It's a good time to be alive and living in America. A gorgeous fall day in Minnesota and we didn't feel like doing a show so we found this show recorded in 1979 at Lake Hammond--- the show where there was a very long bass solo (SFX) and where there was a plumbing problem and meanwhile a lunatic came onstage (FN BABBLING) chased by a small dog (SFX) and there was a woman, Leilani Kaminsky, who wanted to be on the show (SS SINGING, WORDLESS, JAZZ SCAT) and she walked out and auditioned for us and we had to stuff a muffin in her mouth (SS REACT, FADING, PROTESTING) and then there was the elk who came in who was looking for his mate (SFX) and he was the first singing elk I'd ever seen (FN ELK SINGS: THERE WERE ELK ON THE HILL AND YOU NEVER HEARD THEM SINGING, NO, YOU NEVER HEARD THEM AT ALL, TIL THERE WAS ME) and right then the toilets burst (SFX, SLOW GURGLING, THEN HISSING, THEN BIG WHOOSH OF GEYSER) and the bass solo (SFX) that was going to be the show and then I was rewinding the tape (SFX FAST REWIND) ---- back in the day, kids, we recorded the show on quarter-inch tape, as odd as that may seem to you ---- and I rewound it too fast and the tape got hot and (BURST OF FLAME) caught fire and so it's all gone, the Lake Hammond show with the singing elk and all, but it's a good time to be alive and it's a great country especially if you have your own car. I rode the schoolbus as a kid, spent six years riding ten miles each way morning and night, and my stop was the last stop, so there were no empty seats, I had to find a seat with small sensitive children in it and hurl myself at them and then hang on for dear life, and of course the reason they were small was that they were ill, they had tuberculosis or something, and I sat as they coughed on me ---- how much better it is now, I get into my own car, and drive to the office by a route of my choosing, stopping for nobody --- that is the life. And I listen to the radio in the car. It's a great thing, radio. They didn't know what to do with it at the beginning, back when they figured out how to make sound electrically. They thought the static helped plants grow, helped chickens lay more eggs. Just like Edison thought the phonograph would be good for dictating letters on and Alexander Graham Bell thought the telephone would bring music into people's homes. Well, it has many good uses and one is this, that it enables a small-town guy from the Midwest to have friends. This was what we had before social media. This was our social media. And now that there is Facebook, there's no need for radio, as I know all too well.
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