August 14, 2023 • 33 mins
When we left off, our hero had just got his foot in the door at XL1067... How did he turn that into an actual spot on the radio... and how would he fight the evil forces that were going to try to throw him out the door again... (And why am I talking about myself like it's not me writing this...)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Time for Part three of my twentytwo year Journey to Where I Am Right
Now at XL one to six sevenand in Johnny's House. So when we
left off, I wasn't technically onthe show yet, but I was allowed
to hang out on the show andwork for free. How awesome is that?
Hey, We'll let you come inand not get paid for it.
It was fun. But this oneends with a bit of a twist.
(00:22):
This is a podcast, just abit of the contrast from what I'm used
to. I usually have to talkfast because there's four people sharing the mic,
but this is just me, soI say whatever i'd like. It
might be serious, sometimes it mightbe funny. Sometimes describe your head and
say bright and it's such a tunny. But it's just me. I ain't
got no help. This is BrianCrimes and I'm talking to myself. It
(00:45):
is Brian Grimes. It is mypodcast. I Am Talking to my Self,
Part three of my twenty two yearjourney to Where I'm at right Now
on X one to six seven andJohnny's House and various stations all over the
world via the iHeart Radio apps.So when we left off, I had
(01:06):
made my way onto the morning showsort of. I mean I got to
hang out on the morning show.Basically I was still employed in the promotions
department here at XL, but Iwasn't officially officially on the show or anything
like that. And the way thatit works here is when you're in promotions.
Well it's a little different now thelines are blurred, but back then
(01:29):
the lines were not blurred. Youwere in promotions or you were in programming.
They didn't used to let you havea foot in both lanes. That's
just not the way that the structurewas. Because everybody wanted to end up
on the radio, so you couldn'tjust let people in promotions. You kind
of half asked their promotions job andplay on the radio. I mean,
I get it, but there wasa rule in place that you had to
do x amount of time and promotionsbefore you could try to be on the
(01:51):
radio. And that used to bekind of the way into radio. That
and internships, and then when theygot rid of internships, promotions was really
the only way. But I digress. So I was technically in promotions,
but I was still getting to comeand hang out in the morning show.
They're not going to pay you foryour hours to hang out for free obviously,
so that's where kind of this businessweeds you out. And there was
(02:15):
no social media, there was nopodcasting, there was no other way to
do anything creative other than handle yourpromotions job the way you should that way,
you know, there's no question aboutyou moving over to the programming side,
which is what I did. Ibusted my ass and promotions and you
know, sometimes it was you know, making sure that that it was recognized
(02:38):
a little more than maybe it wasworth. Like you know, you know,
I trumped up, you know,some of the stuff that I was
doing, but still I was doingit. I was hustling, and a
lot of people were kind of justnot they were falling off. And so
as the people that are going toend up on the air start to fall
off, and you know, thepeople like myself that are that are kind
of grinding it out and pushing throughstart to you know, push to the
top. So I was doing that. I was doing both, and I
(03:00):
had a foot in both lanes.But at some point they're like, you
can't continue to do both. You'reeither promotions or you're either programming. Because
if if the morning show is doingan event and I want to be out
there for the morning show, butI'm in promotions. It's a weird dynamic.
I can't be the promotions guy andthe morning show guy. Although really,
(03:21):
honestly, logistically speaking, you totallycould do that. I mean,
if you're willing to be the guywho goes and gets there first and puts
up the tents and puts up thebanners and then kind of flips hats and
does like the doing air quotes hereyou can't see them talent sides, and
I don't see the issue with it, But anyway, that's just not the
way it was set up. Sothere was gonna be a time where I
was gonna have to make a decisionand I was gonna have to do one
(03:43):
or the other. But the programmingside wasn't paying me yet. Every now
and then, if I did like, you know, board op stuff,
I would get you know, paidfrom the programming side. And that's when
I started just taking on everything theyoffered to me, running the board for
every show in the building, runningyou know NFL games from London. When
they would do like these Buccaneers games, we would run them on the sports
(04:03):
station. Because of the time differenceI'd have to be here like super early
in the morning or super late atnine or whatever. And I was just
taking on everything. If they asked, I said yes, like literally,
whatever you need. I even almostjumped into sales at one point, and
I'm like, I just you know, I want to get paid and I
want to be able to stick inthe building. Whatever. I took,
whatever it took for me to haveto try to stay in the building.
(04:25):
I was like, I'm down forwhatever, man. So I just started
taking on everything I possibly could,because my whole goal was to stay in
here and I wanted to shift fromthe promotion side to the programming side.
But even though it was just little, little money at the time, I
had to keep getting paid for mytime as much as I possibly could.
So I would work, like,you know, a five hours day on
(04:46):
the morning show five days a week, so that's twenty five hours I was
already not getting paid for, andthen my promotion stuff I would probably work
another you know, twenty twenty fivehours doing whatever, and that I was
getting paid for. And then Ialso kept my full time job because you
can't live on eight dollars an hourfor twenty five hours a week. You
know, you just can't, eveneven more so now you can't, but
(05:10):
definitely couldn't back then. And soI just kept doing everything everything I possibly
could. And then at some pointthe call screener at the time, she
just started to fall off. Like, you know, she was kind of
it was a weird thing, andI don't want to, you know,
to talk bad about anybody, butI didn't get the sense that this is
what she was trying to do.She just kind of liked ride, and
(05:31):
she liked being along for the ride. She liked being on the dock and
Johnny Morning Show. She liked thatcelebrities would come in, and it was
a running joke when celebrities came in, she would disappear to go to her
makeup and get her hair already andeverything like that. It was funny.
But she didn't really want to doanything more than just kind of be around.
And I was, you know,coming up with bits and coming up
(05:51):
with ideas and you know, tryingto be you know, part of everything,
because I wanted to do this,and so eventually she just kind of
fell off, and so the spotopened for a call screener. Now,
basically what that means is I cancontinue coming in the same hours I'm already
coming in and not getting paid,but now I can get paid for it.
(06:12):
But then I have to ditch thepromotions side of it, so that
part would be gone. And Ican't leave the show at eight fifty every
day anymore. And I can't getthe apartment place that I work to let
me come in at you know,eleven o'clock every day either. So that
is when I had to make thedecision to quit my full time job for
a twenty five hour a week parttime job with the idea that I couldn't
(06:38):
possibly make a little bit of extramoney here and there, and with you
know, endorsements or commercials, whichnever really happens. Well it does now
more than it used to, butit didn't back then. You didn't get
endorsements or that many appearances as thelow guy on the totem pole. So
I had to make a decision.And my wife and I at the time,
(06:58):
and when my wife and i've finallydo our podcast, we are basically
a tale of two different relationships.Our pre separation relationship. I mean,
I'll tell you it wasn't great.There was times it was good. I
don't know that there was times thatit was ever great, and she was
not fully on board. That versionof her not fully on board with everything
(07:21):
that I was having to do totry to get where I wanted to get
because I saw in my head,I saw the vision. I saw,
Okay, here's where I'm trying togo. This road to get there is
going to suck sometimes, and itdid. She was not on board,
and so when I told her Igot to quip a full time job to
do this, she was supportive ofit, like because she knew this is
(07:42):
what I wanted to do. Butat the same time, I think,
I these I mean, and maybewe'll talk about this when we do our
podcast. I don't think she thoughtthat it was gonna go the way I
thought it was gonna go. Andwe were in different places in our lives,
so it's like, uh, youknow, she was she was busting
her her ass in the property managementside, trying to move up and property
management I, on the other hand, was taking this dumb radio job where
(08:05):
we tell stupid jokes and you know, a couple hours a day and that's
work, and so she didn't fullywrap her head around the position, what
it could be, what it was, and it didn't really align with you
know, what she was doing.So she was kind of like, but
do it? You know she wasn'tnever like, you can't do that.
