[Complaints that this piece is too
long will be taken down. Read it or don’t. – Plainsman.]
Since I’ve been away for awhile, and
pathetically light on content when I do stick my head up, I thought I’d stage a
comeback with a Scorching Ticket Disquisition.
This one’s going to get me in trouble with a certain cohort of
Confessors, and probably a whole flock of JV, and who knows who else. As an
old girlfriend used to tell me, you can’t please everyone.
I had occasion to be out in the
Conestoga in the early afternoon hours a couple of times a week or two back,
and I thought I’d try to catch up on my woefully deficient BaD Radio
listening. Bob was absent and Jake Kemp
was filling in with Dan McDowell. I mean
no slight to Bob, who is one of my favorites on the station, but I thought
every segment I heard was top-notch.
We’ve remarked from time to time how sometimes a fill-in guy will
elevate the normal host’s game, or, in the case of Corby Davidson, elevate
Corby’s own when assigned non-Hardline duty.
Whatever it was, it was good BaD.
So that’s the first thing I want to
say. That is not the STD.
* *
*
As I struggled to keep the Crosley
tuned in as the team and I lurched across the metro, something suddenly struck
me with great force:
Jake Kemp is a terrific broadcaster and should be an everyday
host.
Every day when he’s got producer or related background duties is a
day of talent in the pail.
I do not mean to slight Sean Bass, Mike
Sirois, Ty Walker, or Eli Jordan, who I view as the main guys who either have
shows or are called to fill-in duty from time to time. Nor is this a snub of any of the other voices
who have a weekend gig or who are called upon to pop on from time to time. Lot of talent there; each deserves his on-air
hours and more.
But to my ear Jake is in a class by
himself. He belongs by himself in Tier 2
in Craig “Junior” Miller’s original, unamended ranking which Craig had left
vacant, separating the daylight hosts from the batch of senior JV. I have no idea of Jake’s reputation at The
Ticket, but on the evidence of his exposure across the broadcast week and over
time, it sure sounds like he’s the king of the go-tos, the guy most clearly
positioned to move up, the guy who gets the plums when there are plums to
distribute. I’ll get to the circumstance
of having nowhere to move in a moment.
First, let me anger everyone further
by heaping some additional praise on the man.
No, wait. First, let me say that I do have some issues
with the guy.
I don’t like his social-issues talk, but that
doesn’t distinguish him from every other host on The Ticket. Subset:
He may think he’s progressive about sexual matters, and he may be, but
his remarks about women sometimes skate towards Hammer-like misogyny.
He can sometimes dominate co-hosts. He has some Sturmian logorrhea issues.
There was a time when he was sometimes dismissive
of opposing viewpoints, and that came across as arrogant, but am I just
imagining that he’s worked on that and that I’m hearing a whole lot less of it?
I find his back-and-forth with Sean and with
whomever else he’s batting something around to be lively while still – mostly –
respectful.
For a highly-educated man – is he the only
Ticket regular with an advanced degree? – he sometimes seems almost gleefully
unaware, and unappreciative, of matters taking place before, well, before he came
into consciousness that important stuff happened before he was born. But even there – hang on, I’ll come back to
that.
So yeah, I sometimes shake my head at the guy. Probably some of the same reasons he takes it
in the shorts from some Confessors.
Back to the praise:
If you tuned into those BaD broadcasts
last week and had no prior knowledge of The Ticket, you would not have known
you were listening to a seasoned and popular host and a very occasional weekday
fill-in guy. Jake ran the show, and that
is no knock on Dan, whose role, after all, is to be a Sports Humorist and not a
deep sportsy guy. In fact, they sounded
great together, Dan sharp and involved.
Jake is dazzlingly smooth, glib in a
good way. No dead air, and he’s got an
interesting way of speaking that attracts the ear. He has a great broadcast voice (with
occasional forays into Dylan the Argumentative Teen territory, but fewer and
fewer as time goes by). Don’t underestimate the value of this, even on
a station that has a lot of reg’lar-guy-sounding speakers and that is justly
celebrated for it. There’s a real
distinct music to his sound that isn’t too obviously Radio Pipes Guy but also
isn’t blue-collar Bro Guy – nice modulation, nice variation in pitch and
velocity, nice timbre, nice grown-man sound but still gives off that
youthfulness vibe that the Catman of the New World probably sits up nights
wondering how to infuse into some of his creaky programming.
