Jeff Cotton

“ Jeremy Lansman coming to help engineer your new  radio station is like Jimi Hendrix coming to sit in and play guitar with your new garage  band!!!” ~Bennet Kobb

 

The broadcasting world recently lost one of its most prolific and brilliant engineering minds, Jeremy Lansman, after a long fight with a rare blood cancer. Progenitor of dozens of non-commercial radio and TV stations (in the US and around the world) and mentor to many, including me, Jeremy was a high-functioning genius, borderline social outcast and outlaw, and a perpetual do-gooder.
 
“In 2007, when it came time to file for my first NCE-FM (KDUP), it was Jeremy that gave me the confidence to go for it. Since then, our perpetually penniless company (Open Sky Radio Corp. dba: Jiveradio.org) has built & licensed 13 NCE-FM’s and two LPTV stations. Out of the 13 FM’s, 9 are still on the air and 4 of those have been turned over to local nonprofits that are currently self-sustaining vibrant hubs of community media. All but one have remained secular. I’m sure Coach Lansman would be proud.” ~ Jeff Cotton, Open Sky Radio Corp.

A Jeremy story from Eric von Schrader in St Louis:

One evening in the early 1970s, he brought a homemade television transmitter to my house. I had portable video equipment and he wanted to see if we could transmit a television signal from one room to another. He set it up, connected it to my video recorder, and pressed play. It worked, but the sound was distorted. He said he needed a variable resistor to control the sound level. We didn’t have one. He went to the kitchen and rummaged around in the refrigerator. He found a stalk of celery, took it upstairs to the transmitter, and hooked it up to the audio circuit. He pinned a wire to one end of the stalk and pinned another at the other end of the stalk. Using the water in the celery as the resistor, he could adjust the sound level by moving one pin closer or farther from the other. And it worked perfectly! I felt like I was in the room with Alexander Graham Bell. Jeremy was thinking “outside the box” years before that term was invented.”
 
More here: https://simorostand144.wixsite.com/jeremy-lansman-2

Jiveradio’s only real-time-live DJ ever, Jim ‘DJ Jim’ Goodwin, signs off this Friday at noon after an incredible 692 shows over the last almost 7 years on KJIV 96.5 in Central Oregon. Like the rare breed of volunteer DJs everywhere, Jim has helped us bring local culture and affairs to KJIV’s vast broadcast area, including his popular “Locals at 11” segment and the weekly Live Jive listings of area concert events, not to mention myriad interviews with national touring acts.

Jim is preparing for a summer of travel and a potential reboot of his music career as a professional musician and producer. We are grateful for Jim’s friendship and selfless efforts in helping us make great local radio. 

If you would like to give him a tip of the hat or a piece of your mind, email him at: djjim@jiveradio.org

Happy trails to ya buddy, we bid you blue skies and green lights! 

~jeff

 

Most of the 96 shows at the infamous dive bar on Reno’s 4th Street from 1999-2001. SEE BIG HERE

Some 46-plus  years ago  I found myself side stage at the closing night of Winterland, handing comedic actor Dan Akroyd, a live microphone to address the long sold out New Year’s Eve audience. While Dan bellowed out his opening line “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Winterland ballroom….”  to the audience, he had me hold his briefcase of harmonicas, the one with the handcuff & chain. I thought it was a prop. I didn’t know then that “The Briefcase Full of Blues” would literally become the stuff of legend.

A couple of our rabid listeners pushed the new audible book in front of us, called “The Arc of Gratitude”. It is written and voiced by Dan Akroyd, and it is a veritable sleigh ride through the story of the band that was not a joke. Only two hours long, it’s loaded with inner-circle cameos and it is most definitely worth a listen, if for no other reason than to learn how John Belushi literally put his house on the line to follow his dream, a dream that would end up resurrecting the careers of a handful of America’s greatest talents. Oh, and I learned why Elwood’s harmonica sound was so fucked up for the first few songs at Winterland (you’ll to have get the book).

Here’s a clip from the night that was, the last show at the aged skating rink with the New Riders of The Purple Sage opening for The Blues Brothers and The Grateful Dead playing till dawn when breakfast was served for 5500 spun-out souls on New Years 78/79: