“The Barney & Shoe Show” That Never Happened

My late friend Tim and I were always talking about music. We were both huge fans of The Beatles and had endless arguments about what Beatle album was the best. Tim was a big Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band guy and I was an Abbey Road disciple. On and on the debates raged, with neither of us giving an inch.

Aside from that argument we discussed other music issues as well. We talked about the greatest cover song, which bands sold out and a ton of others.

Then, one night Tim had an idea. We should do a radio show! Just he and I on a Sunday night, discussing that week’s topic.

I was in, man.

It was decided that we’d come up with a presentation for the local radio powers-that-be and proceed to blow them away with our idea of this amazing radio show, featuring us and our unique ideas and awesome opinions.

Were we a little egotistical believing the general public would want to listen to us? Yeah, probably.

OK, definitely.

Anyway, we met several times to organize our presentation and came up with several topics for our sure-to-be-a-hit radio show. Here are a few show themes we came up with, to name a few:

• Worst and Best Cover Songs: We’d discuss each song, then play it. We’d take calls from our avid listeners and eviscerate them if they dared disagree with us.
•  Best Guitar Solo: It was decided we would choose our Top 10, play each one, and talk about why we’d picked each. “Dickey Betts in ‘Jessica’, man!” “No! Eddie Van Halen in ‘Hot For Teacher!'”
• Greatest Voice in Rock History: Again, we’d choose our Top 10, play a sample of each (guys like Steve Perry, Brad Delp and Freddie Mercury) and work our way up from 10 to 1 as we discussed each singer. As always, we’d invite our audience to weigh in with their opinions, then dismiss their opinions and toss them aside like Elvis discarded his Cadillacs.
• Best Live Act of All-Time: Who would it be? Zeppelin? The Stones? The Who? Springsteen? No matter, our picks were guaranteed to elicit debate among our audience. Note: NSYNC and Backstreet Boy fans would suffer the fate of “The Gong”, a sound effect indicating that your opinion was in fact worthless and that you were a soulless, ignorant shell of a human being.
• Greatest R&B Singer: Man, this one would be a fun discussion, right? Who would it be? Al Green? The great Marvin Gaye? The smooth stylings of Smokey Robinson? Russell Thompkins Jr. of The Stylistics? You don’t think we could fill 2-hours discussing this topic? C’mon, man.

Anywho, we had our presentation prepared and scheduled a meeting. For an hour we sat there, explaining our ideas for a Sunday evening show called The Barney & Shoe Rock Show. It would run from 10 to midnight and would surely be a Southern Ohio must-listen. We finished our pitch, took a deep breath and waited for a response . . .

Crickets.

Puzzled looks all-around.

Uncomfortable clearing of throats.

And then, we were politely but firmly declined. Alas, ’twas not meant to be.

We were despondent. We couldn’t fathom why the radio station wasn’t interested. I mean, they were playing some syndicated Borefest during that time slot. What the hell?

It was a few weeks later that we learned the reason for the devastating rejection. It seems that Tim and I had a reputation for a being, well, a little too outspoken and, dare I say, controversial. The suits were terrified we’d go off-script and shake the very foundation of live local radio, America, democracy, and all that is holy.

And you know what? Now that I think about it they were probably right.