(08:26):
I quit my full time job andI got my first official job on the
morning show as the call screener.So now it's Doc and Johnny, Grace,
Hyla and then me as the callscreener. And my mic was not
open to speak whenever I wanted to. But I got to jump in on
bits now and then, and youknow, they brought me into stuff every
now and then. But it wasn'tjust like free for all like it now.
(08:52):
If you listen to the show now, our call screener is Neice.
Yeah, I wasn't allowed to justjump in and talk that way the way
as she does now. It justwasn't the way the dynamic was set up.
So I'm learning everything as fast asI can. I'm learning the way
everybody kind of works with each othertrying to figure out the dynamic. I'm
also learning the technical side as fastas I can by watching Hila. Now
(09:13):
lucky for me, Hila as ayoung guy. And again, I don't
I don't want to disparage anybody butthere was times when Hila wasn't as focused
on the show as he was Ijust having a good time, and he
was, I think, you know, a couple of years younger than me.
So there was a lot of timewhere I had to slide in on
the fly and figure things out,which now was kind of the foundation for
(09:37):
why everyone comes to me when somethinggoes sideways, because very early on that's
basically what I had to do isfigure out what happens when something goes sideways
on my own show, and soI just kind of became that dude.
That became one of my strengths whensomething goes sideways, figure out how to
make it not go sideways, atleast on the air, so people can
(09:58):
hear everything they're supposed here, evenif behind the scenes everything's on fire.
It's like that meme where the dogis sitting at the table and the rooms
on fire and he says, thisis fine. That was me. I
was a little dog in the roomsaying this is fine, and everybody else
thought it. You know, everything'snormal, everything's cool, and so that
was at the time frustrating, butnow that I look at it, one
(10:18):
of the best things that could havepossibly happened. So I'm learning everything as
fast as I can. I'm runningthe show for segments, sometimes entire mornings
at a time, and I'm learningthe dynamics of everybody. Because Doc and
Johnny had been together for a longtime. Doc is a little more old
school radio host guy. If you'reyounger and you haven't listened to radio.
(10:41):
Radio hosts now and radio host backin the day are two different, totally
different animals, and Doc was oldschool radio guy, so you gotta learn
that dynamic. Johnny was, Imean, really what Johnny is now a
little bit more like I'm Johnny Magic. I always joke with him about that,
and he knows that. But hewas a lot like he is now.
He was like like the friendly dude, like the I don't know how
(11:07):
to say it without, you know, saying Doc was a jackass, because
Doc wasn't. He's just he's aIt's a different dynamic. It was a
different animal to be a radio hostcoming up through the late seventies, early
eighties and into the nineties, andthen I had just joined in the two
thousands, so that morning Zoo thingwas gone. But Johnny was really the
same guy. He was just Doc'sco host, and then Grace was the
(11:31):
girl on the show. She wouldbe the Ray now and she did the
news and the celebrity news. Andthen Hilo was you know, producer and
every now and then throw in funnyguy and young guy. And then I
was a call screener and you know, I just like I said, picked
up the phone and if they broughtme in, they brought me in.
If I had something really good tosay, I would say it. But
man, let me tell you backthen, it better be really really good
(11:54):
because Doc wasn't having it. Ifyou threw out some sort of duck just
to hear yourself talk on the radio. Yeah, no, Doc was gonna
shoot that duck down and it wasgonna be h not pretty. So you
had to be you had to begood about it. It was. It
was just such a weird dynamic comparedto now to learn, but again building
blocks. So for me, reallyreally good that I that I went through
(12:15):
that. So we're moving along andI'm the call screener and assistant producer and
you know, everything's just going welland it's fun and I'm learning how everything
works and everything and not to getinto exactly why it went down, but
the program director and the assistant programdirector, they just had decided I feel
like that Hilo was their target.He was going to be the fall guy
(12:39):
at some point or something, andthey were trying, I feel like to
get rid of him. I woulddo everything I could to back him up
and to if something did go sideways, cover for it. You know that,
And that goes back to making surethe show is always on the air,
making sure that you know, everythingis the way it's supposed to sound
(13:00):
coming through the speakers, and everythingwas way less traceable back then because there
wasn't this digital stuff. A lotof stuff was off CD. We didn't
have a something recording the show NonStop. So when like you could go back
and listen to anything you wanted toall the time, you had to ask
me to pull the audio. Anda lot of times conveniently the audio just
didn't record or whatever if it wassomething that I didn't you want anyone to
(13:24):
hear or to be able to assess. But eventually, without getting into too
many details, they found something thatthey had decided they were going to let
Highla go for. And so afterthe show one day, and this is
they still do this the same way, we're doing the show, everything's normal.
After the show, one day,they come down and get him and
(13:45):
pull him out of the office andhe comes back about ten minutes later,
and he's got this look on hisface like what the hell? And they
told him that they were going tolet him go, and it was like
what And so that was rough.And I was new to the to the
room. I hadn't been around allthat long at this point. I mean,
I've been there for a while,but not that long. And so
(14:07):
I was like, wow, likethis is a weird, weird thing.
Like he was he was family tothem, Like he started as an intern,
he started in promotions, you know, he worked his way up and
that was their dude. And nowjust like that, you know, they
are gonna let him go. Thatdidn't go very well with Doc and Johnny,
but at the same time, like, you know, what are you
(14:28):
gonna do? Like the boss isthe boss, and that's what they decided
to do. So literally the nextday, we're coming in to do the
show, and it's now just understoodthat I'm gonna be, you know,
the one who slides over and doesthe work. Now I don't have the
job, but I'm gonna slide overand and pick up the slack until you
know, they figure out what they'regonna do. And to me, in
(14:52):
my mind, well, I'm obviouslywhat they're going to do. Like I
mean, I've been you know,his backup, I've been filling in.
I've been on the show for youknow, close to you know, a
year now, and obviously I'm gonnabe what they do. But that's not
exactly the way it went down.They started to give me the idea that
you know, well, I'm beingconsidered and I'm like, uh, interview
(15:16):
for a job that I basically havebeen interviewing for every morning for like the
last year, like seriously. Andso I went for maybe two weeks with
them not telling me that it wasgonna be me, not not Doc and
Johnny. It was the bosses,like the PD and APD. They were
thinking about bringing back one of theguys who used to be on the show,
Stan and he was in town andyou know, he wasn't doing the
(15:41):
show, but he was you know, he knew everybody. He had been
here in the early days of XL, and so there was the idea that
that might be the guy they bringin instead of me, and I was
like, it sucks, like Imean, I've been doing it. I've
been I've been the fill in guy, and now you're gonna tell me it's
not mine. But eventually they did. They gave me the full time job.
And it's really funny because I wasexcited. I'm like, I'm full
(16:03):
time now you no contract yet,but my first full time salary. And
when they told me I'm full time, I'm thinking, all right, I'm
gonna make a livable wage at leastnot so much. My first full time
salary and I ain't got no problemsaying it. Nineteen thousand dollars a year.
