborn and Al Jarreau, they are the stars; they are the reason people are coming to your radio station. They are not coming because of me or the commercials.

Ray - I have always been known for being the music guy and that has been my niche and I am going to go toe to toe with anybody on their music and what I like and what I know and what I am proud of serving up at my show. I think that was a little too sophisticated to explain to that General Manager is that I am going to be one or two steps removed from being the personality. I am not going to be a Howard Stern or a talk radio kind of personality but at the same time someone is going to know when Ray White is on and I am always going to hear something good that I like or learn something about an artist that I didn't already know.

John - I am a music guy too on the air and I know I can't talk about musicology all the time but at the same time I like slipping in a little comment here which is something that is lifestyle oriented almost.

Ray - Yes, it is almost lifestyle, exactly. I was talking with Billy Cobham recently and Will Kennedy and I am hanging out with all these drummers.

Ray - Oh unbelievable. I over the years have just met so many great people and radio has been so good to me and I was thinking when I broadcasted from Abbey Road Studios once and did an interview with Roger Waters and it was on all over Canada, Mexico and the U.S. one evening and I was thinking I am in the room and it didn't mean so much to Roger now that I look back but I said to Roger, "I am sitting here in the house in the room in the building that Sgt. Pepper's and Dark Side of the Moon were recorded in."
Roger said, "Oh yeah." He smiled and that was kind of that. For me as a music fan that was huge and as a kid when I remember lining up at a record store where they were allowed to sell Sgt. Pepper's June 1, 1967 they were allowed to sell it the night before at a record store and we were all cued up on the street at seven at night. So, here I am now finally my career in radio has allowed me to go Abbey Road Studios and to be doing a broadcast and before we walked around all the three rooms and it was just awesome.

John - The fact that you could be in the moment and understand that is a monumental affair in your life, you are in it. Good for you.

Ray - Roger is great. I have been to his house and I have been swimming with him at another one of his houses.

Ray - Roger is rich and he is very wealthy but at the same time he is a sharp guy that doesn't miss a beat. Have you seen the documentary on the making of The Dark Side?

John - You are talking about the classic album's DVD series?

Part two posted April 7, 2004

Ray - Yeah, I think it is about a year old. On it Roger is totally a jokester and at the same time if all of a sudden it switches to politics, human beings or war or whatever, he's there. I remember we were hanging out and swimming in the pool with his kids and he said he liked that tune that Neil Young did called "This Notes For You" featuring this great video that looked at all the rock'n roll being used to sell products. I asked him if he would ever consider selling a song to sell a product and I knew his answer was going to be no. Just like Neil Young he would never sell a song. Roger really respects Neil Young, John Lennon and Bob Dylan but he said that he would do it. I was just floored he told me if it meant putting food on the table or just taking care of his family he would do it. To answer your question, yes, it was really magical being around him for a couple of years.

John - In your personal opinion do you think the four of them will ever get back together?

Ray - No, I don't think so. After watching this DVD of the making of "Dark Side of the Moon" I don't know. I think they have been in the same room together working on the box sets stuff but I'm not sure. I think at the end Roger maybe didn't expect David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright to pick things up and go on without him and they did it. So, I don't think any of them will and really none of them need the money.

John - You know I really enjoyed your interviews with Chris Botti, Diana Krall and Natalie Cole. I liked your sense of ease and comfort which as an interviewer I know can make for a better interview because it makes the subject more comfortable.

Ray - You know I am comfortable. It did take me a while to get there. I think when you're an entertainer you have to balance a lot of things. You can't take away my Rock' n Roll, you can't take away everything I've loved. My job doesn't define everything I am. I have to say it's been wonderful to rediscover Jazz and be part of this great music. I'm fifty-two and it's a great part of my life. Sometimes I hear my friends on Rock radio and they're still doing what we were doing in our 20's and 30's. I'm very comfortable and professionally I'm really comfortable.

John - Have there been interviews that you've done that were intimidating?

Ray - Probably Jerry Garcia when "Shakedown Street" was released. I was at WLIR which was a huge Grateful Dead radio station. They played the Nassau Coliseum which was a place they were always playing and he was on his way to a sound check and he was just tickled by the fact that we just totally rolled out the red carpet for him. Garcia to me was always sort of a Jazz musician in terms of just his attitude.

Ray - (laughing) Oh Yeah. I really had to pinch myself after the interview. When I came to San Francisco an old friend from New York came up to me and said they had a tape of that interview. I couldn't believe he had it and it was in his trunk with a tone of Grateful Dead music in there.

