Went thru the new stuff

[Kevin]

John, I just went thru all the new posting on the main page and this really is becoming a well-stocked website. The photos from Max and the Video are nice additions.

I kept seeing Joe Elliot in the pictures. I know that he is blind, but it amazes me how well he gets around and stays so informed on his WHAS show. Does he have everything converted to braile?

[bruiser]

Of course John can answer fro himself, but I asked Joe about that. He said he has some software that converts text into audio so he can listen to whatever website he desires. Wouldn't it be a hoot if it turns out that Joe Elliott isn't his real name?

[John Quincy]

I've had the pleasure of watching Joe Elliott work on the air twice. The first time was doing a DJ shift in the mid-80s at WAKY, and the second was, of course, doing his talk show at WHAS in July. It's amazing how well he took care of the mechanics both times. (He, like Terry Meiners, runs a board in the WHAS talk show studio with full control over his mike as well as the guests' mikes.)

He uses a text recognition program called JAWS to read stuff from computer (like e-mail). It reads the text out of a speaker using a robotic male voice. He also has a mechanical device called a Braille Writer (like a manual typewriter) he uses to type up weather forecasts and liners and such. While he was at WAKY there were Braille labels on all of the carts. Ed Phillips, another blind WAKY DJ, no doubt had everything labeled in Braille too.

Joe is his real first name, but like many other people in radio, he doesn't use his real last name on the air. I had it posted on the DJs page at one time, but he asked me to take it off (in a nice way).

[bruiser]

I know Joe's real name, as well as a couple of others on HAS who use kayfabe names.

[GilHerbigJr]

I have had the pleasure to watch Ed Phillips work when he was at Lite 106 and he never ceased to amaze me...He could have run circles around me in a studio.

[Travis]

I once covered the transmitter for Ed Phillips as he did a show on WAKY (I had one of those places out in California print me up an FCC license ;D) Just watching him work made me feel as if I was the one who had a visual impairment.

He knew the feel of the board, carts, records... everything. And with all that compression, it didn't matter where the levels were on the board's VU meter.

As a song entered its extro, Ed would feel the special wrist-watch he wore (for the current time) open the mic and do his thing. Ed Phillips, and those like him, make for some really incredible jocks.

By the way, I had to insert a hyphen in wrist-watch because ProBoard thinks I'm being naughty again. Who are the jokers that run this board, anyway?

[Dr Thompsons Ghost]

I too worked with Ed Phillips in the final days of WAV970, or WAV-Guh as we called it. Ed was indeed a very phenomenal individual. He had a braille writer that he would type up his stuff on. The person that would be on before ED had a mini cassette recorder and we would have to record the commercial numbers into it so he could pick out the spots he needed.

Ed, much like most of us, was really in to DX and short wave listening (DX being distance, picking up AM stations that were really far away.) Well ED was able to troubleshoot and solder some of these radios he used. Needless to say this astounded me. He said he could feel components and figure out what they were and could trace them through in his mind. He said he might occasionally burn a finger or two while soldering but he was able to change out components and the like.

Of course there was the time too that ED got me in the back with a piping hot cup of coffee. I was standing in the hallway talking to someone and felt this searing pain shoot down my back. I screamed in agony and turned around and ED said, "Oh, sorry I didn't see you standing there." Well, I was then laughing too hard to be po'd, but man that coffee was hot!