He is well-informed about sports, able
to talk dweeb-wonk stats and empirical observation with equal authority (maybe
I should say “apparent authority,” since I don’t know much about either). Maybe
he doesn’t have Bob’s large Talosian-throbbing sports brain,
but Jake always,
always holds his own. In fact, in terms
of overall sophistication of his sports analysis, I would say he is second only
to Bob on The Ticket. Now maybe at The
Ticket that is not his reputation – I have no idea how his sports talk is
regarded. But remember, we’re talking about
what is coming through the earbuds. Is
Jake a con artist? If so, he’s a real,
real good one and his sports talk is entertaining and thought-provoking.
He can be funny.
He rid us of Mike from Palookaville.
He seems to be very decent to the
P1. His occasional cups of coffee here
on MTC have always been gracious even when he’s been slagged about something by
some of our more dyspeptic observers.
I’ve heard that he’s responsive to P1 outreach. His instinct seems to be to defuse anger with
reason and, dare I say, niceness. The
digisphere needs more of that strategy.
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| "I like a man who's never heard of stuff and who disdains the super gay." |
And I do not mean by saying what I’m
about to say next to elevate him over one other soul on The Ticket. I’m having trouble finding the right words
for this, so I’ll just plunge ahead:
When I listen to Jake broadcast, I feel like he absolutely believes
every word he is saying and does not care one bit if you like it or not. What is that?
Honesty? Sincerity? Everyone on The Ticket is honest and sincere. I think that what I hear in Jake is a thinker
who tries hard to be free of preconceptions and fads – I think he shares that
independence of thought with Gordon – and doesn’t take a position in order to
be deliberately provocative or get a reaction.
This independence leads him into creative analyses and unexpected
opinions, and he doesn’t filter them – he lays them out there. In this respect, perhaps he’s a little like
Dan himself; there’s that fearlessness that keeps you listening, love his
opinions or not.
Even that “gleefully unaware” crack I
made above I said I’d come back to: God,
what was it the other day? Some musician,
huge, famous musician, maybe even artistically important, but perhaps before
Jake’s time. Can’t remember why he or
she or the group was in the news.
Anyway, Jake said he couldn’t name a single song by that artist. I shook my head, but what struck me was he
clearly did not care if
you thought he was unexpectedly ignorant.
He wasn’t grandstanding – he may even have been just the tiniest bit
chagrined. But his blithe cruising
through opinions or gaps in his education without constantly qualifying his
point of view – which a couple of hosts do to utter distraction – is why he can
be counted on to tell us exactly what’s on his mind. Which is what we want from our hosts.
Hosts, hosts .
. . oh, yeah, I was saying that I thought Jake
should be a host, have his own show, every day.
But there’s no room for another
everyday host on The Ticket. With every
show leading its time slot among listeners who matter, there’s not going to be
a vacancy unless someone decides not to re-up.
No room -- on The Ticket.
But there are two other stations in
town with some pretty damned lame programming, one of which is programmed by
our very own Cumulo-Ticket Overlords. Is
it beyond imagining that Jake might be invited to helm a showgram on one of
those joints? How would you feel about
that? I wouldn’t forsake the sainted
Musers, but I’d give a Jake-based show a real spin.
And what about TV? Jake’s a nice-looking chap, and my Jah, he’d
come across as positively incandescent next to some of the jamokes they’ve got
doing sportsy commentary in this great land of ours.
And, of course .
. . sometimes Ticket talent gets offers from
elsewhere.
(No, my road-to-Damascus insight, if
insight it is, that Jake needs to move up and/or on is not a secret strategy to
get him off The Ticket.)
As I said, there are several JV at The
Ticket who could hold down an everyday host job. There are those of you out there right now
who would like to see some of those JV take the place of one or more of the
less-favorite current hosts. Cirque du
Sirois is big fun, and for my money Country Force should have a permanent
weekend or even an evening slot (would cause problems for the award-winning
Diamond Talk, though, wouldn’t it? By
the way, what award did Diamond Talk win?).
But for sustained interest to the listener, for sophisticated
conversation, for brainy (or brainy-seeming) analysis, for overall broadcasting
polish, it’s Jake – yes, it’s Jake.
And that’s where I come out. Jake always gives me what I tune in The
Ticket to hear: Entertainment with intelligence and integrity,
whether I agree with him or not. I’d
like to hear more of him.
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| "I'm before your time so you've never heard of me, Mr. Jake Kemp, but let's just say I like thin men." |
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