A couple of months ago, I had to rent a car and drive out to the western part of the state on business, as the company wouldn’t spring for a train ticket. On hour four of my trip, tooling down the interstate, I had the radio set on scan, flipping between the frequencies, looking for anything at all to relieve the grinding boredom. Suddenly, at 1420 AM, the radio stopped in the middle of “Express Yourself” by Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band.
Needless to say, I was a bit surprised and almost broke the damn thing trying to lock it in, convinced that I’d found the holy grail of in-the-middle-of-nowhere awesome radio stations. Once the song ended, though, it went right into a talk show and I figured that my glory was short-lived. I was wrong. What followed was one of the best examples of small-town talk radio I had ever heard.
“Hudson and Gaines” broadcasts on Great Haven’s WBFK (“Your home for old-school funk and Bush Pilots baseball.”), hosted by local hardware magnate/conservative Mike Hudson and Great Haven Community College instructor/liberal Craig Gaines. Luckily, they have a web site and there are a few episodes of the show available on FeedBurner.
Here’s the one I heard on that day. (mp3- right-click, save as)
– R. White