An unvarnished blog that dips into the past and comments on the present of WBAI-FM, a once significant, intelligent New York radio station that for years has suffered chronic abuse from within and now nears extinction. Your comments are welcomed and will not be censored.
Say it ain't so.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I heard him, I learned something and enjoyed it thoroughly. There isn't anyone even remotely like him on the radio or almost anywhere in the media.
He's one of the few remaining BAI hosts of whom I could say, "I'd really like to meet him in person!"
I don't know the cause of death but I can guess with confidence that his cigarette was at least an aggravating factor.
ReplyDeleteKGT
I am told that Simon had pancreatic cancer.
DeleteCigarette smoking is the best-established avoidable risk factor for pancreatic cancer, approximately doubling risk among long-term smokers, the risk increasing with the number of cigarettes smoked and the years of smoking. The risk declines slowly after smoking cessation, taking some 20 years to return to almost that of non-smokers.
DeleteAnnals of Oncology
KGT
Snälla Chris… Louis B har berättat for mej vad du gjorde för Simon Loekle och hans minnelse. Tack så mycket. Janet
DeleteGood
DeleteHey, KGT:
Delete"Thanks" for trying to take this opportunity to turn our attention from a truly excellent broadcaster and focus it instead on your your personal puritanical agenda. Dick.
Getting back to the topic, I just found out about his death earlier today (not in the US for a while now). It hurt like an unexpected punch in the gut.
I can't easily listen to BAI any more -- and that's probably a blessing. Nonetheless, all day I've been trying to think of a show I enjoyed more than -- or even as much as -- Simon's. And I haven't been able to come up with one. At least not a "truly" BAI show. Michio Kaku I enjoyed (is he still persevering in that nutbox?). Uncle Sid was sometimes very good, but erratic on the whole. Oh yeah -- I enjoyed Max Schmid. I hope he's still plugging on.
Used to love the late night punk with Susan Brown and the Sat. afternoon gutbucket blues, but those were music shows, not essentially "BAI" like Loekle's. Was a fan of some of the anarchist chats, when Bill W. wasn't acting out or sucking up to the nambla patriarch. (Again, an erratic offering, whereas Loekle was almost never below par.)
Enough. I'm going to hoist a couple of Guiness's in his honor later today.
FO
Damn I feel terrible.
(JustAListener)
ReplyDeleteNobody left to play Count Basie (Unless Max might fits some in).
So I'm guessing the Nov 14th show was his last (unless it was a repeat of last year).
It's hard for me to imagine a generation in the future, people mourning the passing of classic WBAI voices from this generation of young producers. Heck WBAI will be forgotten altogether.
Perhaps Simon's shows will be played during "the Golden Age of Public Radio".
I'll miss him, and second what Justine said.
Simon was a wonderful weekly reminder of the good radio WBAI once epitomized.
DeleteSad to say, the snakes are probably already scheming to fill that time slot with their racist venom.
I tuned in for a while last night. No mention of his passing.
DeleteFolks like Chris Whent and Ivan Hametz will probably pay tribute to him. But Ron Daniels and Gary Byrd and their ilk are probably saying, "He was just another old white guy. F*** him."
If it isn't about hating for profit, they don't know what anything or anyone is.
DeleteSDL
I think Chris Whent is abroad, but Ivan Hametz will undoubtedly pay tribute. As for the others, only if they see advantage in it.
DeleteOne of the only reasons to pledge to WBAi.
ReplyDeleteI remember taking a taxi to La Guardia Airport early one morning. The driver was a South Asian immigrant and was listening to Simon reading poetry and spinning jazz records... part of the life of New York City. Simon will be missed.
ReplyDeleteJ.
Does anybody know anything about Simon Loekle's bio? Was he an English teacher or an actor or what?
ReplyDeleteKGT
One of the first voices I ever heard on WBAI, actually. I wasn't a regular listener, but when I was in the mood for his style, he was fun. Sorry to see him go.
ReplyDeleteSDL
What a shame, i caught him in the car on Sat. morning, he was just off to Hungary for a three week vacation. o Joyce o Beckett...
ReplyDeleteSimon was my dear dear friend. His leaving is unbearable. So many bright lights are going out.
ReplyDeleteSimon Loekle, and I were close friends for over 30 swell years. There isn't the space on any page for all the adventures we, and the "Early Morning Radio Alliance" of the former WBAI got up to. Including noted radio productions of the works of Shakespeare, personal pharmaceutical research huge feasts in China Town, those walks around the ledge of the Empire State Building.
ReplyDelete'But wait there's more!
Which I can't tell you the laws being what they are. Still it was a great adventure in living life to the full! Simon was in the middle of it all. Bless him a thousand times over.
In my final daze at WBAI before the "Great Purge".
Simon's show would come on just after mine. He would often sit-in, and share the last five to ten minutes of my deranged program. Aw gee swell times.
For those that didn't know him or never heard him on the air.
Go here:
http://joycegeek.com/2014/12/24/simonsays/
Oh Simon..oh my dear dear friend.
Goodbye, and "Happy Trails"
I second Sidney's suggestion and highly recommend that you also use the link located just below this blog's masthead. It will take you to a liberated Uncle Happy and his wonderful podcasts from the new and ever evolving Mon Casa Studio.
DeleteLike Sidney, Simon was a true gem in WBAI's eroded crown. They were Saturday's Sunrise Swells.
