Living On Air (13 page)

Ann picked up JoBee at her house and the two of them drove together to meet up with me. This was the exact time of my life when I was working all over town, at several studios, production companies, and networks where Danny used to work. It was Don LaFontaine’s advice that gave me the courage to go after new jobs. But I always thought Danny had something to do with landing them. I chalked it up to some sort of supernatural intervention from D Squared. Now that JoBee had dropped this bomb on me, I knew it must be true. There wasn’t any other way we would have been able to get into some of those places, unless I worked there, too.

We met up at a park, near one of the networks. I had no doubt Danny probably spent some time smoking his precious pipe, sitting at one of the picnic tables under a tree in that park. JoBee pulled out the wood box with Danny’s remains and we stared at it for a moment. I don’t think any of us wanted to make the first move. JoBee opened it up and I carefully began to pour Danny’s ashes into our coffee cups. We needed a little practice, so we started by leaving a little bit of Danny here and there outside in the park. Once that was done, we headed over to the studio.

We walked in through the gate where we chatted with the guard, carefully setting our official Danny Dark “coffee cups” on the counter top. There was no turning back now. The guard let us pass and wished us well. As we walked through the door we began to spread Danny everywhere. Some of him ended in his old parking space, some of Danny went into the engineering area, some in one of the sound stages. But my favorite spot was in the stairwell, on the way to the audio rooms. That’s where Danny came in and out of his recording sessions so many days of his life. That’s where I went to work now, too, up and down those exact same stairs. Everywhere Danny went, that’s where we took him on his last visit.

We had one moment of panic, when we thought we were being followed. Ann saw a security guard walking behind us, and when we turned the corner, he turned the corner. We went through a door, he went through the door. Ann broke out in a sweat and JoBee was as pale as the cup in her hand. I was about to lose it when we turned right and he turned left. We were safe to finish the job but after that scare we left in a hurry.

For the rest of my time at that network, whenever I took those stairs to the audio rooms, I would tip my imaginary hat to Danny and say, “Hey Danny, how ya doin’?” On my way out, at the end of the day, I’d say, “See you tomorrow, D-Squared.”

Danny was a legend, and he got a legendary send-off. We spread his ashes all over that fucking place.

Back when I first met Danny and we became close, it was at a turning point in his life. Danny’s reign as one of the most accomplished voice-over talents in television was just about to come to an end. He had been one of the most recognizable voices on network TV when gradually, the calls stopped coming. It wasn’t just the drop in income that saddened him, it was the loss of his identity as a network talent as well. The calls for commercials stopped coming too. It’s inevitable; it’s the nature of most every business. You’re up, then you’re down. Hopefully, you find your way back up again.

I caught Danny at a time when he was healing from the slipping away of his career. Yet even though he felt abandoned, he still had great laughter and love in his personal life. He pushed past the sadness to embrace the joy. Danny and JoBee traveled the world, he took up piano lessons, played his trumpet, did whatever he wanted to do, whenever he had the thought. That’s the gift he gave me. His most important piece of advice. No matter what is going on in your life, you should always make time for a candy party.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE WELCOME…

The first time I ever announced a live television show, I nearly blew it. It was 1996 and I just got hired to work on the VH1 Honors, broadcasting live from the Universal Amphitheater, in Los Angeles. When I walked in for rehearsal, I guess I expected the booth to be someplace special, right next to the stage, in a trailer, or even at the back of the theater. But that’s not where I ended up. I was UNDER the stage, in the basement of the amphitheater. The stage manager led me down a set of dark, dreary, cement stairs into the bowels of the building. Welcome to show business, I thought.

At the bottom of the steps we entered a vast room that looked like a warehouse. We walked past electrical panels and I could see ductwork snaking around everywhere. Planted smack in the middle of all that emptiness was a bunch of scaffolding, holding up thick drapes to create a makeshift booth. Inside my little room was a folding table, with a small television set, headphones, a microphone, and a box with a couple of buttons on it. This was not the glamorous setup I had expected for something called the VH1 Honors.

Just then the rehearsal started upstairs, with the unmistakable thumping of a rock band performing on stage, right above our heads. Huge equipment was moved onto and then off of the stage. It was loud! The equipment rumbled above me and the percussive beat of the rock bands shook the ceiling and rattled my little table. The only other time I had a similar shaking experience was live on the air at KIIS-FM when an earthquake hit at the exact same time I was playing the song “Causing a Commotion” by Madonna.

The stage manager showed me how the control box worked. That’s what I would use to communicate with the director of the show, a nice guy named Dan Appel. One button turned the microphone on and off and the other one would allow me to talk to Dan. If I had a question, all I had to do was push the button to reach him in the truck outside where the crew was set up. There were also two volume-control knobs, one for the programming audio in my ear, and one to control the volume of the director’s talkback and all the other myriad of sounds coming from the truck, from the camera people, lighting people, and stage managers. I learned quickly there is a lot of chatter and surprisingly a lot of yelling going on in your ear all during a live show.