That was it. Nineteen thousand dollarsa year, which means you work
(16:25):
as much as you you need toand you get nineteen thousand dollars a year.
You don't get to tie, youknow, put in your hours anymore.
So if you're working forty hours,if you're work in sixty hours,
nineteen thousand dollars a year. ButI was the full time producer of The
Dock and Johnny Morning Show, andso for me, it was like,
I I'm in man, like thisis good, this is a good thing.
(16:47):
So now I'm grinding it out andI'm just trying to do the best
that I can to to you know, be good at this. And now
I'm part of the show. Andso now it's stock Johnny Grayson then me
and we you know, have acost breaker that's that we've added, and
you know, I get to bepart of the show. Now my MIC's
a little more open than it usedto be. But again, you had
(17:07):
better bring it. And that iswhen I started learning the real dynamic of
the morning show, and not justthe morning show, but the morning show
within the hierarchy and the structure ofthe radio station. There was a time
where our program director and our assistantprogram director, you know, the old
school radio thing is the program directorand the hosts, they don't get along.
(17:30):
They're constantly button heads, right,So I think they they thought early
on that they the the suits wouldhave me as their their kind of guy
on the morning show. So theybrought me in and they're like, you
know, hey, you know,you know, we gotta be on time.
One of the things I remember specifically, we got to be on time,
you know. So I know,Doc just likes to ramp and ramble
(17:53):
and just go as long as hewants to go with no sort of direction.
You're the guy that is going tobe the direct So even if he's
in the middle of something and yousee that we're running super late, cut
his mic and just go to commercialbreak. And when they're telling me this,
I'm thinking, yeah, right,dude, Okay, like, if
you say something that's remotely off topicor not funny, you get destroyed by
(18:18):
doc. I'm going to turn offhis mic and go to commercial break.
That made me laugh so hard inside. I didn't laugh in his face.
I'm like, okay, because youknow, I'm the new guy and I
I have to kind of play everybody'sside, so I didn't say anything.
I'm like, all right, youknow, I'll you know, I'll do
what I bet. I'll do mybest to kind of drive the train.
I'll remind him that, you know, we need to go to break in
(18:40):
two minutes. I'll keep giving themupdates because you know, as the producer,
part of your job is to keepeverything kind of on time. Because
the host is in the middle ofdoing the hosting thing, they're not necessarily
paying attention to the clock. See, you know, at the time we
were in two separate rooms. Yougotta hit him in the ear a man
two minutes a man a man,you know, kind of break or whatever.
And you still have to be reallydiplomatic about it because you don't want
to in a uped one of hisrants, you know what I mean.
(19:02):
And so I eventually a couple ofdays ago by and I tell the guys
on the show that that's what theysaid, and we're all dying laughing.
But that kind of stuff is whatmade them realize that I'm I'm down,
I'm part of the team, youknow what I mean. I had,
you know, done my best tohelp cover back in the day when things
were going sideways, instead of throwinganyone under the bush in the name of
(19:23):
getting myself a better position or abetter standing in the building. Then you
know, they come to me withthis, and I, you know,
instead of doing what they ask,I come and I tell the guys.
So now it's like, all right, you know, he's one of us,
he's he's down, he's in.And so that was cool, that
was good. I was now likeofficially officially part of the show. But
(19:44):
it was still hard. It wasstill very hard. Like that's when I
started to learn, and I'm gonnabe vague about this. There are some
people and prominent positions that don't necessarilywant to see you win, you know
what I mean. It's just it'sjust the way that it is. And
like I said earlier, back inthe day, dynamic just totally different.
You know, old school radio host, old school radio vibe. There was
(20:07):
no social media, there was nopodcasting, there was no way to branch
off and do your own thing.There was no way to kind of hone
your skills. It was just kindof like this is this is the path.
But as things started to to getdeveloped, the internet and social media
started to get developed around this time, you know, things started to open
up a little bit. And nowmy as the younger dude and my ability
(20:30):
to do web stuff and social mediastuff early early social media. When I
say social media, I mean myspace. It started to give me more
of a foothold. And I wasreally I mean not to pat myself on
the back, because you know Inever do that. I was actually really
funny. Uh. And so Ihad I had a pretty good, like
(20:55):
you know, palette of paints topaint my pictures with. But not everybody
wants you to have your pictures hangingin the gallery. Let's say so a
lot of times, and I'm notgoing to go as far to say as
sabotage, but let's say a lotof times, agendas are different and they're
not really necessarily focused on what's bestfor the show or the entertainment value.
(21:18):
They are more focused on what's bestfor specific individuals. And so that was
a very hard lesson to learn anda very hard thing to figure out.
I had one of our bosses pullme aside at one point and tell me
that this was the job I hadat the time, was a dead end
job here, so I should starttrying to use this to get somewhere else,
(21:38):
because you know, I'll never beanything here. That's just not the
way that the structure works. AndI remember thinking to myself, well,
how about we blow up that structure, because shouldn't it be? In my
mind, I'm like, shouldn't itbe. Let's put out the best entertainment
product we can, the funniest thingwe can, the most dynamically engaging thing
(21:59):
that we can, and why arewe going by, Well, this is
just the structure of the way thingswork. So you know you need to
move along. And you know,I looked at other opportunities in other places,
but I'm born and race here.Uh so my intentions were never to
leave here. My thing was,well, why does it have to be
that way? Why are you tellingme this is the way this has to
be and that's the road we're on. Why can't we see about turning right,
(22:23):
because you know what's down that roadto the right looks really cool.
And so I was like, allright, But then at the same time,
I felt like, like I said, not everyone's necessarily for you.
So I felt like some of thatwas a kind of hold me back.
I always caught crabbing the barrel syndrome. You pull other people down to pull
yourself up, and so I justdidn't I couldn't get on on board that.
(22:45):
I'm like, in my mind thing, I'm thinking to myself, that's
that's not how this is. I'mgonna blow this up like that's like and
not in a bad way, likeI'm gonna be the guy who brings it
all down. I'm gonna be theguy who says, no, this doesn't
have to be the way, becausewe can do something better and funnier and
more entertaining. And so I waslike, well, I'm not going to
take that as that's just the waythat it is. So I just stuck
(23:07):
with it and kept doing what todo, and I'm working and everything's going
fine. And then another story thatI really can't get into in depth here
if you know the history of XL, you know, just one day out
of the blue, we get aphone call and our program director at the
time, it gets nooped like he'sdone, and rightfully so had some personal
(23:32):
discretions that don't work in any realmof society, but definitely don't work in
radio for sure. And so he'sgone. And so now we're kind of
flying without a pilot as far asyou know, management goes. And it
was a weird time, you know, like we didn't know exactly what was
going on. There was a chancethat XL as a whole was about to
(23:55):
get blown up, which was crazybecause I was like, man, I
literally just got here. And astory that I didn't really tell. The
week after I got full time,we did a spring break promotion where we
went down to Key West and inRV that we worked. We totally set
this up myself, aj late Kateat the time. We totally set this
this whole spring break trip up.We were gonna you know, RV down
(24:17):
to Key West and do like bitson the morning show on the way down
to Key West for spring break,and literally four hours into that trip,
I wrecked the borrowed RV from aclient and did like thirteen thousand dollars worth
of damage to it. I thoughtfor sure I was gonna get fired.
