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The Commercials Radio Loved to Hate
 Posted
1/12/2010 9:02:00 AM
“Smokin’ US-30 Dragstrip . . . where the great ones ride!” Simple words on a screen don’t do justice to the tag line of that (in)famous commercial. If you listened to WLS or Super CFL as I did in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll never forget the turbo-charged voice of Jan Gabriel who, with the help of some technical wizardry, made that commercial blast its way out of your transistor radio.
Jan Gabriel died this past Sunday at the age of 69. There’s a wonderful obituary on him at ChicagolandRadioandMedia.com. For five decades he worked as a disc jockey, TV personality and executive of an ad agency. But he’s best known for his in-your-face US-30 Dragstrip commercials, a concept he conceived himself.
As memorable as they were, those commercials were held up by station management everywhere I’ve ever worked as examples of what NOT to do in a commercial. In fact, every boss I’ve had reviled them. Whenever a client submitted a commercial produced in that style for us to put on the air, I was ordered to do two things: a) request that the client give us a different commercial to run; and, if they didn’t, then b) bury it in the middle of a commercial break so it wouldn’t butt up against the jocks’ voices and result in a jarring transition to the listeners’ ears.
It’s also ironic that a commercial campaign so universally despised by station management had such staying power. If you heard it once, you remembered it for life, as I’m sure many of you do. It’s like little Timmy’s nails-on-a-chalkboard voice, calling out “Extra, extra, read all about it” for Long Chevrolet. Do you remember that series? There’s another commercial high on the annoyance scale that will live on forever.
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Rick O'Dell
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Rick, Back before you left the other station I asked about a song by Etta James that caught my attention, Damn Your Eyes. If you can find it and play it I would like the listners comments on it. There is a web site that a friend of mine found it on.
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Posted By
Jim Vece
On
7/24/2010 12:02:37 AM
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Boy, I missed you like crazy!!!
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Posted By
Dorothy
On
2/9/2010 11:39:16 AM
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Welcome back Rick, long over due.No need to reply just keep jamming the hits.
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Posted By
Sheila Gale
On
1/20/2010 10:29:56 AM
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Rick,
I'll bet you're savvy enough to remember "The Conception Corporation" a wanna be Firesign Theatre group who parodied the US 30 spots.
"...See Arnie "The Farmer" Sedgewick set his nostril hairs on fire and drive to Milwaukee..."
I think I still have their album, "A Pause in the Disaster" somewhere.
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Posted By
Electro Voice 676
On
1/16/2010 6:59:57 PM
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