Once the show started, everything was going smoothly. For me there’s nothing better than following along in my own fat, three-ring binder, stuffed with the script of a live show, and being a page or two away from a live-announce moment. It’s exciting, it’s fast-paced, and everyone is pumped. I heard the director say, “Item 46 is next. Joe, that’s you. We have a live announce coming out of the band and introducing Cameron Diaz.” I clicked my talkback mic and said, “Got it.”

As the band finished its number, applause broke out in the house, when I heard in my headphones from the director, “Ready announce…annnnd cue announce.” That’s my cue. I tapped the button for the microphone. The button lit up, and opened my mic into the auditorium, live on the air. Loud and proud I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the…”

Suddenly I heard director Dan Appel say, “No, no, no, no…stop…stop.” I froze. I stopped talking. Then I heard Dan say, “Joe, what are you doing? Why the fuck did you stop talking??? GO GO GO GO.”

I immediately picked up where I left off and introduced Cameron Diaz.

That’s when I learned a very important lesson about live announcing. All those other voices in your ear, the camera folks, lighting, stage manager, who the hell knows who else, the director communicates with all of them, and they are all on the same talk-back channel that he uses for the announcer. Me. On my first live-announce gig. When he said, “No, no, no, no…stop, stop,” he wasn’t talking to me, he was shouting at a cameraman who was moving in the wrong direction.

From that moment on, I decided if I ever announced another live show, when the director says, “ready announce…cue announce,” I would turn DOWN the volume of the truck, start reading the script, and just keep going. My thinking was, if the director says CUE ANNOUNCE…I’m gonna go announce and nothing will ever stop me again. Ever. If they made a mistake in cuing me, too bad. I’m taking the ball down the field and I’m scoring a touchdown even if I’m running the wrong way.

After that show I did get plenty of other live announcing jobs. [
Click Here
] I was the hot sound of the moment and the offers kept rolling in, “Vanessa Williams and Friends,” “Elton John, Live,” and the most fun of all, “The Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.” My biggest supporter in the world of live TV shows was the brilliant producer/director Ken Ehrlich. My guess is that Ken has produced more shows, and the best shows, about music than anyone else, at any time, anywhere. I think he personally knows every rock star, past and present, and just about every actor, singer, and celebrity on the planet. He is incomparable, the coolest cat around at what he does. No one puts on a show like Ken.

The very first “Blockbuster Entertainment Awards” went on the air in 1997, from the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. To this day I still think it was the most exciting of all the awards shows because it included stars from movies, television, and music. There was every big name in the world appearing on that one stage. Best of all, my announce booth was not UNDER the stage, anymore. It was right smack-dab in the middle of all the action, backstage.

The way the Pantages Theater was set up, when you walked off stage, you went down a couple of steps, into an open area with a couple of hallways leading to about 25 or 30 dressing rooms. My booth was one of those dressing rooms, right in the center of everything and everyone, including John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Warren Beatty, Jim Carrey, Courteney Cox, Russell Crowe, Harrison Ford, Tom Green, Kate Hudson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Keanu Reeves, Ben Stiller, Clooney, Crystal, Costner, Cube (as in Ice), Jamie Lee Curtis, the list went on and on and on. It was like a night of a thousand stars, with all of those people crisscrossing from make-up room
to dressing room, from dressing room to the green room where the producers set up food and drinks, from the green room to the stage, this way and that way, everyone stopped to chat with one another. I felt like I was hanging out by my locker in between classes, if my high school happened to be Hollywood High.

With all of those people standing around, the last thing I wanted to do was shut myself off from the fun. I love to be in on the action, so what did I do? I left my dressing room door/voice-over booth wide open. Everybody who walked off that stage could see me and hear me doing my live announcing thing. They’d poke their head in and say, “You’re kidding! You’re live on the air from right HERE?” I got to meet everyone. It was a blast. Tom Hanks called out to Harrison Ford, “Do you see this guy? He’s got the best gig ever. Joe, how can I get into this line of work?” I told him I thought his career was going just fine. The other cool thing for me was, the show didn’t have a host, so as the announcer, I introduced absolutely everything that happened on stage.

As the show got into its second and third year, Ken let me bring my family, Ann, Dayna, and Alex, and a bunch of other people, too. One year my brother Henry and sister-in-law Eileen came out from Connecticut to go to the show with our friends Peter and Patti Black. We hired a limo to take us back and forth and on the way home, in true Hollywood style, stopped off at In ’N Out Burger for dinner to cap off the night.

If you’re lucky enough to be asked back to voice the same live show, sometimes the producer will throw in a couple of extra perks. Especially if the salary stays the same, at least you can up the ante with some fringe benefits. After the first few years, I
was able to get all-access passes for Dayna and Alex. If you think I was having fun backstage, my kids had the run of the house, and brought their friends with them, too. Dayna sat in the front row when ’N Sync rehearsed a number for one of the shows, then ran backstage during the live broadcast for a picture with Justin Timberlake. Alex had his best friend Christopher Moore with him one year when the cast of “Charlie’s Angels” walked off stage. The boys got a photo with Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, and Cameron Diaz crouching down to be at the same height as the two 12-year-olds. Cameron Diaz had her arm draped around Alex with her head on his shoulder. Golden.

