The Oppenheimer Report - 6/22/15

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and it’s now been about six years since mine passed away. I miss him a lot, and probably always will, but I am thankful he lived the long and productive life he did, and I am also thankful to have had him in my life for well over fifty years. Reading some of the Facebook posts yesterday, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of people mourning the loss of their fathers. This loss is especially painful if the father died before his time. Mine did not, but I still get sad sometimes when I think of something I would like to say to him. What I’m trying to do more and more is to remind myself of the happy memories I shared with him; and there were many. I told a story on Facebook about Dad taking me to an amusement park when I was four or five, to ride a kiddie train. After the ride was over, he came over to me expecting I don’t know, exhilaration, joy; something. He asked me if I liked the ride, and my response was “I could walk faster.” I was a wise ass at four, and he loved to tell that story about his son. I worked with him for about twenty years in the family business, learned a great deal from him, and we grew to be good friends. He and I were very different people, but somehow also very much alike. Shauna tells me I baby talk to the dog exactly the same way he used to talk to his dogs. Maybe it’s genetic. Anyhow, Dad I miss you, I love you, and wherever you are, stop telling that story about the kiddie train ride.  
 

Donald Trump for President of the United States? I’m sure Jon Stewart is having a field day with this. I’ve heard some people comment that Trump is a business man and might make a good political leader, but I am reminded what happened to Ross Perot when he entered the political arena. He was eaten alive. Trump will do what he has so successfully done throughout his life: entertain us with with his pomposity and arrogance. My guess is the big money will back Jeb Bush, and as a moderate Republican, he is probably the party’s best hope. That said, the Republican party lost me (and I think a lot of other voters) a long time ago when religious fundamentalists hijacked show. What concerns me most about the election process is that it is so inextricably tied to big money. It is about who has the biggest PAC fund, and I doubt that whoever becomes President will have as much impact on the state of the union as the next pop star or communication device. Speaking of the state of the union, race is again front and center in the news as a hateful young man named Dylann Root opened fire last week in a historic Charleston, South Carolina church, killing 9 African Americans. Nobody can deny that racism is still a huge problem in the United States, but this kind of extreme crime only serves to remind me how many loose cannons are running around packing heat and ready to explode. My heart goes out to the families of the victims, and my only hope is that the hatred that inspired this crime has the unintended effect of unifying the very people whom the killer hoped to divide.

Some of my old friends are coming out of the woodwork and taking time out of their busy days to comment on my Thursday night radio show at Hunters Bay Radio. Not only am I getting good suggestions for songs and songwriters with whom I am not familiar, but people are reminding me of long forgotten groups I used to follow. Clearly my show is weighted towards what I know, but my musical solar system is gradually being expanded by my listeners, and by other hosts at the station who have opened me up to new artists and songs I may never have otherwise heard. My evil plan is working. I sponge off your musical knowledge, and this in turn improves my songwriting. At least this is what I’d hoped would happen when I began hosting the show. It’s funny because, I’ve been listening to some of these songs for forty or in some cases over fifty years, but in many instances, I did not listen carefully to the lyrics, or I was mistaken about the writers. Someday I may do an entire show about songs wherein I misunderstood the lyrics. I wanted the show to be about the fact that I am trying to learn something myself. The listeners and the host learn together. The mandate of community radio is not simply to play music, but to provide useful information for the listeners. In an age where we are bombarded with too much news (much of it “soft” news), and “information” I find community radio to be an increasingly more acceptable medium through which to sift through this information. Indeed we are watching far less television these days, and the radio is on a good portion of the day. It always makes me smile when I walk in to a store in Huntsville and they are playing HBR. As my show evolves, I hope it will include more of your feedback and comments. At Shauna’s suggestion, I have begun to quote some lyrics I find noteworthy, and perhaps some time in the future, there will be brief interviews with some local songwriters. Thanks again to those who have listened and offered their input; I’m having a ball doing the show.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED