Abstract
This interview was conducted as part of Cleveland State University's 50th anniversary commemoration. Ed Ferenc is a lifelong Clevelander. Born on the city's east side, Ferenc moved Seven Hills where he attended Shiloh Junior High and Normandy High School. Ferenc initially enrolled at CSU as an Electrical Engineering student but soon switched his major to Communications. He was part of the campus radio station WCSU and began working at WMMS while still a student at Cleveland State. At WMMS Ferenc would ultimately team up with co-host Jeff Kinzbach as part of the wildly popular "Jeff and Flash Morning Show." In this interview Ferenc relates many of the experiences he had as part of the radio station at CSU and traces how his career developed at WMMS. He describes how his friendship with Kinzbach developed and talks about the show in depth. Among other things he discusses different segments from the show, The World Series of Rock, the relationship between WMMS and the Agora, grassroots efforts to bring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Cleveland, and the state of radio today. Of particular interest is Ferenc's description of how the foundation of WMMS was largely CSU with alums like Kid Leo, Matt The Cat, Betty Korvan, Larry Bole, and himself working at the station during its early years.
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Interviewee
Ferenc, Ed (interviewee)
Interviewer
Wickens, Joe (interviewer)
Project
CSU at 50
Date
8-6-2014
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
71 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Ed Ferenc Interview, 06 August 2014" (2014). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 500020.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/687
Transcript
Joseph Wickens [00:00:01] This is Joseph Wickens. I am here with the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities, conducting this interview as part of Cleveland State University’s 50th anniversary commemoration project. I’m here with– You can introduce yourself.
Ed Ferenc [00:00:13] Ed Flash Ferenc. And middle name is Flash. I can get into that a little bit later in the show, but the last name is Ference. F as in Frank, -E-R-E-N-C. Today’s date is August 6, 2014.
Joseph Wickens [00:00:31] Alright, maybe we could start off by getting a little bit of your early life and background where you were born and raised.
Ed Ferenc [00:00:36] Okay, well, I’m a lifelong Clevelander. I was born on the city’s east side, grew up right below the old John Adams High School, which was since rebuilt. The address was 101202 Greenwich Avenue. I remember that like it was yesterday. I was born in 1953, part of the Baby Boom generation. Went to Paul Revere Elementary School, then went on to Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was on Aetna Road. And in the 7th grade — the year was 1965 — my parents decided to move to the southwest side to a place in Seven Hills. They purchased a ranch home, and I transferred to the public schools at the time, went to Hillside Junior High school and, for the first year, and then they built a new junior high. At the time, they didn’t call them middle schools. Then I went to Shiloh on Grantwood, and then Normandy High School was being built. You have to understand, this is late sixties. There was a population boom in Parma. They were part of the Parma school system, Seven Hills, Parma, and Parma Heights. And they had Parma High and Valley Forge High. And they decided to build a third one. So for 10th grade – it was 10th, 11th, and 12th – I went to Normandy High School. Normandy, you have to understand, too, what was going on. This was a music revolution. You had the Beatles, you had the progressive revolution with Led Zeppelin, a lot of new artists. And everybody was into music and rock and roll, and I was certainly no exception at Normandy High School. I got interested– I was part of the audio-visual department. That was one of my side projects. I was kind of an electronic geek. And in fact, when I was about 14 or 15 years of age, I bought a wireless transmitter. In fact, it was one of these kits. There was a company called the Heathkit, and they did electronic devices. And there was Lafayette Electronics and Olson Electronics. There were a lot of these stores where they [sold] transistor radios. I can build this stuff. This was top 40 radio. And at that time, I was intrigued by radio and what I did, we, a couple of friends in the neighborhood, we built a little 500-milliwatt radio station in my basement. And I would ride around on my bicycle, make recordings of myself, and ride around the neighborhood and listen. I mean, this is what I did. And I’d go see the disc jockeys when they did any remote appearances. WIXY 1260 was the popular station back then, and I just watched them for hours. So getting back to Normandy High School, that kind of got me into the morning announcements, and I was the voice of the morning announcements. In fact, they had a call letters, WPOP, the Pride of Parma. That was it. That was my first radio experience. And the senior class – I did the morning announcements – told everybody what was going on. If there was anything newsworthy to talk about, I did it. And graduated from Normandy, 1971. Went right to Cleveland State. My parents, very traditional parents, they really didn’t even want me to go away to school. And college was very affordable then. In fact, this is a funny little tidbit here. I worked part-time from the age of 16 to 18 at McDonald’s in Parma on Broadview and Snow Roads. And minimum wage at that time was a buck 30 an hour. I saved enough money when I left there two years later, I got myself up to a buck 70 an hour. But I saved enough money to afford to go to Cleveland State for four years. You have to understand, Cleveland State at the time was $230 a quarter. So you multiply that times three, unless you wanted to go summer. I didn’t want to go summer school. I wanted to work. So that’s what, $690 a year? Say 700 a year times four. Under $3,000, you can get a four year degree, which I, which I did. I have to say this, though. I didn’t start out– When I went to Cleveland State, I didn’t think radio was going to be my profession. It was a hobby. I decided to go into electrical engineering, and I was kind of a science geek, because I was telling you about the radio transmitters and all the stuff that I was reading, Popular Electronics, Popular Mechanics, and things like that. It was only a natural thing to get into the electronics part of it and go into engineering. After a couple of quarters of calculus, I didn’t think it was fun anymore. And I really enjoyed radio at that point. It wasn’t immediately when I went to Cleveland State. It was about a quarter after. It was the winter quarter of 1972, and joined the campus radio station. Now, the campus radio station was really not an on air radio station at the time. It was called WCSU, and it was a glorified public address system. The station was located in Stilwell Hall, which I think is torn down now. [Stilwell Hall still stands as Fenn Hall.] And there was four stories. It was on the fourth floor. There was physics rooms up there, too. They had labs up there, and they carved out this little area for a radio station, and they had a control board, mics. It was pretty nice. And all it did was broadcast to the cafeteria. That was it. At that time, I met some rather interesting people. Kid Leo was the first person. Well, he wasn’t Kid Leo at the time. His name was Leo. He eventually became that name. There were a group of us that just kind of clicked right away. Matt the Cat was another one. Betty Korvan came by. There was another fellow by the name of Larry Bole, who we were all, within a year’s time, we were doing shows. We were hanging out together. We were having a good time. I’m still continuing my education at Cleveland State, and some opportunity came up. I remember the day like it was yesterday. There was a phone call to the radio station. I just happened to be at the desk, the front desk, answering the phone, and on the other side was the news director of WHK. And what had happened? WHK and WMMS were sister stations. They were recently purchased by a company called Malrite Communications. The deal happened in December of 1972, and in 1973, they were taking over the facilities. When a new owner comes to town, a lot of heads roll. Typically, it’s like any corporation. There’s some people, there’s some bad blood, and there’s some new life coming in. They’re going to change this, they’re going to change that. They want to make it more efficient. I could go on. So a number of people left, some of them voluntarily, many of them involuntarily, and they needed some help in the newsroom. So they said, you know, we’ve got an opening here. It’s $2 an hour. If you want to come by, we need you to make some phone calls in the newsroom. And they had a pretty active newsroom. WHK, they had about seven or eight people. They had a city hall reporter. They were, they were a viable force when it comes to news. So I pretty much got in my Volkswagen Beetle, zipped down to 50th and Euclid – they were in a different location back then – and got in there, did the interview on a Friday afternoon. I started working on Monday, and I was working primarily for just a couple hours in the morning or early morning, like from five to eight, five to nine in the morning, so I could still go to school. That was the beauty of it. I was just making phone calls, writing some news copy, learning on the job. And I have to tell you this. At that time, I already switched my major to communications. I decided this engineering thing is just not for me. I’m going to go into communications, and I’m going to go in that head first, and I’m going to do what I can with it. So that was in February of 1973. Got a job there and got a few more hours on weekends. I was what they call a board op. Just running the board overnight. And slowly but surely, MMS, WMMS, the sister station, which I had my eye on all the time. I figured if I can get my foot in the door, that’s the station I really want to be in. They were developing, and they needed somebody to write some news for them in the morning. Denny Sanders was the morning show personality, and it was just what they called rip and read whatever the AP or UPI wire had. They would rip it off, but a lot of times it needed some editing, things of that nature. And I said, well, I’ll be happy to write for you. And I started writing the news, and he would read it one day. This is kind of funny. I was on the phone trying to get confirmation on a story, and I was waiting and waiting and waiting. And I’m looking at the clock and saying, man, he’s gonna go on the air with the news. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. I came in there and the records, this is records back, okay? I’m dating myself. The record is fading out, and Denny’s getting all nervous. And I run into the newsroom with the copy in my hand, and he goes, there’s Ed Ferenc. He just flashed in. Oh, that’s your name. I’m going to call you Ed Flash Ferenc, because you just flashed in here with the, with the latest news. And that’s how I got my name. It’s kind of funny. He kept crediting me. The news is prepared by Ed Flash Ferenc. And it got to the point where people were saying, who is this guy? How come we don’t hear him on the air? And at that point, I was only, what, 20 years old? You often wonder when you’re ready to go on the air. I was behind the scenes. I was working at it. The program director, John Chaffee, said, well, why don’t you come up with a tape? Why don’t you record something? Give me what they call an air check. And I submitted it, and he said, hey, you know what? You sound pretty good. I think this will be a good thing. So, January 1974, less than a year after I walked into that radio station, I was on the air, and I had a full-time job. It was a member– I was full-time on the air. Benefits, everything. I was a member of the union. They were the American Federation of TV Radio Artists, AFTRA, which has since merged with SAG. I’m still a member of that union today, and I was– It was a dream come true. Let me put it that way. It was a dream come true. I was, like, on the station that I wanted to be. Never thought I’d be on it in 20 years of age. And it was– Still had a lot of potential. We all knew it. A lot of the people that I mentioned that worked at Cleveland State found their way to MMS. Kid Leo was actually the first one, and then I was, I think, second, and then Matt and then Betty through it, the next two to three years, there were part-time openings, and they all kind of just– And there were stories written about it, too. It’s like, what’s this place? CSU grilling, you know, becoming a hotbed for the broadcast community. And the funny part about it, there was– This was not a class. This was a– This was a part-time activity. Cleveland, the radio station was just a part-time activity. It was not like I was going to radio school or anything like that. It was just a glorified PA system with a bunch of people that struck at the right time, at the right place.