I was literally just full time fora week. But it managed to dodge
(24:37):
that bullet and we're moving along andthen this thing comes up and the pdsnoped,
and now we're gonna get a newPD, which not necessarily a bad
thing, but at the same time, what's gonna be his direction, what's
gonna be his agenda, what's goingto be his plan. So we bring
in the new PD. It's gota new vibe, and it's a little
bit weird. I mentioned that,you know, one of the dynamics of
(24:59):
old school RADI host doesn't necessarily getalong with program director. And so I
think this guy's whole plan was tocome in and kind of befriend DOC,
because you know, he's like,if I can get on board with the
host, then I can basically geton board, you know, with everybody.
You know, it's like a youknow, a new coach coming to
a team that's got a veteran quarterback. You think of yourself, all right,
(25:22):
let me get on the same pagewith this guy. What he didn't
know is that I'm pretty sure Dochad no intentions of you know, being
his boy like that. That's justwasn't in the cards. But he tried
really hard found common ground with him, and and you know, hung with
him and tried to make decisions anddo things. I think that, uh,
(25:44):
Doc would be like, Okay,I like that choice. I like
that decision. That's not necessarily theway to go if you're trying to keep
the train on the tracks. Buthe was trying to, you know,
I think, create an alliance withyou know, the guy whose name is
on the morning show. Whatever.I mean, that's that's the direction that
he decided to take. Like Isaid, not everybody is always cheering for
(26:07):
you, Not everybody wants to seeyou. You win. So fairly quickly,
it looked like I was kind ofnot necessarily on the outs, because
I don't think the dynamic changed inthe room per se, but I think
fairly quickly and it was decided thatmaybe I wasn't really needed as part of
(26:30):
the show, and these were allconversations that were had around me, not
to me. And then I toldyou, when when stuff goes sideways,
you do the show and then youget called into an office. So we
did the show one day and Iget called into the office. And up
until this point, I had doneeverything, you know with this new the
new guy, pretty diplomatically. Ihad hung out outside of work. I
(26:51):
had, you know, I mean, my work ethic can't be questioned to
this day. I mean, that'smy work ethics. But got my foot
in the door, so that can'tbe So he pulls me into the room
and I will never forget this phrase. I say it. I've said it
on the air. I will neverfor as long as I live forget this
moment. And it still pisses meoff. It calls me into the room
(27:14):
and he sits me down and literallylike it was just a thing to do
on his to do list for theday, tells me that I am not
necessarily going to be part of themorning show anymore. He's like, you
know, and so now I'm like, well that's my job, Like I'm
I fired. I mean, likethat is that it because I don't know
(27:37):
what that means, like you're notpart of the morning show anymore, but
I'm the producer of the morning show. The plan was to slide Alex Diaz,
who was our call screener and whohad been on the show as an
intern and it was doing you know, late nights on the station and everything,
to slide him over to run theshow and be the producer, and
then I'm out. But I wasn'tfired because the Internet was starting to take
(28:02):
shape and you know, build steam, and so they developed what they called
the I Team, which didn't existbefore, and it was, you know,
people who worked on the websites andfound ways to marry the Internet with
the on air product, which isn'talways easy. It is now, It
wasn't then because a lot of thehosts weren't Internet savvy because the Internet wasn't
(28:23):
around when they started, and sothinking of the Internet when they thought of
radio wasn't a thing. So theI Team's job was to try to marry
the two. So Jeff, hisname was Jeff, the guy who ran
the I Team. He basically threwme a lifeline, like he was I
was thrown off the cruise ship andhe threw out one of the little floaty
rings and I grabbed onto it,and so he wanted me on the I
(28:48):
team. But even better, hewanted me on the I team, but
he wanted me to work the morningshow hours because he wanted me in the
room while the morning show was onso I could do Internet stuff that related
to the morning show. So Istill got to be part of the morning
show and do the internet stuff.I just wasn't technically on the air.
So I like, I'm shell shockedwhen I get the news. I'm excited
(29:12):
that I didn't get fired altogether,because I didn't do anything wrong. In
fact, I've done everything right.So I was shell shocked and I walked
out and I was I was like, I'm just so confused right now.
And I went back to the morningshow office and I sat down, and
I don't know if they knew alreadyor not. I mean I would I
would hope that the guy told them. I didn't even ask. Maybe one
(29:33):
day I will ask. I don'teven know if they knew or not.
But I explained to them what justhappened, and they were kind of like,
oh, well, you know again, same thing when they let highly
go. You know, suits makethese kind of decisions. But you know,
bright side, you're still employed andyou're still in the in the studio
as you know, the internet partof the show, so you still get
(29:55):
to be around. And I'm like, well, that's cool. But then
I started to to get pissed becauseI'm like, wait a second, this
guy just got here, like hedidn't really assess the situation all that that
well, in my opinion, hejust got here and his thing was let
me make friends with the guy whosename is on the show, but basically
(30:15):
fuck everybody else. And I'm like, you know what, I'm not cool
with that, Like I don't likethe way that just went down. So
I walked back into the room andI knocked on the door and I said,
hey, I know what's done isdone, but I just want to
say something. I said. Ididn't really say anything before because I didn't
I didn't know what to say,and I was kind of shell shocked.
I was kind of like what whatwhat just happened? I was like,
(30:37):
but I want to say something likethat's not cool, dude. I was
like, you know, you justgot here. I've been working the better
part of the last three or fouryears mostly for free to get here,
and you just walk in and makethis kind of decision, and I think
that's that's that's not cool. Man. I was like, you know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna do what Igotta do, but like, I just
(30:59):
want you to know that I thinkit's bullshit. And he looked at me,
and this is the part that willIt was burned into my brain.
This phrase will never leave my brain. And he said, well, when
it comes to the morning show,you are relatively insignificant. He said that
it looked me in my face.He was probably I think he's my age,
(31:22):
so we're about the same age.He looked me in my face,
and he said, when it comesto the morning show, you were relatively
insignificant. Now, this is amorning show that I busted my butt to
be a part of. This isa morning show that I have basically given
my entire everything too, not justto show the station. And for this
dude to tell me I'm relatively insignificant, I was like, all right,
(31:47):
all right, okay, and Iwalked back to my desk and I didn't
know what to do, but atleast I was still employed. Even though
I had just been told I wasrelatively significant to the morning show lost my
gig technically, but I was savedby the I Team, and so I
wasn't necessarily gone. But I'm stillhere and the I Team doesn't exist anymore.
(32:14):
So clearly there's been a plot twist, which we'll talk about on part
four of my twenty two year journeyto Where I Am right now today on
Johnny's House and X one O sixseven. Make sure you check us out
each weekday morning six to ten am, XL one O six seven always free
on the iHeartRadio app anywhere in theworld on Johnny's House afternoons, I'm on
Magic one oh seven seven two toseven each weekday a mid day's anywhere in
(32:38):
the world old school hip hop andR and B throwbacks on the iHeartRadio app
and in various cities across the country. My friend just hit me last week
and say, Yo, I'm doneat West Palm. Is this shoe on
the radio? I said, well, yes, yes it is, so
you can check me out there.Make sure you follow me at v Brian
Grimes on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, x whatever we're calling it these days.
