continued from last
month's issue
A couple of months after McInnes was fired by KGB, local San
Diego musicians banded together to throw Jim a big going away party at the
Catamaran Hotel's Cannibal Bar, featuring ten bands and drawing what hotel
management described as one of its biggest-ever Sunday crowds.
Soon,
McInnes was scrambling to retool his broadcast career. Fortunately, the
competition was more than happy to take him. And, Jim went to work as the
afternoon drive jock for 103.7 The Planet, the other "classic rock" station at
the time. With his typical sense of humor and knack for puns, and longing for
the more obscure boundaries of rock, McInnes developed an on-air Sunday show
called "Vinyl Resting Place," which featured B-Sides and other lesser-heard
tracks. "Resting Place" lasted two-and-a-half years until the Planet switched
formats in 2005.
In the
meantime, Jim approached KSDS Jazz 88.3. Always a quiet aficionado of jazz
going back to his days at "free form" WIBA-FM in Madison, McInnes has an
extensive knowledge about the genre although, he admits, it was difficult at
first shaking his 30-year reputation as a "Rock Jock." Nevertheless, he was eventually
able to convince management that his jazz pedigree was for real and he's been
working regularly at Jazz 88.3 since 2006. At the same time, he found a place
in town to work off his well-known knack for one-liners. Besides working at
Jazz 88.3, he also nailed down radio's equivalent of a 9-to-5 job, doing
traffic and news for KFMB-AM and "traffic with personality" on the sister
station, Jack-FM. For the latter, he also maintains a blog. Today, he can be
heard over 45 times per day on the two KFMB stations.
Thus, these
are the two radio lives of Jim McInnes: The first life he spent at one of the
country's top radio stations for nearly 30 years. The second life has entailed
jumping between four stations in the last seven years, at present working for
three of those stations simultaneously.
Yet,
because of Jim's consistent on-air demeanor and level-headed tone, it's as if
he's never budged in nearly four decades. Although the call letters have
changed, JM on either the FM or the AM is still holding court in the AM and the
PM. The fact that Jim has lived these two radio lives has only underscored his
institutional status in San Diego radio.
There are
many ingredients that have made Jim McInnes such as success in radio, many
reasons why, as mentioned last month in part one of this article, he has risen
above the usual schlock of commercial radio. In a business where the key to
success is selling the sponsor's product, it's difficult to stay genuine. One
of the reasons McInnes has garnered so much respect is his encyclopedic
knowledge of popular music, from rock to jazz to blues to the more experimental
fringes. This is because McInnes is a musician himself. As stated, he started
playing guitar in high school. Adding bass to that, he has been playing for some
45 years. Humbly, he'll tell you that his playing is "more enthusiasm than
skill." But, after all of these years, he definitely holds his own on stage,
becoming a local musician of some renown. He played in college bands while
still in Illinois and even put together a jam band called the Bizarro Brothers
during his few years in Madison. After moving to San Diego and becoming a
fixture in the local scene, he co-founded Land Piranha in 1979. "In retrospect,
it seems like we were destined to be an opening act for the Penetrators,
because we must have played half our gigs with them!" (the Penetrators,
featuring Dan McClain, who would later morph into Country Dick Montana, listed
McInnes as a "spiritual advisor" on one of their albums.)
With Jim on
bass, Land Piranha "played '60s garage tunes like Paul Revere and the Raiders,
the Stooges, and MC5 with a little Cheap Trick and even Ritchie Blackmore's
Rainbow thrown in." Land Piranha gigged until 1981, often at the Spirit Club,
and were featured on a live compilation album titled Who's Listening?
After a
long hiatus, Jim joined Modern Rhythm in 1999, a band that had formed locally
in 1982 and included former members of Land Piranha, Burning Bridges, and
Claude Coma's band, the I.V.'s, as well as drummer Jack Pinney of Iron
Butterfly, Glory, Shames, and Jacks fame. McInnes inserted himself on rhythm
guitar with, as he puts it, "the occasional ham-fisted solo." Modern Rhythm, a
blues, swing, and boogie outfit, played their first gig with McInnes on the KGB
Skyshow parking lot stage in 1999, and went on to play the OMBAC Coming-Out
Party for six years (opening for the Farmers, the Smithereens, and even the
Platters) as well as Streetscene in 2001-2 and an estimated 120 other gigs
until McInnes left in 2006. Today, without a band, Jim continues to jam around
town and with friends. Still, he remains intrigued by "the art of playing in a
band where the whole is more than the sum of its parts."
McInnes is
also well known as a friend of the San Diego music scene and a connoisseur of
the outer, less-populated edges of popular music. "I know what it's like to be
in a band," Jim says. In 1974, there was zero exposure for San Diego musicians.
