Great DJs in films - and in real life

[Taomist]

@missred

In Chicago, there was WLS DJ, Uncle Larry Lujack Larry Lujack - Wikipedia for an IRL DJ. I’m not sure if he has ever been immortalized in film, but damn, he was funny back in the day.

I recognize his name, and used to listen to WLS all the time when I was growing up. I wonder if he was the DJ, or one of them, who introduced me to political satire with the remixed songs reflecting current events. (Freeze Frame turned to Faulklands! and Jane into…Jane <Byrne>. LOVED that stuff!)

[Taomist]

@Taomist

I recognize his name, and used to listen to WLS all the time when I was growing up. I wonder if he was the DJ, or one of them, who introduced me to political satire with the remixed songs reflecting current events. (Freeze Frame turned to Faulklands! and Jane into…Jane <Byrne>. LOVED that stuff!)

Thanks to an old Doper thread started by someone nearly a decade ago, I have discovered that it was Steve Dahl, another radio DJ, who did the Falklands song. Thank you, Dopers!
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-111755.html

[missred]

@Taomist

I recognize his name, and used to listen to WLS all the time when I was growing up. I wonder if he was the DJ, or one of them, who introduced me to political satire with the remixed songs reflecting current events. (Freeze Frame turned to Faulklands! and Jane into…Jane <Byrne>. LOVED that stuff!)

Uncle Larry and Little Tommy were the ones who did the animal stories back in the seventies. We used to listen to them on the schoolbus. Kept us in stitches.

[astorian]

@Spoons

Like you, I was too young to have heard Wolfman Jack in his prime, and too far away as well. But I remember listening to his syndicated “oldies” show in the mid-1970s. It was a good show, as I recall.

He did describe his experiences on the Mexican “border blaster” stations in his autobiography: Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock ‘N’ Roll Animal. They are interesting (500,000 watt transmitters, when the strongest allowed by the FCC was 50,000); but perhaps even more interesting are his experiences in radio in general. Well worth reading if you want to get a feel for what radio was like back in the 1950s and 60s.

Toward the end of his life, I saw a newspaper interview with Bob (Wolfman Jack) smith, in which the reporter mentioned how free and wide-open radio was in the early Sixties and how corporate and regimented it had become.

The Wolfman groaned and said (I’m being as accurate as I can… this was decades ago), “Man, as bad as you THINK things have gotten they’re a lot worse than that. Look at me- I’m the most famous DJ in America, right? Now, I host a syndicated oldies show. Oldies is a very conservative genre to begin with, but you’d THINK I’d have some freedom within those limits, right? Wrong! You’d THINK I could play practically any Elvis song- but there are EXACTLY six Elvis songs I’m allowed to play. You’d THINK I could play any of Chuck Berry’s hits, right? There are EXACTLY three Chuck Berry songs I’m allowed to play.”

“Today, I’m the best known and highest paid DJ in the world, but I had a lot more freedom and power when I was a nobody.”

[5-HT]

@Yookeroo

John Digweed is a great DJ.

And he was in a film, playing himself in Groove
As a techno snob, I despise trance, but as trance djs go digweed isn’t terrible. He’s better than people like keoki at least.

anyway, back to the radio djs…