The good times @ WBAI were not always good times. People should have been fired for all the drug use @ the station. They created all the bad examples of what was to follow. People could get away with anything. Sidney should have been fired a long time ago for his negligence of his duties. Chris, the crown eroded a long time ago.
DeleteWhile I agree with you that drug use or marketing should be grounds for possible firing, I wholeheartedly disagree on your statement re Sidney Smith. He was one of the few board operators who knew what he was doing and he was a fine broadcaster whose skills as such are hard to find at the current WBAI.
DeleteIf you are going to fire people for their "negligence of duties," the first to go would have to be Berthold Reimers and Sidney wouldn't even be in the running.
Would you say the same thing were you not hiding behind an "anonymous" tag?
Has the Station Manager publicly acknowledges Simon Loekle's passing?
ReplyDeleteKGT
Not that I know of, but his Saturday morning slot was devoted to a wonderful tribute aired live. Participants were Max, R. Paul Martin, Catherine Connors (not sure of her name) and Jim Freund.
DeleteThere should have been something from management, but I didn't hear it. Figures.
Kathy O'Connell. She came into WBAI in the late 1970s and eventually got her own show in 1980 or 1981, replacing the fired Tom Leykis and taking his slot. She was more lighthearted and focused on comedy, overall. Eventually, she moved to California and then returned in a new time slot. After that she went on to NPR(?) and did children's shows. She was a good buddy of Lynn Samuels and some of the morning people.
DeleteIn and old 1980s Village Voice I remember there was an article about some staff members unhappy with the station direction and speaking out as a group, of which she was a member. There was a picture of them in said article posing on a sidewalk.
She put on a nice face, but some said she was a secretly vicious backstabber when the time was ripe. I don't know as I never met her.
SDL
Kathy O'Connell sounded nice on the Loekle tribute (she can't have been all bad if Simon befriended her), but the WBAI not so christian mingle probably requires a sneer and a sneak from anyone who finds her/himelf in Pacifica's tangled web.
DeleteShe mentioned a children's show that was cleverly named "Small Things Considered," but hd to be renamed when NPR thought that was a bit too close to their own.
Thanks for giving the correct name... I was too lazyto look itup, which I should have. :)
I really don't remember Kathy O'Connell. But someone who's friends with both Lynn Samuels and Simon Loekle can't be all bad, can she?
ReplyDeleteI am glad that she and the others paid tribute to Simon. I've always liked Max and Jim Freund, even if I wasn't always crazy about their programs. Martin, though, is another story. At least he had the decency to pay tribute to Simon, which is more than I can say about the station management or the haters and airheads that infest too much of the station's current programming.
I imagine that Simon's affinity for good radio and his wonderful talent for producing just that with intelligence and depth fomented resentment among the haters and airheads you speak of.
DeleteLynn Samuels was a hateful and poisonous vine @ WBAI. She later was on satellite radio spewing hatred on President Obama. She used to suck up to Limbaugh and Hannity on WABC Radio. So glad she is no longer here. Sidney used to pal around with her which tells one a lot about Sidney - poor judgment about his so-called friends.
ReplyDeleteThat slanderous summary is just so stupid and knee-jerk doctrinaire that it's really not worth refuting. Lynn was an original thinker and a very good radio talker. And she loved BAI -- I can still remember her agonizing on air over the the station's ideological stupidities of the 1990's and suicidal power struggles of the early 2000's.
DeleteAnd FYI: I'm a leftist (but with a brain) and when Lynn got shit-canned from WABC and moved way out on long island, I made myself an inductive coil antenna tuned to her station's (forget which it was) frequency in order to pull it's signal into my manhattan apartment. I still have some of those shows on cassette somewhere.
FO
I never met Samuels personally. I just always liked her on WBAI. Sometimes I thought she was a little naive about matters, but that is what makes us individuals. The only thing I really disliked was her fascination with the one ultra right wing caller, and her basically making a career for him. Having him come down to the station was absurd, as he was 2nd to Monroe in the amount of airtime he already received.
DeleteI think Samuels didn't really understand the business of commercial talk radio. She seemed to let herself be set up to be made a victim of more experienced cutthroat right wingers.
To Felashi Ofan - No slander @ all - she and Mike Feder made slanderous charges about BAI in a Jewish publication years ago.
DeleteNOTE FROM CA: I do not practice censorship, but I deleted the last line of this comment, because it was frivolous, offensive and posted anonymously. Critique of a radio station, even a harsh one, is not objectionable, per se. but it would have been weightier if the publication and quote had been included in your comment.
Though most certainly no Angel me self. Through the many years I tried to be friends with every one at the station. Their politics didn't matter to me. I pal-ed around with Elombe Brath, and several other of the JUC cult. This because we were pals 'before' Bernard & Co. invented that awful club.
ReplyDeleteI have the ongoing problem of believing what people show about themselves to the world.
Sometimes it's fine as with Simon 30+ years my friend, and sometimes not like with Robert Knight. He was nearly 20 years a friend till it suited him to join the "JUC", and called for my firing like the rest of them.
Speaking of Elombe though a race nationalist he never spoke against me, and indeed often spoke in my defense to management. So yeah he was a pal.
Such is life.
Robert Knight - ah yes! He would physically threaten people who spoke badly of Stalin, aka Samori Marksman. What a place!!
DeleteI firmly believe that Robert Knight was as sick mentally as he apparently was physically.
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