Ben Fong-Torres, our very own Renaissance man: author, broadcaster, and former senior editor and writer at Rolling Stone Magazine, writes again. An old letter triggers thoughts about today's radio scene. Also, a visit to the beautiful new Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
The other Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a letter from one Vic Dertimanis, saying: On Feb. 22, I met Ben Fong-Torres at a benefit for the beautiful Signe Anderson [the original lead singer for Jefferson Airplane]. I expressed to him how much I missed the joy of hearing him on the one and only KSAN and reading his articles in the Pink section. The next day, as I was lazily making my way through Sunday Datebook, I realized that I was drawing steadily nearer to the Aidin Vaziri zone. [Note: Mr. Vaziri does a Q&A interview each week with a pop artist.] Even as inspired as I was by the great happiness of my chance encounter the night before, I realized that there was only an outside chance that Vaziri's writings wouldn't be caustic, cynical and uninformative
When I'd finished his column, I felt solemn, then decided to get up and take on the day. But first I thought back to those earlier days and smiled at how much fun it had been to read articles by someone who gives a damn
I am glad to have given Mr. Dertimanis great happiness, but, lest you think Im a 24/7 people-pleaser, let me revisit a comment I ran across years ago on the Internet, on a radio site. This is from a broadcaster named Bob...