Banned From The Air

The next show we were scheduled to do was the WCCC Big Show, that I had booked a month earlier. I had managed to get some acetates of the newly mastered recordings, and since I had already been told I could count on major airplay support from a number of the stations that had played the first single...I thought it was time to let the Program Directors from those stations get a preview of the record they would be playing soon. I went to WCCC first, since I had developed a good relationship with their Program Director, after all, he had come to the recording sessions, and we were about to do another "Big Show" for the station...to follow up on a very successful first one. I was excited to let him hear the finished product, because he had loved what he had heard before any vocal tracks had been done. I made the appointment to see him at the station about a week before our scheduled concert date at the club. I got into his office, and we talked for a while about the night of the session, and how well things had turned out on this record. Then I played him the acetate. And I knew instantly that something was wrong...he had a strange look on his face. When it was over he looked at me and said..."Mike..there is no way I'm putting this on the air"....and I thought he was joking. He wasn't. After I regained my composure, I asked him why. He told me that the lyrics were too controversial, that I had named certain government agencies by name, and that the lyrics were just too hot to handle. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I pointed out that I had invited him to the sessions, and that he had loved the record...and I had gone forward with manufacturing based on that...and all he said was that it was too bad he hadn't heard the lyrics that night, or he would have told me this stuff then. I was devastated. This was going to kill our momentum. The public expected a follow up record...and it was overdue. A few years later, Don Henly came out with a song called "Smuggler's Blues" which basically said a lot of the same stuff this song did...but this was years earlier...and I wasn't Don Henly. Sometimes being "ahead of the wave" has its drawbacks...and this was definetely one of those times. I knew this could stop us dead in the water...and cripple the band...but there was nothing I could do about it.