John - Well, you had that separation factor I'm sure when you listened to it. So you could almost listen to it objectively. What did it sound like?

Ray - (laughing) Oh, I was so embarrassed on how naive I was. I would never do an interview like that now but it was still a highpoint meeting Garcia. Also on the list would be a couple of interviews I did with (Peter) Gabriel. You know I totally got him leaving Genesis and it totally made sense to me.

Ray - It was just before "Security" came out so it was before the third and fourth album.

Ray - Right, in fact "Shock the Monkey" was the only advance that I had when we talked. I also talked to him when all the Real World label stuff came out. I've seen him in concert maybe eighty times, so I went to all his shows and to show you just how good of a guy he is he gave me a platinum album for "So." That just floored me. He said "you deserve this; you were there in the beginning when no one knew who I was." He came up to me with this big box and just said "open it." It was this great platinum album which is one of my all time Rock'n Roll treasures. So I did this interview with him and Real World records were coming out and "So" was a huge hit which enabled him to build this incredible complex in England. When I did that interview I was with an engineer and we had a special suite to do the interview. He gave me an hour and fifteen minutes, it was a great interview. We talked about everything. So when the interview was finished he stood up and said thanks and all of a sudden the engineer says, "Oh Shit." Something had gone wrong with the DAT tape and it didn't record. Peter looked over and said, "It didn't bake?" I'd never heard that term before but I suddenly knew what it meant. (laughing)

Ray - No, I won't. Then Gabriel says, "I have to go upstairs and freshen up and I have to go to dinner and I'll see how much time I have and maybe we'll be able to do it again." Gabriel ran up and came back in five minutes and said, "Ray, how are you? I haven't' seen you in a long time." (laughing) We sat down and did a condensed forty-five minutes of the other interview. That to me was just unbelievable.

Ray - Well, he's forever always tops in my books.

Part three posted April 15, 2004

John - Tell me about Smooth Jazz performers that you've really connected with?

Ray - David Sanborn is one. One of the things that hit me when I moved from Rock'n Roll to Smooth Jazz is the formats themselves. Rock 'n Roll was getting tighter and tighter and I was thirty-seven when I left WNEW and I was starting to feel almost silly. I still had all my hair and everything but I was thinking genuflecting to our college days? Are we somewhere between ten and twenty-eight? I did this interview, it was my last at WNEW with Randy Newman and Mark Knopfler came up and played on my show. The two of them played three or four new Randy Newman songs and we just hung out and it was just awesome. It was proof to me that there were people who were still playing great music who were getting older. This wasn't militant or juvenile. Lee Abrams (XM Satellite) once told me that every age group will have their music and that runs from seventeen to twenty-four years old. It's the music that you and your buddies listened to before you settled down or fell in love for the first time or were running around going to concerts all the time. He said that is the music that you will carry with you for the rest of your life. I asked him if at forty we would keep referencing back to that music. He said absolutely. I thought in some ways he's really wrong and in other ways he was very right. So I found at WNEW I was playing these same songs and I felt like we were just recreating this same thing. The first thing I noticed when CD 101 came on was that these were people in their forties and fifties like George Benson, David Sanborn and Bob James making great new music. I interviewed all of them in my first year. We did alot of interviews and everyone seemed as you mentioned earlier comfortable in their own skin. This is without divorces or drugs or alot of self doubt. All those conflicts and that turmoil that I would see all the time in Rock radio like people complaining that their limo wasn't big enough and all that craziness wasn't evident.

Ray - Yeah. It was them saying "Hey thanks for your support." They'll autograph fifty CD's, they'll meet people in the elevator on the way down to the show and I thought this is great. I love this.

John - The interviews seem to me like conversations instead of just being a business promo thing.

John - I do envy your Rock'n Roll past though being that connected must have been fun. Most Smooth Jazz lovers have this big past in some form of Rock. These people are our heroes.

Ray - Well I have to tell you you're pretty well connected in Smooth Jazz. You have everyone on your website. You're hitting everybody.

John - Yeah, we're working it hard. What artists in Smooth Jazz have made a big impact on you personally?

Ray - I think quite a few of them. (laughing) You are really putting me on the spot. I'd say Basia and her energy to Ben Verdery the classical guitar who's has the band Ufonia. Ben and I became just great friends.

John - I haven't heard Ben's name in a while. This is the guy who formed Latitude in the eighties with Craig Peyton?