(32:58):
Check out Yoho Rum dot com atYoho Spies, rum on all the
social media and get yourself a deliciousdrink, and we will pick up with
Part four next time around.
Time for Part three of my twentytwo year Journey to Where I Am Right
Now at XL one to six sevenand in Johnny's House. So when we
left off, I wasn't technically onthe show yet, but I was allowed
to hang out on the show andwork for free. How awesome is that?
Hey, We'll let you come inand not get paid for it.
It was fun. But this oneends with a bit of a twist.
(00:22):
This is a podcast, just abit of the contrast from what I'm used
to. I usually have to talkfast because there's four people sharing the mic,
but this is just me, soI say whatever i'd like. It
might be serious, sometimes it mightbe funny. Sometimes describe your head and
say bright and it's such a tunny. But it's just me. I ain't
got no help. This is BrianCrimes and I'm talking to myself. It
(00:45):
is Brian Grimes. It is mypodcast. I Am Talking to my Self,
Part three of my twenty two yearjourney to Where I'm at right Now
on X one to six seven andJohnny's House and various stations all over the
world via the iHeart Radio apps.So when we left off, I had
(01:06):
made my way onto the morning showsort of. I mean I got to
hang out on the morning show.Basically I was still employed in the promotions
department here at XL, but Iwasn't officially officially on the show or anything
like that. And the way thatit works here is when you're in promotions.
Well it's a little different now thelines are blurred, but back then
(01:29):
the lines were not blurred. Youwere in promotions or you were in programming.
They didn't used to let you havea foot in both lanes. That's
just not the way that the structurewas. Because everybody wanted to end up
on the radio, so you couldn'tjust let people in promotions. You kind
of half asked their promotions job andplay on the radio. I mean,
I get it, but there wasa rule in place that you had to
do x amount of time and promotionsbefore you could try to be on the
(01:51):
radio. And that used to bekind of the way into radio. That
and internships, and then when theygot rid of internships, promotions was really
the only way. But I digress. So I was technically in promotions,
but I was still getting to comeand hang out in the morning show.
They're not going to pay you foryour hours to hang out for free obviously,
so that's where kind of this businessweeds you out. And there was
(02:15):
no social media, there was nopodcasting, there was no other way to
do anything creative other than handle yourpromotions job the way you should that way,
you know, there's no question aboutyou moving over to the programming side,
which is what I did. Ibusted my ass and promotions and you
know, sometimes it was you know, making sure that that it was recognized
(02:38):
a little more than maybe it wasworth. Like you know, you know,
I trumped up, you know,some of the stuff that I was
doing, but still I was doingit. I was hustling, and a
lot of people were kind of justnot they were falling off. And so
as the people that are going toend up on the air start to fall
off, and you know, thepeople like myself that are that are kind
of grinding it out and pushing throughstart to you know, push to the
top. So I was doing that. I was doing both, and I
(03:00):
had a foot in both lanes.But at some point they're like, you
can't continue to do both. You'reeither promotions or you're either programming. Because
if if the morning show is doingan event and I want to be out
there for the morning show, butI'm in promotions. It's a weird dynamic.
I can't be the promotions guy andthe morning show guy. Although really,
(03:21):
honestly, logistically speaking, you totallycould do that. I mean,
if you're willing to be the guywho goes and gets there first and puts
up the tents and puts up thebanners and then kind of flips hats and
does like the doing air quotes hereyou can't see them talent sides, and
I don't see the issue with it, But anyway, that's just not the
way it was set up. Sothere was gonna be a time where I
was gonna have to make a decisionand I was gonna have to do one
(03:43):
or the other. But the programmingside wasn't paying me yet. Every now
and then, if I did like, you know, board op stuff,
I would get you know, paidfrom the programming side. And that's when
I started just taking on everything theyoffered to me, running the board for
every show in the building, runningyou know NFL games from London. When
they would do like these Buccaneers games, we would run them on the sports
(04:03):
station. Because of the time differenceI'd have to be here like super early
in the morning or super late atnine or whatever. And I was just
taking on everything. If they asked, I said yes, like literally,
whatever you need. I even almostjumped into sales at one point, and
I'm like, I just you know, I want to get paid and I
want to be able to stick inthe building. Whatever. I took,
whatever it took for me to haveto try to stay in the building.
(04:25):
I was like, I'm down forwhatever, man. So I just started
taking on everything I possibly could,because my whole goal was to stay in
here and I wanted to shift fromthe promotion side to the programming side.
But even though it was just little, little money at the time, I
had to keep getting paid for mytime as much as I possibly could.
So I would work, like,you know, a five hours day on
(04:46):
the morning show five days a week, so that's twenty five hours I was
already not getting paid for, andthen my promotion stuff I would probably work
another you know, twenty twenty fivehours doing whatever, and that I was
getting paid for. And then Ialso kept my full time job because you
can't live on eight dollars an hourfor twenty five hours a week. You
know, you just can't, eveneven more so now you can't, but
(05:10):
definitely couldn't back then. And soI just kept doing everything everything I possibly
could. And then at some pointthe call screener at the time, she
just started to fall off. Like, you know, she was kind of
it was a weird thing, andI don't want to, you know,
to talk bad about anybody, butI didn't get the sense that this is
what she was trying to do.She just kind of liked ride, and
(05:31):
she liked being along for the ride. She liked being on the dock and
Johnny Morning Show. She liked thatcelebrities would come in, and it was
a running joke when celebrities came in, she would disappear to go to her
makeup and get her hair already andeverything like that. It was funny.
But she didn't really want to doanything more than just kind of be around.
And I was, you know,coming up with bits and coming up
(05:51):
with ideas and you know, tryingto be you know, part of everything,
because I wanted to do this,and so eventually she just kind of
fell off, and so the spotopened for a call screener. Now,
basically what that means is I cancontinue coming in the same hours I'm already
coming in and not getting paid,but now I can get paid for it.
(06:12):
But then I have to ditch thepromotions side of it, so that
part would be gone. And Ican't leave the show at eight fifty every
day anymore. And I can't getthe apartment place that I work to let
me come in at you know,eleven o'clock every day either. So that
is when I had to make thedecision to quit my full time job for
a twenty five hour a week parttime job with the idea that I couldn't
(06:38):
possibly make a little bit of extramoney here and there, and with you
know, endorsements or commercials, whichnever really happens. Well it does now
more than it used to, butit didn't back then. You didn't get
endorsements or that many appearances as thelow guy on the totem pole. So
I had to make a decision.And my wife and I at the time,
(06:58):
and when my wife and i've finallydo our podcast, we are basically
a tale of two different relationships.Our pre separation relationship. I mean,
I'll tell you it wasn't great.There was times it was good. I
don't know that there was times thatit was ever great, and she was
not fully on board. That versionof her not fully on board with everything
(07:21):
that I was having to do totry to get where I wanted to get
because I saw in my head,I saw the vision. I saw,
Okay, here's where I'm trying togo. This road to get there is
going to suck sometimes, and itdid. She was not on board,
and so when I told her Igot to quip a full time job to
do this, she was supportive ofit, like because she knew this is
(07:42):
what I wanted to do. Butat the same time, I think,
I these I mean, and maybewe'll talk about this when we do our
podcast. I don't think she thoughtthat it was gonna go the way I
thought it was gonna go. Andwe were in different places in our lives,
so it's like, uh, youknow, she was she was busting
her her ass in the property managementside, trying to move up and property
management I, on the other hand, was taking this dumb radio job where
(08:05):
we tell stupid jokes and you know, a couple hours a day and that's
work, and so she didn't fullywrap her head around the position, what
it could be, what it was, and it didn't really align with you
know, what she was doing.So she was kind of like, but
do it? You know she wasn'tnever like, you can't do that.