"I simply tried to breathe some life into the small but thriving music scene
here." As already mentioned, he spent 10 years mentoring both the KGB Homegrown
albums and later the on-air "Homegrown Hour." And, he's mc'd hundreds of local
shows, making friends with all of San Diego's rock royalty along the way. But,
he's also designed a number of eclectic radio programs too. From 1977's "Modern
World," which featured emerging punk, to "Off the Wall" to "Private Stock" to
"Rock n' Roll Museum," dedicated to early rock pioneers such as Jerry Lee
Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Link Wray, Jim has created Sunday night and lunch hour
formats that reach deep into both the blossoming underground and the forgotten
vaults of rock ‘n' roll. As he puts it, "I like turning people on to stuff I
like."
Another
trait that singles Jim McInnes out from the huddled masses of "air talent" is
that Jim is funny. Now, 100 percent of radio jocks try to be funny. There was a
jock once who went into hysterics every time he changed the word "rainbow" to
"rainblow," hysterics that culminated only after the traffic on Clarence Weed
Boulevard had been delivered. Despite the fact that DJs have been hanging
upside down, wearing underwear intended for the opposite gender, and riding
bicycles designed for circus chimps for decades, the pass rate on the Air Jock
Funny Test is less than one percent. This puts JM in the PM on the FM in an
elite category. Moreover, McInnes helped develop what could best be described
as KGB humor, the brand of comedy that KGB has put out from the News Brothers
of the 1970s to the KGB Chicken to Delaney and Prescott, then, Berger and
Prescott in the '80s to the number-one rated "Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw Show"
of today.
"We were
all listening to George Carlin, the Credibility Gap, Lenny Bruce, and
especially the Firesign Theater," McInnes remembers. The original News Brothers
- Brad Messer and Brent Seltzer - along with the program directors of the early
'70s were especially influenced by Firesign Theater. Jeff Prescott, whom
McInnes describes as an immense comedic talent, joined KGB in 1975, and a host of
other, now-legendary KGB personalities such as Gabriel Wisdom, Mike Berger,
Bill Hergonson, Erik Thompson, and the late John Leslie joined soon after. In
the 80s, Cookie "Chainsaw" Randolph and Chris Boyer would join the station,
forming a link between the 1970s talent and the morning show headed by Dave
Rickards and Shelly Dunn that has been a staple on KGB, more or less, since
1991.
"In fact,"
Jim continues, "the high-pitched sound bite ‘What!?!' that is still used during
KGB bits was sampled from a Firesign Theater skit, although I can't remember
which one." The humor consisted of creating non-sequiturs using soundbites from
comedy records, movies, and TV, and juxtaposing those with live bits and other
sampled material. Couple that with an uncanny eye for the topical and naturally
absurd, and KGB has developed a brand of humor that has stayed fresh for 35
years.
Jim also
describes this KGB humor as "intelligent comedy," which brings up a last point:
Jim McInnes is smart. He goes beyond the standard bob-and-weave, jive, jump,
and wail most often found on rock radio and is just as able to dive into his
brain and pull out a literary quote as quickly as a piece of rock trivia. He
learned to speak what he calls "kitchen Russian" long ago, which helped get him
around Moscow when he was sent there by KGB. He even understands a smattering
of "restaurant Japanese." He is well-read and likes to read. And, when he's not
writing traffic reports and newscasts, McInnes writes a monthly column in the
San Diego Troubadour. In the last ten years, he has even taken up oil painting.
It wasn't
always like this Jim is quick to add: "I was a poor student in high school,
poor grades, no social skills," McInnes says. But, a couple of teachers turned
that around. The result today is San Diego's thinking man's Rock Jock.
Beyond it
all, the guy who has interviewed and rubbed shoulders with Frank Zappa, Rush,
Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Yoko Ono, Julian Lennon, the Stones, Angus Young and
Bon Scott from AC/DC, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin, Ian
Anderson, Huey Lewis, Bob Seger, Kiss, Heart's Ann Wilson, ZZ Top, the Moody
Blues, Steve Allen, Doc Severinson, Ed McMahon, astronaut Scott Carpenter, Ray
Manzarek, and many others is truly a solid family man. Proudly, Jim recites the
McInnes family resume. His wife, Sandi Banister, whom he met in 1979 when she
was working for the competition - KPRI - is the promotions manager at Fox 5
(KSWB). His stepdaughter, Danyell has followed her parents into the media
business, working now at Cox Media after spending several years at KSON, KBEST,
KIFM, and KFMB Channel 8. Jim's two stepsons, however, did venture away from
the family industry. Dustin, also known as Dirty, who toured as a tech/backing
vocalist with Rocket from the Crypt and is a musician in his own right with his
band Beehive and the Barracudas, went on to become a high school teacher.
Oldest stepson Lee is a master sergeant in the U.S. Army, now serving in Iraq.
Still the
tug of 1970s FM radio is still there. As we conclude our interview by phone,
Jim apologizes because he needs to let out his dog, Zeppelin, now barking in
the background. Realizing the potential cliché of naming one's dog after
yesteryear's biggest rock band, Jim pauses
for a moment, then, justifies the canine's nomenclature by adding, "You see:
She's a Black Dog."