Ray - Same guy. We just became best friends. We're on the phone all the time. David Sanborn's interview to me was very special and slowly we've developed a friendship. A few months ago in San Francisco we talked about some really personal stuff.

Ray - It's funny, my wife always kids me about this conversation we had when we first started dating about what we would do if we won the lottery. She said she'd be doing some charity stuff and maybe go scuba diving in Hawaii. When she asked me I couldn't come up with anything in other words I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have radio. (laughing) I was seriously stumped. I still think of myself as being able to do it. I recently got together with Scott Muni and other people from WNEW in New York and it was a huge reunion for me. It was at the Hard Rock Café with anyone who's ever worked there. Scott Muni was in his early seventies and Dave Herman was there and they are all still doing radio.

Ray - Yeah. I came from Long Island and Harry Chapin came from Long Island that old W*O*L*D song. (laughing) If it starts to beat me up or it starts to kill me then I don't want to do it. I've seen that happen to people who are just strung out on radio and when they get older it's just not fun anymore. My vision is if somebody doesn't want me full time then a few days a week would be fine.

John - With voice tracking you could be too old to stand up but not too old to do a radio show. (laughing)

Ray - (laughing) Voice tracking is a whole new world. I was driving home last night and I was thinking about us doing this interview. I walk with a cane. I was paralyzed when I was fourteen or fifteen and I spent nine months in a hospital. I was at a children's hospital and I was going to physical therapy everyday and they had a school there also. I received special permission to have my record player brought in and so I had my Beatle's, Simon and Garfunkel and Byrds albums. At Christmas time some of the local DJ's that I listened to all the time at WDRC came by. This would have been 1965 and they came in and had a band playing. It was great. I met Diamond Jim Nettleton and told him that I listened all the time. I told him what I'd observed from the radio station like him giving away money yesterday and filling in for somebody a few days before. (laughing) He was autographing my Beatles album at the time and he stops and says, "Do you work in radio?" (laughing) I said, "I'm fifteen years old and I'm in a hospital. He goes "You know more about the radio station than I do." He told me to give him a call when I got out of the hospital." (laughing) It was like the clouds just parted for me. When I did call he had moved on in typical radio fashion to another station in New York or Philly but I did get the tour. During this little tour there were some independent record promoters listening to some music and one of them said, "Here are some kids, how old are you?" When he found out we were fifteen he said, "Get in my office." So here we were with the Music Director and the Program Director who were fighting with two independent promotion guys about new 45's. They kept putting music on and asking us what we liked in the bunch. It was a scene out of a "Hard Days Night" or something.

Ray - Oh yeah. I had this thing when I was growing up I could flow with the different clicks. I used to kid people in New York that I could be in a sports bar one night and go into a Jazz club the next night and be at a Punk club the next night. It may be because I moved around a lot as a kid and I always had to reintroduce myself. So radio was a perfect job for me.

Ray - I had something called Guillain-Barré (Ghee-yan Bah-ray) Syndrome. It's a virus that attacks the nerve endings and it sort of attacks the coating on the nerve and it came out of nowhere. I was playing baseball and getting ready to play football and I just got these cramps under my legs and within five hours I had no movement or feeling from my bellybutton down. It was like that for weeks and it started to come back but it didn't come back even. It did get me into radio and it did turn my life in a direction I didn't anticipate.

Ray - One of my great moments was with Roger McGuinn. I ended up knowing him and he's played my twelve string guitar and once he said to me, "Ray, I've played your twelve string guitar but you've never played my Rick." So he hands me his Rickenbacker. For anyone who plays guitar they know to play Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker twelve string guitar is one of those ultimate moments. He reached in his pocket and gave me a pick

Ray - (laughing) It wasn't plugged in but I could play all my little Byrds riffs.

John - When you look around your house do you have some treasured memorabilia?