(08:26):
I quit my full time job andI got my first official job on the
morning show as the call screener.So now it's Doc and Johnny, Grace,
Hyla and then me as the callscreener. And my mic was not
open to speak whenever I wanted to. But I got to jump in on
bits now and then, and youknow, they brought me into stuff every
now and then. But it wasn'tjust like free for all like it now.
(08:52):
If you listen to the show now, our call screener is Neice.
Yeah, I wasn't allowed to justjump in and talk that way the way
as she does now. It justwasn't the way the dynamic was set up.
So I'm learning everything as fast asI can. I'm learning the way
everybody kind of works with each othertrying to figure out the dynamic. I'm
also learning the technical side as fastas I can by watching Hila. Now
(09:13):
lucky for me, Hila as ayoung guy. And again, I don't
I don't want to disparage anybody butthere was times when Hila wasn't as focused
on the show as he was Ijust having a good time, and he
was, I think, you know, a couple of years younger than me.
So there was a lot of timewhere I had to slide in on
the fly and figure things out,which now was kind of the foundation for
(09:37):
why everyone comes to me when somethinggoes sideways, because very early on that's
basically what I had to do isfigure out what happens when something goes sideways
on my own show, and soI just kind of became that dude.
That became one of my strengths whensomething goes sideways, figure out how to
make it not go sideways, atleast on the air, so people can
(09:58):
hear everything they're supposed here, evenif behind the scenes everything's on fire.
It's like that meme where the dogis sitting at the table and the rooms
on fire and he says, thisis fine. That was me. I
was a little dog in the roomsaying this is fine, and everybody else
thought it. You know, everything'snormal, everything's cool, and so that
was at the time frustrating, butnow that I look at it, one
(10:18):
of the best things that could havepossibly happened. So I'm learning everything as
fast as I can. I'm runningthe show for segments, sometimes entire mornings
at a time, and I'm learningthe dynamics of everybody. Because Doc and
Johnny had been together for a longtime. Doc is a little more old
school radio host guy. If you'reyounger and you haven't listened to radio.
(10:41):
Radio hosts now and radio host backin the day are two different, totally
different animals, and Doc was oldschool radio guy, so you gotta learn
that dynamic. Johnny was, Imean, really what Johnny is now a
little bit more like I'm Johnny Magic. I always joke with him about that,
and he knows that. But hewas a lot like he is now.
He was like like the friendly dude, like the I don't know how
(11:07):
to say it without, you know, saying Doc was a jackass, because
Doc wasn't. He's just he's aIt's a different dynamic. It was a
different animal to be a radio hostcoming up through the late seventies, early
eighties and into the nineties, andthen I had just joined in the two
thousands, so that morning Zoo thingwas gone. But Johnny was really the
same guy. He was just Doc'sco host, and then Grace was the
(11:31):
girl on the show. She wouldbe the Ray now and she did the
news and the celebrity news. Andthen Hilo was you know, producer and
every now and then throw in funnyguy and young guy. And then I
was a call screener and you know, I just like I said, picked
up the phone and if they broughtme in, they brought me in.
If I had something really good tosay, I would say it. But
man, let me tell you backthen, it better be really really good
(11:54):
because Doc wasn't having it. Ifyou threw out some sort of duck just
to hear yourself talk on the radio. Yeah, no, Doc was gonna
shoot that duck down and it wasgonna be h not pretty. So you
had to be you had to begood about it. It was. It
was just such a weird dynamic comparedto now to learn, but again building
blocks. So for me, reallyreally good that I that I went through
(12:15):
that. So we're moving along andI'm the call screener and assistant producer and
you know, everything's just going welland it's fun and I'm learning how everything
works and everything and not to getinto exactly why it went down, but
the program director and the assistant programdirector, they just had decided I feel
like that Hilo was their target.He was going to be the fall guy
(12:39):
at some point or something, andthey were trying, I feel like to
get rid of him. I woulddo everything I could to back him up
and to if something did go sideways, cover for it. You know that,
And that goes back to making surethe show is always on the air,
making sure that you know, everythingis the way it's supposed to sound
(13:00):
coming through the speakers, and everythingwas way less traceable back then because there
wasn't this digital stuff. A lotof stuff was off CD. We didn't
have a something recording the show NonStop. So when like you could go back
and listen to anything you wanted toall the time, you had to ask
me to pull the audio. Anda lot of times conveniently the audio just
didn't record or whatever if it wassomething that I didn't you want anyone to
(13:24):
hear or to be able to assess. But eventually, without getting into too
many details, they found something thatthey had decided they were going to let
Highla go for. And so afterthe show one day, and this is
they still do this the same way, we're doing the show, everything's normal.
After the show, one day,they come down and get him and
(13:45):
pull him out of the office andhe comes back about ten minutes later,
and he's got this look on hisface like what the hell? And they
told him that they were going tolet him go, and it was like
what And so that was rough.And I was new to the to the
room. I hadn't been around allthat long at this point. I mean,
I've been there for a while,but not that long. And so
(14:07):
I was like, wow, likethis is a weird, weird thing.
Like he was he was family tothem, Like he started as an intern,
he started in promotions, you know, he worked his way up and
that was their dude. And nowjust like that, you know, they
are gonna let him go. Thatdidn't go very well with Doc and Johnny,
but at the same time, like, you know, what are you
(14:28):
gonna do? Like the boss isthe boss, and that's what they decided
to do. So literally the nextday, we're coming in to do the
show, and it's now just understoodthat I'm gonna be, you know,
the one who slides over and doesthe work. Now I don't have the
job, but I'm gonna slide overand and pick up the slack until you
know, they figure out what they'regonna do. And to me, in
(14:52):
my mind, well, I'm obviouslywhat they're going to do. Like I
mean, I've been you know,his backup, I've been filling in.
I've been on the show for youknow, close to you know, a
year now, and obviously I'm gonnabe what they do. But that's not
exactly the way it went down.They started to give me the idea that
you know, well, I'm beingconsidered and I'm like, uh, interview
(15:16):
for a job that I basically havebeen interviewing for every morning for like the
last year, like seriously. Andso I went for maybe two weeks with
them not telling me that it wasgonna be me, not not Doc and
Johnny. It was the bosses,like the PD and APD. They were
thinking about bringing back one of theguys who used to be on the show,
Stan and he was in town andyou know, he wasn't doing the
(15:41):
show, but he was you know, he knew everybody. He had been
here in the early days of XL, and so there was the idea that
that might be the guy they bringin instead of me, and I was
like, it sucks, like Imean, I've been doing it. I've
been I've been the fill in guy, and now you're gonna tell me it's
not mine. But eventually they did. They gave me the full time job.
And it's really funny because I wasexcited. I'm like, I'm full
(16:03):
time now you no contract yet,but my first full time salary. And
when they told me I'm full time, I'm thinking, all right, I'm
gonna make a livable wage at leastnot so much. My first full time
salary and I ain't got no problemsaying it. Nineteen thousand dollars a year.
