What? No "The David Lee Roth show sucks" thread?

Cafe Society
1

I’ll start with this: David Lee Roth is intelligent and articulate. Unfortunately, that alone does not make for a good radio show. The David Lee Roth Show, for lack of a better word, is just awful. His comments are punctuated by musical snippets between sentences. There’s no chemistry among the crew. No guests. The format is much like that of local afternoon drive-time radio - find one subject, and ram it into the ground. There’s a right-wing feel to the commentary, as if he’s trying to be a Ted Nugent Lite.

Maybe, like Conan O’Brien, Roth will hit his stride, and the show will eventually catch on. I’m betting it’s not going to happen, though.

I bought a Sirius radio a year and a half ago. After hearing Roth a couple of mornings, I decided to buy about a hundred shares of Sirius stock.

2

First of all I’ll give you articulate, but intelligent? No way. He’s just a dumb guy. But, worst of all is that he doesn’t know it.

I’m actually surprised that he doesn’t suck more, though, as far as his radio skills go. I thought for sure there would be dead air, awkward silences, and more problems. There is a lot of skill that goes into hosting a show like that. It’s hard to appreciate when so many people on the radio now, such as Stern, are so good at it they make it look easy.

But, despite his surprising skills at some of the technical aspects of the job, Roth sucks. I only listened for about 20 minutes yesterday and today and I heard the following:

Roth preaching to his callers about how smart he is, while using the non-word “irregardless” repeatedly.

Roth going off on tangents that have nothing to do with anything over and over again. They all relate to his greatness, though. A caller mentions something about “bad luck”. He jumps in with a story about how you make your own luck. He made a sail out of a bedsheet and rigged it into his kayak and went out into the ocean for eight days in a row. Not having any wind, he didn’t give up. On the ninth day there was a huge storm, and he looked super cool in front of all the supermodels on the beach who were watching him with awe. Dave makes his own luck.

Roth talking about gun ownership. He sounds like he’s in favor of it, execpt that he’s got it into his head that in order to be a responsible firearms owner you must shoot literally for hours every day to keep in good practice. Even shooting 16 hours a month is not nearly enough to keep up the skill level required to own a gun.

I know it seems like I’m being hyperbolic here, but I’m really not. He actually said this stuff. He’s a fucking idiot. The show is a joke.

What I don’t understand is why anybody would think that Howard Stern needs to be replaced? Let every local station get their own radio shows and if somebody rised above the rest in the ratings then let them expand, just like Howard did.

3

Whatever happened to him becoming a paramedic?

4

He was a paramedic in NYC for year or two, apparently. He talked about it during the snippet I heard on his first day on the air. I think he was a hospital orderly (or something like that) before he was a rock star, and from the sound of it he’s an adrenaline junkie, so it makes sense. However, I know several NYC paramedics and EMTs, and my impression was that what he said was perhaps a third true, a third exaggeration, and a third made up.

His patter was more professional than I thought it would be, but after 10 minutes I felt like I was at a cocktail party trapped in a conversation with an affable egomaniac who always turned the subject back to himself. Click.

It didn’t seem like there was any interaction with other people in the studio, which I think is a mistake.

5

Oh, I forgot to mention this. There was a woman who spoke occasionally, but Roth did far too much talking.

There were also at least two other men in the studio. They barely spoke, but they laughed a lot. Horrible, grating, forced, fake sounding laughter. It was awful. (I hate laugh tracks, and won’t watch even an otherwise good sitcom that has one.) It really sounded just like a laugh track. Everything he said, even when it wasn’t funny at all had the fake laughing.

6

I haven’t heard the David Lee Roth show yet, but I will say this. . .

All radio shows take time to get to like. I listen (or have listened) to a lot of them. . .the Junkies, my local idiots, Don & Mike, another local idiot, Stern, some sports shows, two more local idiots, Wait wait don’t tell me, Whaddayaknow, Car Talk, some Opie & Anthony, Phil Hendrie.

Without exception, I can say I didn’t like any of them the first several times I listened. ALL radio shows suck when you first start listening to them.

They all have their own rhythm, their own quirks. Sometimes a guy has an annoying laugh that drives you crazy, then you realize a week later you don’t even notice it anymore. Sometimes you can’t parse the personalities.

Maybe DLR’s radio show does suck. I actually suspect it does. I don’t think that having a radio show that people listen to day in and day out is an easy thing to do. And you just can’t do it because you were a rock n roller.

But, I bet it’s still too early to tell.

7

On the west coast we got Adam Carolla instead of DLR. The few times I heard DLR on Howard’s show I was not terribly impressed, but I’ll admit to not being able to hear whats going on now.

Pardon the hijack, but Carolla isn’t too bad at all. I’ve listened all this week for an hour or so a day and I found the show atleast entertaining. I always liked Adam on loveline, so hearing he got the morning show in the West was good news, well, atleast until I got Sirius for Christmas. I’ll be flipping back and forth I assume.

8

I wish we got Adam Carolla on the east coast, I’d definitely listen on Fridays (when Howard is going to be off). DLR is just awful. The supporting crew has no personality, and commit the worst morning show sin of all, the disproportionately high laughter at everything the host says.

The people behind “Free FM” can’t be happy with the first week of Dave.

9

I agree it was awful. The worst part was how they would “turn up” the background music between sentences… It really made the show seem even worse. Also, the constant commercial breaks. I know Howard’s shows had lots of commercials, but at least there would be a while between the breaks, and they were always 10 min long, so you could tune in something else and then tune back in when the commercials would be over. But it seemed like every 7 min DLR was going to commercials. I don’t believe DLR will be around for long unless things change.

10

Nobody mentioned his interview with his uncle? He had his uncle Mort Roth on the first day. Apparently he owned a club in the village in the 50s and 60s. He knew a lot of famous people before they were famous such as Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and Woody Allen. Somehow he did not have one interesting story about any of them. Not one. And he was on for an hour or more. I could only listen for short periods of time.