Ray - Oh Yeah. It's in very good shape. It's worth six or seven hundred dollars. I have an old 54 Martin twelve string that I got for my 50th birthday. I have to say when I was reading your interview with Carol Handley I noticed you two were talking about getting rid of old LP's. It reminded me of when it came time to purge my record collection and I was changing my copy of Jimi Hendrix "Are You Experienced." I met Hendrix on his "Axis: Bold as Love" tour. I went knocking on his hotel room door with a bunch of guys that I was in a garage band with and he answered the door and I nearly fell over. He said, "Hey guys did you see the show?" He was totally Jimi. He had the hat on and the shirt that was a million colors and the tight bell bottom pants. There were these beautiful woman that all looked like Twiggy in the room. Chas Chandler, his manager, was standing there he was one of my heroes because he was the bass player for the Animals and I couldn't even speak. I was sixteen years old then.(laughing) Jimi says, "Are you guys In a group?" and we said, "Yeah" and he says, "Well, lets talk I'll be right outside in five minutes." So he shuts the door and a few people said he won't come back. Sure enough five minutes later he opens the door and says, "Okay, who's the guitar player, who's the drummer?" We talked about the show which was great and his amps and his sound. He was so approachable and so nice. The whole time he was talking to us he had this pad of paper from the Statler Hilton hotel in Hartford and this little ball point pen and he was doing autographs while he was talking. He said he had to go but first shook everyone of our hands and gave us an autograph and then he said to me, "Here you keep the rest of these." There were five more autographs and each one was different and they all said 'Keep Rockin' Peace, Jimi Hendrix' or 'Be Groovy, Jim Hendrix.'

Ray - (laughing) Yeah. They went into an 'Are you Experienced' album cover sleeve and when I replaced that or was dumping my albums, I lost them. So that would have been my best Rock'n Roll treasure. (laughing)

John - It's the old my mother threw out my Babe Ruth rookie cards story.

Part four posted April 23, 2004

Ray - (laughing) Exactly. I first saw the Kingston Trio when I was ten or eleven and that was with a kid in the neighborhood who's brother was a really good acoustic guitar player. He ordered a Martin and it took forever and then he got a Gibson J200 and that's one of the greatest acoustic guitars you can get and for someone who's thirteen or fourteen in my neighborhood to save his money is amazing. It was just an unbelievable guitar but this guy took us all to see the Kingston Trio. I remember I was meeting John Stewart afterwards and got an autograph and then John Stewart handed me this program autographed by the three guys in the Kingston Trio and on it was the peace symbol and I said, "What's that?" This would have been 1960 or 1961 and it was the first time I've ever seen the peace symbol. Anyway, he told me it meant ban the bomb. So I have that tucked away somewhere. I have a bunch of great autographs. A friend of mine Andy Fairweather-Low plays guitar with Eric Clapton. He always sends me a handful of picks from the tours. So I have a pick collection.

Ray - I could mention some names from people like Mick Ronson to Roy Haynes. Years ago I had a chance to meet Bob Dylan. I was sitting in a rehearsal hall and I was sitting on an amp case waiting for some folks to come in and see the rehearsal. All of a sudden the elevator opens and a guy comes out with a leather jacket on and he's got the collar up and he's looking down and he walks right in front of me. Oh my God it was Dylan. Lennon, Dylan what would you say to these guys. As he looked up our eyes met he smiled and he said, "Hey" and I said, "Hi" and I thought you know what I'm going to leave it right there. Hey, hi that was it. You know I'm not going to compress in thirty seconds how this guy changed my life and risk the possibility of Dylan being Dylan. He could have been nice and charming and actually he was charming. The most frustrating situation for me is when I meet somebody whether it's somebody I have high regard for or a musician in general is that bitter musician who has been ground down by the machine. It could be personal it could be because of drugs and alcohol, it could be marital things or bad luck. It's just bitterness. I was talking to a friend the other day about the fact that I just don't have room for the old "I could have been a contender." It's usually "I should be a millionaire." They seem to pick Kenny G out as the one to throw daggers at. I kind of take a step back and feel bad for them. Do you run into the same thing?

John - I think all broadcasters do. I interviewed this singer who had this truly false sense of his own importance who was so bitter and his view of things was so warped that it was embarrassing. I called him on some stuff and he threatened my life. It was laughable! Do you like where the Smooth Jazz format is going? It's a little more funky these days. It's groove oriented.

Ray - You know I remember being in Rock radio when we started playing Punk or New Wave stuff and a lot of people were asking, "How can you like this crap? It's three chord crap" To me it was an evolution, the anti-Genesis/Yes stuff. I like it though, I liked its energy. I think the one thing that I've been good about is I've been very open to where it goes next. If Smooth Jazz suddenly swings Latin then I'm open. Also, if it goes Chill that's ok too. I just got this Rendezvous Sampler that's cool. That's what makes it fun and different. If it brings a couple more people to the party and gives us a little more spontaneity then I like it. The one part of the format that always surprises me is the vocals I'm never really sure which one's work and I can't second guess it.