That was it. Nineteen thousand dollarsa year, which means you work
(16:25):
as much as you you need toand you get nineteen thousand dollars a year.
You don't get to tie, youknow, put in your hours anymore.
So if you're working forty hours,if you're work in sixty hours,
nineteen thousand dollars a year. ButI was the full time producer of The
Dock and Johnny Morning Show, andso for me, it was like,
I I'm in man, like thisis good, this is a good thing.
(16:47):
So now I'm grinding it out andI'm just trying to do the best
that I can to to you know, be good at this. And now
I'm part of the show. Andso now it's stock Johnny Grayson then me
and we you know, have acost breaker that's that we've added, and
you know, I get to bepart of the show. Now my MIC's
a little more open than it usedto be. But again, you had
(17:07):
better bring it. And that iswhen I started learning the real dynamic of
the morning show, and not justthe morning show, but the morning show
within the hierarchy and the structure ofthe radio station. There was a time
where our program director and our assistantprogram director, you know, the old
school radio thing is the program directorand the hosts, they don't get along.
(17:30):
They're constantly button heads, right,So I think they they thought early
on that they the the suits wouldhave me as their their kind of guy
on the morning show. So theybrought me in and they're like, you
know, hey, you know,you know, we gotta be on time.
One of the things I remember specifically, we got to be on time,
you know. So I know,Doc just likes to ramp and ramble
(17:53):
and just go as long as hewants to go with no sort of direction.
You're the guy that is going tobe the direct So even if he's
in the middle of something and yousee that we're running super late, cut
his mic and just go to commercialbreak. And when they're telling me this,
I'm thinking, yeah, right,dude, Okay, like, if
you say something that's remotely off topicor not funny, you get destroyed by
(18:18):
doc. I'm going to turn offhis mic and go to commercial break.
That made me laugh so hard inside. I didn't laugh in his face.
I'm like, okay, because youknow, I'm the new guy and I
I have to kind of play everybody'sside, so I didn't say anything.
I'm like, all right, youknow, I'll you know, I'll do
what I bet. I'll do mybest to kind of drive the train.
I'll remind him that, you know, we need to go to break in
(18:40):
two minutes. I'll keep giving themupdates because you know, as the producer,
part of your job is to keepeverything kind of on time. Because
the host is in the middle ofdoing the hosting thing, they're not necessarily
paying attention to the clock. See, you know, at the time we
were in two separate rooms. Yougotta hit him in the ear a man
two minutes a man a man,you know, kind of break or whatever.
And you still have to be reallydiplomatic about it because you don't want
to in a uped one of hisrants, you know what I mean.
(19:02):
And so I eventually a couple ofdays ago by and I tell the guys
on the show that that's what theysaid, and we're all dying laughing.
But that kind of stuff is whatmade them realize that I'm I'm down,
I'm part of the team, youknow what I mean. I had,
you know, done my best tohelp cover back in the day when things
were going sideways, instead of throwinganyone under the bush in the name of
(19:23):
getting myself a better position or abetter standing in the building. Then you
know, they come to me withthis, and I, you know,
instead of doing what they ask,I come and I tell the guys.
So now it's like, all right, you know, he's one of us,
he's he's down, he's in.And so that was cool, that
was good. I was now likeofficially officially part of the show. But
(19:44):
it was still hard. It wasstill very hard. Like that's when I
started to learn, and I'm gonnabe vague about this. There are some
people and prominent positions that don't necessarilywant to see you win, you know
what I mean. It's just it'sjust the way that it is. And
like I said earlier, back inthe day, dynamic just totally different.
You know, old school radio host, old school radio vibe. There was
(20:07):
no social media, there was nopodcasting, there was no way to branch
off and do your own thing.There was no way to kind of hone
your skills. It was just kindof like this is this is the path.
But as things started to to getdeveloped, the internet and social media
started to get developed around this time, you know, things started to open
up a little bit. And nowmy as the younger dude and my ability
(20:30):
to do web stuff and social mediastuff early early social media. When I
say social media, I mean myspace. It started to give me more
of a foothold. And I wasreally I mean not to pat myself on
the back, because you know Inever do that. I was actually really
funny. Uh. And so Ihad I had a pretty good, like
(20:55):
you know, palette of paints topaint my pictures with. But not everybody
wants you to have your pictures hangingin the gallery. Let's say so a
lot of times, and I'm notgoing to go as far to say as
sabotage, but let's say a lotof times, agendas are different and they're
not really necessarily focused on what's bestfor the show or the entertainment value.
(21:18):
They are more focused on what's bestfor specific individuals. And so that was
a very hard lesson to learn anda very hard thing to figure out.
I had one of our bosses pullme aside at one point and tell me
that this was the job I hadat the time, was a dead end
job here, so I should starttrying to use this to get somewhere else,
(21:38):
because you know, I'll never beanything here. That's just not the
way that the structure works. AndI remember thinking to myself, well,
how about we blow up that structure, because shouldn't it be? In my
mind, I'm like, shouldn't itbe. Let's put out the best entertainment
product we can, the funniest thingwe can, the most dynamically engaging thing
(21:59):
that we can, and why arewe going by, Well, this is
just the structure of the way thingswork. So you know you need to
move along. And you know,I looked at other opportunities in other places,
but I'm born and race here.Uh so my intentions were never to
leave here. My thing was,well, why does it have to be
that way? Why are you tellingme this is the way this has to
be and that's the road we're on. Why can't we see about turning right,
(22:23):
because you know what's down that roadto the right looks really cool.
And so I was like, allright, But then at the same time,
I felt like, like I said, not everyone's necessarily for you.
So I felt like some of thatwas a kind of hold me back.
I always caught crabbing the barrel syndrome. You pull other people down to pull
yourself up, and so I justdidn't I couldn't get on on board that.
(22:45):
I'm like, in my mind thing, I'm thinking to myself, that's
that's not how this is. I'mgonna blow this up like that's like and
not in a bad way, likeI'm gonna be the guy who brings it
all down. I'm gonna be theguy who says, no, this doesn't
have to be the way, becausewe can do something better and funnier and
more entertaining. And so I waslike, well, I'm not going to
take that as that's just the waythat it is. So I just stuck
(23:07):
with it and kept doing what todo, and I'm working and everything's going
fine. And then another story thatI really can't get into in depth here
if you know the history of XL, you know, just one day out
of the blue, we get aphone call and our program director at the
time, it gets nooped like he'sdone, and rightfully so had some personal
(23:32):
discretions that don't work in any realmof society, but definitely don't work in
radio for sure. And so he'sgone. And so now we're kind of
flying without a pilot as far asyou know, management goes. And it
was a weird time, you know, like we didn't know exactly what was
going on. There was a chancethat XL as a whole was about to
(23:55):
get blown up, which was crazybecause I was like, man, I
literally just got here. And astory that I didn't really tell. The
week after I got full time,we did a spring break promotion where we
went down to Key West and inRV that we worked. We totally set
this up myself, aj late Kateat the time. We totally set this
this whole spring break trip up.We were gonna you know, RV down
(24:17):
to Key West and do like bitson the morning show on the way down
to Key West for spring break,and literally four hours into that trip,
I wrecked the borrowed RV from aclient and did like thirteen thousand dollars worth
of damage to it. I thoughtfor sure I was gonna get fired.