The most fun I ever had working would probably be those Blockbuster Entertainment shows. It was a party. Loose, loud, and lively. The audience was encouraged to scream and shout out to the stars. When the actors and singers walked onto the stage, they were greeted with deafening roars from the crowd. They would look out in amazement at that beautiful theater, all the way up to the elaborate gold balconies high above the stage. I could actually see them on camera mouth the word “WOW.”

I had several great years working that show when it all came to an end in 2001. That’s when Blockbuster pulled the plug on its live television show. I think security concerns after 9/11 made it a tough show to produce. Also, the Blockbuster company was probably just beginning its downward slide about that time. New technology had already started to take over the movie rental business, like satellite TV and Netflix. Boy, do I miss those shows. But I wasn’t done yet. Turned out I was just getting started in the live-announce business.

It was February 2000 when Ken hired me to say the following
words, “Live from Los Angeles, welcome to music’s biggest night!” That was my very first Grammy Awards show. Talk about the big time, that show is seen around the world in I don’t know how many countries. Even today, just thinking about it puts a smile on my face. The host that year was Rosie O’Donnell. I was back for two more years after that when Jon Stewart hosted both of those shows. During that time the Grammys were broadcast from three different theaters, first the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, then Staples Center, and finally the new Nokia Theater. For all three of those shows the announce booth was in the audience, in a small room at the back of the theater.

Working on the Grammys was such a rush of adrenaline. [
Click Here
] I still left my door open, something I learned doing the Blockbuster shows. During the telecast when I didn’t have anything to say, I wandered out into the aisle to talk to people in the audience. No more running backstage, though. Times had changed. I don’t think I had ever before seen such tight security at a television show. It was a privilege to be part of a combined effort of hundreds of professionals working together for weeks and weeks of planning, for that one moment to pull it all off, LIVE. Thank you, Ken. Working for you is an honor, my own lifetime achievement award.

All the time I was announcing those live shows, I was still doing promos, as well. Remember when I was first hired at FOX? Bob and Lew picked me to voice the promos for the Primetime Emmy Awards. That was back in 1988. Seventeen years later, I was the live announcer for the actual Emmy broadcast. That didn’t take too long, did it? The first year, 2005, Ellen DeGeneres was the host, at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown L.A., then I
did the show when five reality stars hosted, followed by my most recent Emmy gig, with Conan O’Brien. Conan was just gearing up for his move from New York to Los Angeles to take over the “Tonight Show” from Jay Leno. We all know how that ended up. But at the time we were doing the Emmys, that move was still in the future for Conan and I had a lot of fun chatting with him during rehearsals about what his life would be like in L.A. I mentioned to him that he didn’t meet the height restriction for late-night hosts in Los Angeles, citing the many low bridges and tree-covered streets around town. He told me not to worry, that NBC had ordered he be shortened upon crossing the state line.

On most of the bigger live shows, like the Grammys and the Emmys, the announcer has his or her own script assistant by their side, in the booth. That’s a big help when it comes to pronouncing some of the names of the winners. I couldn’t exactly turn off the microphone, or the transmitter, like I did when I worked at WWCO in Connecticut, just because I wasn’t sure how to pronounce the winner of best polka album.

Walking the red carpet at those events was an unexpected thrill, especially at the Emmys.
[Click Here
] [
Click Here
] There are actually two carpets at most award shows. One is for the nominees and big-name stars, and the other one is for ticket holders, us common people. Of course I snuck onto the major one as often as possible, walking the carpet at least two or three times at each event. Ann’s sister Amy went with us to the show when Ellen DeGeneres hosted, along with our friends Patti and Deb Lloyd. Come to think of it, Patti has been to quite a few of my live-announcing jobs. They walked the carpet, too. We taped the pre-show back home and there they were, in the background, watching all the celebrities
getting interviewed. They looked beautiful.

Working on live shows, like most other voice-over work, was mainly a male-dominated industry until just a few years go. I give a lot of credit to Randy Thomas, one of the best female voices in the business, for crashing through that glass ceiling. Randy has announced the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys. Because of her success, and a change in thinking by producers, just about every live show on television these days has a female announcer. Voice-over artists like Melissa Disney, Ellen K, and Cedering Fox have taken over all of the big live events. Even if that means less work for me, I am happy to see the transformation. It’s about time.

One of the most famous live-show announcers ever is the incomparable Don Pardo. Most people my age remember him from game shows but my own kids know him from “Saturday Night Live,” where he is still part of that iconic introduction, “Liiiiiive from New Yoirk, it’s Saturday Night Looooiiiiive!” I actually met Don a long time ago when I was 19 years old. It happened in New York City, when a friend of mine from WWCO radio got tickets to see the taping of a game show called “Winning Streak.” My buddy, Fred Landau, was a sports reporter at C-O and he was auditioning to be a contestant. When I heard that Don Pardo was the announcer for “Winning Streak,” I knew I had to see it first-hand. I was more interested in working ON a show, rather than being a contestant IN a show. Fred was from New Jersey and had been to New York plenty of times. I had only been to Manhattan one other time in my entire life. I was happy to let Fred lead the way.