Help Me if You Can

Today's show needed, well, help

 

Not every show is gold and I know that.

Things go wrong, no matter how hard you prepare.

This is the story of today's edition of "Meet the Beatles," which didn't live up to my standards.

Of course, part of the tale is in how things ended. We'll get there.

I was planning to tell more of the history of the band, picking it up with The Ed Sullivan Show appearance on Feb 9, 1964.

I had decided that I would pack all of their CDs into a backpack and utilize the CD players in the studio as well as my computer.

I should tell you that while we have a two-deck CD player, CD 2 doesn't work for some reason. From what I can tell, it doesn't read the CD in the deck. But given my show and another live music show have both recently started, the need for working CD players has become necessary.

As such, a portable CD player has appeared in the studio to serve as CD 2. 

So, cool. We're covered.

I cued up what I wanted to play, which was "Till There Was You," the 1957 Meredith Wilson-penned show stopper from The Music Man. For Paul McCartney that had become a bit of a tender spotlight moment during Beatles shows in the early days.

However, I wasn't playing the studio version from With the Beatles and I stayed away from playing the version they did on The Ed Sullivan Show because the Sullivan estate is a bit protective of such things. I've been working hard to avoid running afoul of any copyright concerns.

So I used the commercially available live version from Anthology 1. OK, good. We're set. I listened to it in cue and was ready. In fact, I had it cued up to a particular spot where McCartney makes a little Beatle pun.

I had a second song ready on CD 2 just in case.

The show went live at 9:06 and I did my introduction, setting up everything for "Till There Was You" to play.

Then I hit play. We'd be waiting a bit longer till there was you or anyone else. No sound came into either my headphones or the monitors in the studio.

Stay calm was my first thought. Thus, I pressed play on CD 2. That also didn't play though that could have been a wrong button pressed on my part.

The most important thing to do in these spots is not panic. I wouldn't say I panicked this morning. I was ready -- prepared if I do say so! -- but nothing was playing. No sound.

And so I fumbled and tried to fill all while maintaining a sense of humor. Plan C was to play "Till There Was You" on my computer.

Except, somehow, the song wasn't on my computer.

Yes, we had a perfect storm on our hands. 

I pivoted to -- seriously -- Plan D, which was to recognize Buddy Holly's passing this week in 1959 and play one of his songs. I was going to do that anyway, and I figured if I could get anything going, I could catch my breath and we'd be fine.

Finally, I was able to cue "Not Fade Away" up on my computer. Eventually, I played a Beatles cover of Holly's "Words of Love," and that was the tie-in to today's show.

The show, which was wildly careening into a ravine, was back on the tracks. Above all, I remained calm.

I wasn't able to complete Beatles history this week but I realized I needed to let up and control what I could control. The technical stuff was out of my hands and this show is a wide-open slate, so who cares how many weeks it takes me to get to 1970?

The years I covered today -- 1964-1966 -- are as pivotal as ever in Beatles history, let alone music history. Consider these are the years that included Rubber Soul and Revolver. There was a lot to cover when you add in the Shea Stadium concerts, John meeting Yoko, and so on.

Needless to say, 1967-1970 will also be monstrous.

I don't want to rush it, of course.

But I do pride myself on running a fairly flawless show. Thus today gnawed at me.

There's nothing I can truly do except to make sure I've done everything in my power to make the show right. There's still a bit of a learning process and I'm growing the show in terms of balancing with an outline but not a script. That's enormously important. There still needs to be some play for ad-libbing.

And boy did I need those skills today.

My expectation is that listeners will always think any presentation of mine is professional and upholds a high standard. In short, I want listeners to say, "That would sound great on a network or as a distribution."

A syndicated show!

I don't expect that to happen ever but it's a good level to reach for.

Keep striving. Keep grinding.

Sometimes, that standard won't quite be met.

Today was one of them.

For the record, I kept testing out the CD players after the show ended and they still didn't work. So, while it may be operator error, there is something that I need to figure out.

In the meantime, I'll just keep playing music off my computer, like it or not.

We'll try it again next week.