Deeper Meanings

I’m thinking about this song and how depressing it is. The lyrical content is what I am talking about here. I mean, the song itself is great. A treasure and a gem, the one standout tune in the 20th Century Songbook for sure. Miraculous even, for it has given me the gift of knowledge with regards to playing piano music, no, I mean what the song is about - this is what’s sad, very sad, you see it is about a loser. A sad and lonely loser at love who has lost out so bad he had to leave town in shame. I guess someone was fucking around or something. Whatever the case he’s suckered. The guy in the song is relegated to this freeze-dried Middle America that only exists for fucked-out truckers and spent meth heads. Vacant air conditioned highways and the sort. The lyrics rely heavily on the classic top 40 poetic device of using a radio dial to describe the endless wanderings of this broken hearted loser. Deep down he knows that it was “never meant to be” but he is still doomed to an existence haunting cheap hotel rooms where he endlessly packs, then unpacks his luggage, manically subverting his anxieties into an obsessive-compulsive disorder. If that weren’t harrowing enough of an emotional roller-coaster ride for the listener, the ending passage creates this ominous foreshadowing of false hopes and impotent yearnings as he asks ”maybe, just maybe…once in a while…” knowing full well that she has already forgotten him, never really cared to begin with, and will never ever think of him again, not even occasionally, but still he clings to his delusional state of denial, which makes him doubly cursed. It’s so dark and nihilistic; almost anti-human. It is one of the best depictions of the breakdown of sanity in the first person view of an afflicted mind. The song tears the emotional equilibrium to pieces. To hear it, puts one right into the same miserable state of existential angst as the protagonist. You wonder if the lyricist did not have sadistic intent, it is that effective in cursing the listener’s psyche, destroying their mental and emotional well-being. It’s like a kick in the stomach, truly gut-wrenching. This is possibly the greatest song that has ever appeared at the library in the piano books section. Even though it is not containing happy or joyful themes, one can redeem some positivism from it by learning from the hard and cruel lessons of its beleaguered singer…this being; never go to that Dark Cincinnati of The Soul for you may never return and live to see tomorrow. This can ultimately produce joy in the listener because thankfully you yourself are not so romantically doomed to total rejection and dejection and you can feel relief for this. Ultimately I take this song as a warning. It is a warning to me personally to not be taken up by the Passions and to stay diligent to my piano lessons and my piano lessons only. In this respect it is a masterpiece of meta-didactics for the piano because by learning it I learn to learn the piano even more so, and the more I learn the more I am compelled to learn further. If I keep mastering this one song, eventually I will master all of the piano, all learning, and ultimately the entirety of the universe itself.

Television In Revolt

This was a really good episode. It was the one where Johnny Fever tries to blow up the radio station. You can see here in the picture that Earl has talked Big Guy into doing a ventriloquist act where the Big Guy is the dummy and has to sit on Earl’s knee! The act, despite Earl’s best intentions and total professionalism, is a disaster. The Big Guy has no talent and keeps wrecking the act. Seen here they have just performed it for the rest of the wkrp gang and bombed out miserably. Their own friends and employees are disgusted and enraged by the thinly veiled insults that Earl is dispensing through big guy’s mouth, and the wkrp gang are not amused. He’s getting a little too personal and it’s not funny anymore. You can see in the picture that they are throwing lettuce and tomatoes and wadded up balls of paper at them.
Meanwhile Dr Johnny fever has been suffering an acid flashback and has accidentally locked himself in the janitor’s closet, and in his delusional state has decided to rig up a homemade bomb to free himself from what he thinks is a Viet Cong Prisoner of War camp. He’s got some binder twine and a pack of hotdogs that he has connected to his chest and he is going to blow everybody up including himself! It is the desperate action of a desperate man and you can see this by the close-up photography of sweat on his forehead and his eyes darting back and forth. There’s intense, heat-of-the moment incidental music that sounds like seconds ticking away. Then the most amazing thing happens. Instead of ending the program with the expected climax and denouement, the writers get all Beckett on the TV viewing audience and put the absurdist “To be continued…” on the screen, leaving it open, never to reveal what actually happens to Dr Fever or Earl & Big guy’s showbiz careers. It’s a double whammy that really made me think all those years ago, a real “what if?” moment. It was a unique and thought provoking way to design television and considered to be quite revolutionary for its time, changing the way we look at television, and in turn, ourselves.

Another "Run-Through"

I’m going to go give this WKRP song another try and see if I can’t hammer it out. Wait for around 0:28 . The hook is there, and I’ve almost got the knack of it for about a second. I might not be playing it right…there are a lot of sharps and flat notes that I’m ignoring altogether. I’ll fix that after I get the over all feeling of the piece. It is a small masterpiece of MOR Adult contemporary television theme music, and in the simplicity of the tune, it is a deceivingly complicated piano-thing to deliver.