I was literally just full time fora week. But it managed to dodge
(24:37):
that bullet and we're moving along andthen this thing comes up and the pdsnoped,
and now we're gonna get a newPD, which not necessarily a bad
thing, but at the same time, what's gonna be his direction, what's
gonna be his agenda, what's goingto be his plan. So we bring
in the new PD. It's gota new vibe, and it's a little
bit weird. I mentioned that,you know, one of the dynamics of
(24:59):
old school RADI host doesn't necessarily getalong with program director. And so I
think this guy's whole plan was tocome in and kind of befriend DOC,
because you know, he's like,if I can get on board with the
host, then I can basically geton board, you know, with everybody.
You know, it's like a youknow, a new coach coming to
a team that's got a veteran quarterback. You think of yourself, all right,
(25:22):
let me get on the same pagewith this guy. What he didn't
know is that I'm pretty sure Dochad no intentions of you know, being
his boy like that. That's justwasn't in the cards. But he tried
really hard found common ground with him, and and you know, hung with
him and tried to make decisions anddo things. I think that, uh,
(25:44):
Doc would be like, Okay,I like that choice. I like
that decision. That's not necessarily theway to go if you're trying to keep
the train on the tracks. Buthe was trying to, you know,
I think, create an alliance withyou know, the guy whose name is
on the morning show. Whatever.I mean, that's that's the direction that
he decided to take. Like Isaid, not everybody is always cheering for
(26:07):
you, Not everybody wants to seeyou. You win. So fairly quickly,
it looked like I was kind ofnot necessarily on the outs, because
I don't think the dynamic changed inthe room per se, but I think
fairly quickly and it was decided thatmaybe I wasn't really needed as part of
(26:30):
the show, and these were allconversations that were had around me, not
to me. And then I toldyou, when when stuff goes sideways,
you do the show and then youget called into an office. So we
did the show one day and Iget called into the office. And up
until this point, I had doneeverything, you know with this new the
new guy, pretty diplomatically. Ihad hung out outside of work. I
(26:51):
had, you know, I mean, my work ethic can't be questioned to
this day. I mean, that'smy work ethics. But got my foot
in the door, so that can'tbe So he pulls me into the room
and I will never forget this phrase. I say it. I've said it
on the air. I will neverfor as long as I live forget this
moment. And it still pisses meoff. It calls me into the room
(27:14):
and he sits me down and literallylike it was just a thing to do
on his to do list for theday, tells me that I am not
necessarily going to be part of themorning show anymore. He's like, you
know, and so now I'm like, well that's my job, Like I'm
I fired. I mean, likethat is that it because I don't know
(27:37):
what that means, like you're notpart of the morning show anymore, but
I'm the producer of the morning show. The plan was to slide Alex Diaz,
who was our call screener and whohad been on the show as an
intern and it was doing you know, late nights on the station and everything,
to slide him over to run theshow and be the producer, and
then I'm out. But I wasn'tfired because the Internet was starting to take
(28:02):
shape and you know, build steam, and so they developed what they called
the I Team, which didn't existbefore, and it was, you know,
people who worked on the websites andfound ways to marry the Internet with
the on air product, which isn'talways easy. It is now, It
wasn't then because a lot of thehosts weren't Internet savvy because the Internet wasn't
(28:23):
around when they started, and sothinking of the Internet when they thought of
radio wasn't a thing. So theI Team's job was to try to marry
the two. So Jeff, hisname was Jeff, the guy who ran
the I Team. He basically threwme a lifeline, like he was I
was thrown off the cruise ship andhe threw out one of the little floaty
rings and I grabbed onto it,and so he wanted me on the I
(28:48):
team. But even better, hewanted me on the I team, but
he wanted me to work the morningshow hours because he wanted me in the
room while the morning show was onso I could do Internet stuff that related
to the morning show. So Istill got to be part of the morning
show and do the internet stuff.I just wasn't technically on the air.
So I like, I'm shell shockedwhen I get the news. I'm excited
(29:12):
that I didn't get fired altogether,because I didn't do anything wrong. In
fact, I've done everything right.So I was shell shocked and I walked
out and I was I was like, I'm just so confused right now.
And I went back to the morningshow office and I sat down, and
I don't know if they knew alreadyor not. I mean I would I
would hope that the guy told them. I didn't even ask. Maybe one
(29:33):
day I will ask. I don'teven know if they knew or not.
But I explained to them what justhappened, and they were kind of like,
oh, well, you know again, same thing when they let highly
go. You know, suits makethese kind of decisions. But you know,
bright side, you're still employed andyou're still in the in the studio
as you know, the internet partof the show, so you still get
(29:55):
to be around. And I'm like, well, that's cool. But then
I started to to get pissed becauseI'm like, wait a second, this
guy just got here, like hedidn't really assess the situation all that that
well, in my opinion, hejust got here and his thing was let
me make friends with the guy whosename is on the show, but basically
(30:15):
fuck everybody else. And I'm like, you know what, I'm not cool
with that, Like I don't likethe way that just went down. So
I walked back into the room andI knocked on the door and I said,
hey, I know what's done isdone, but I just want to
say something. I said. Ididn't really say anything before because I didn't
I didn't know what to say,and I was kind of shell shocked.
I was kind of like what whatwhat just happened? I was like,
(30:37):
but I want to say something likethat's not cool, dude. I was
like, you know, you justgot here. I've been working the better
part of the last three or fouryears mostly for free to get here,
and you just walk in and makethis kind of decision, and I think
that's that's that's not cool. Man. I was like, you know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna do what Igotta do, but like, I just
(30:59):
want you to know that I thinkit's bullshit. And he looked at me,
and this is the part that willIt was burned into my brain.
This phrase will never leave my brain. And he said, well, when
it comes to the morning show,you are relatively insignificant. He said that
it looked me in my face.He was probably I think he's my age,
(31:22):
so we're about the same age.He looked me in my face,
and he said, when it comesto the morning show, you were relatively
insignificant. Now, this is amorning show that I busted my butt to
be a part of. This isa morning show that I have basically given
my entire everything too, not justto show the station. And for this
dude to tell me I'm relatively insignificant, I was like, all right,
(31:47):
all right, okay, and Iwalked back to my desk and I didn't
know what to do, but atleast I was still employed. Even though
I had just been told I wasrelatively significant to the morning show lost my
gig technically, but I was savedby the I Team, and so I
wasn't necessarily gone. But I'm stillhere and the I Team doesn't exist anymore.
(32:14):
So clearly there's been a plot twist, which we'll talk about on part
four of my twenty two year journeyto Where I Am right now today on
Johnny's House and X one O sixseven. Make sure you check us out
each weekday morning six to ten am, XL one O six seven always free
on the iHeartRadio app anywhere in theworld on Johnny's House afternoons, I'm on
Magic one oh seven seven two toseven each weekday a mid day's anywhere in
(32:38):
the world old school hip hop andR and B throwbacks on the iHeartRadio app
and in various cities across the country. My friend just hit me last week
and say, Yo, I'm doneat West Palm. Is this shoe on
the radio? I said, well, yes, yes it is, so
you can check me out there.Make sure you follow me at v Brian
Grimes on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, x whatever we're calling it these days.
(32:58):
Check out Yoho Rum dot com atYoho Spies, rum on all the
social media and get yourself a deliciousdrink, and we will pick up with
Part four next time around.
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