A Little Known Fact...

INTERESTING STORY… Apparently WKRP was not just made up for the show but it was and is a real actual place. According to my freind Donny, Cincinnati is an actual existing midwestern American city. It’s in Ohio.

“I did not know that…” Johnny Carson (deceased)

NAILED IT!!!

As you know I took a little mini sabbatical from my piano studies last week. But look here what happened when I returned to my song! BOOM-RIGHT UPSIDE YO HEAD! I FINALLY GOT IT! check this out….(in your face streetboners!)

sometimes all you really have to do is just take a step back and breath…it is all it took for me to get WKRP right, I didn’t bother practicing or nothing all week, I didn’t even watch any of my ‘KRP boxset DVDs, I just fucked the dog and look what happens…Even though I basically knew I had the song down “pat” all along, I will admit it sounds “proper good” now. Indeed, I must say, it’s a very satisfying feeling.

So… While it is true that I have gone as far as I can with “WKRP” and I now know all there is to know about the piano, negating the need for me to study it any further, I realize that there are my legions of supporters following this plog, and I will, despite my lack of need to do so, carry on! If only for your, you the reader’s own benefit. So stay tuned, my babies, as the good doctor would say, for I have more exciting piano music to regail you with in the weeks to come. Yes it is true, I have found even more piano books at the library and, even though I am saving it for a surprise (hint, hint), I will return here in days to come with a new and even more exciting favorite from that golden era of popular music piano books…the 1980s. I promise to amaze you with my piano skills with a brand new, totally retro, top-secret surprise addition to my repertoire. (slaver, drool)

DOSSIER : WKRP - SUBJECT #2 - Earl Tardjlic

The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

I really am sorry about the title, it being this dudes name-but that’s what he’s called…it’s a funny name. He is South-African, Afrikaans, Dutch actually. That’s why he has a funny name and is always saying idiomatic Afrikaner shit like “Rumpo-stumpo, bal-lag,ya! pouffe! & Challakki dum pouffe! Marawayr fej n shit like that. You know him. You love him. You ask for him by name…The WKRP show would not be the same without him, yes! It’s Mr. Earl Tardjlik his own self, un-arguably the funniest and most lastingly endearing characters created in the Cincinnati Universe Involving radio station WKRP 105.3 AM.

Earl stole every episode he appeared in, most of the time the whole idea of the show focused on his perspective of the other soap-operatic proceedings at radio-station WKRP. Earl was this central POV, and it is wholly embodied in the comic sty lings of consummate method-player FrankBonner. Such suavetiere and flawless timing take it’s toll on even the few Olympic players who dare to pretend the throne and, sadly, as in Actor FrankBonner’s case, sudden death was surely the result!



No better way to die would ever surmise one’s bland expectations, especially in after-school time-slot syndications and rerun episodes. Earl was, and remains today the only truly redeeming feature of, comparatively, and conversely, the only endearment in an otherwise culturally un informed, intellectually bereft, and insignificant historical artifact vis-a-vis video tape. Years ahead of his time, he originated the single most important concept in contemporary culture: Corporate Rock. No other guy came near to what he did, he literally forged the template for what modern generations of A&R guy’s would begin to set their bar to the likes of your “Nirvana’s” and Rascle Flatts! I still remember it today, the first time I laid eyes on him, I knew it, I said to myself…this is the guy for me, I have stepped into my metier and need seek no further. Truly, a charmed life, as lived by one typifying grace under pressure.

How could anyone who has even heard mention of those eponymous call-letters “WKRP” or even seen an add in TVGuide or The Penny Pincher not entirely endorse every aspect associated with the character Earl Tardjlik of WKRP played by FrankBonner on NBC TV station in 1980s N America. If you Roger That Delta Niner than God Bless America! Bombs bursting forth lights, &c. Falcon 1-2-3

And if you rascals are on interfering Taliban frequencies, and listening in on good hearted god fearing American citizens, or any other variation of profiled personages and you think you can hold a mickey-mouse birthday candle to honest freedom loving citizen’s God-given rights and freedoms, especially manifest destiny, well than, you just read on Habib… Were into some heavy technology now! Can-Do-itive-nous & extreme adherence to good old American Know-How

Code seven blue!

Operation Yankee Rose in full effect..

All Systems GO!

Before the “other voice” kicks off…I am not at liberty to fully disclose on Character: Earl TaRDjlik. Even at this juncture, but please try back later or leave a comments in the posts. Thank you for reading this message.

Goodnight Mr & Mrs Internet & all the ships at sea

Over & Out