Joseph Wickens [00:13:17] Who sort of organized the radio station and what was sort of like the format of the program?
Ed Ferenc [00:13:23] It was all over the road. I mean, it was, I think for the most part, it was what we call a progressive– It was album-oriented rock. Everybody did different show. We had a jazz show, they had a classical show, and people could say just about anything they wanted. Keep in mind, you’re not on the air. It’s a PA system. You could do– I mean, there was no swearing or anything like that involved comedy. There was a group called Fire Sign Theater with funny comedy and stuff. A lot of shtick, produce up funny commercials and stuff. Like, it was, it was– I think there was an advisor, a faculty advisor to the station. There was– It was kind of run like a, like a– You had a– You had certain hours to fill. People had to come in there and do their show. I mean, it was run very professionally. There was a general manager and a program director. Nothing on promotions or anything like that. There’s nothing to promote. But it was a well-run radio station. It just happened to be a college radio station that just broadcast in Stilwell cafeteria. That’s all. Now there were other radio stations on the air. I believe Case Western had one, John Carroll had one. And not a big signal or anything like that, but it served its purpose, certainly. And it was a training ground for a group of people that I don’t think anybody thought that they’d all end up at the same radio station. It just so we often say it was the right place at the right time. We got there when the station was sold, they needed people. Leo was the first, actually to be hired myself, then Matt the Cat, then Betty Korvan. Betty was a philosophy major. Leo, I don’t know exactly what. I think Leo had– He was really brilliant in math and science and engineering. Betty, I mentioned philosophy. Larry Bole, he did a show. He ended up in the record business. I don’t know exactly what his degree was in. And it was like, wow, we’re here. We’re all together doing it. And at that time – we’re talking mid seventies – the station started to really catapult into what it became. I often say that it just had a solid foundation because most of the people were from Cleveland. It’s so important that you have a good foundation to build on. People that were on that radio station knew the city. They knew the streets. They knew how to pronounce the names of the streets. A lot of people in radio, they come from another municipality. They don’t even know how to pronounce Cuyahoga or Elyria. I mean, you got all these old Indian names and we used to laugh at them. We often– And you know, the other part of this, too, it was we all use our own names. You often hear what was really big. You had this, like, I’m not gonna slight them or anything. Tom Kent or Doug Williams or something. You know, where they were kind of a generic name. Chuck Collins, names like that. Ed Ferenc is not what you call a radio name, nor is Jeff Kinzbach. Leo’s name is Travagliante, but he went with Kid Leo. Matt is Matt Lapczynski, but it was Matt the Cat. I mean, they did have a little fun with it. And we were Jeff and Flash in the morning, but our names, we kept our full names. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that that’s what made MMS so special. We celebrated the ethnic diversity in Cleveland. You know, if you’re Russian or Polish or Irish, Hungarian people knew that. And so it’s probably that’s what made it so unique, I think, or one of the many things that made it so unique. You got a question?
Joseph Wickens [00:17:46] You just mentioned Jeff Kinzbach, and he was your longtime co-host.
Ed Ferenc [00:17:50] Yeah.
Joseph Wickens [00:17:51] He wasn’t one of the people that you mentioned at Cleveland State because he didn’t attend. How did that whole– How did you two meet and how did that friendship develop, I guess?
Ed Ferenc [00:17:57] Well, I started in February of ’73. He came about April. He came about two months later. Jeff grew up in Lakewood. He went to Lakewood High School. He didn’t finish because he got a job. Well, he did finish Lakewood High School. I take that back. He did work at WIXY 1260, the station that I idolized. He answered the phones there. In fact, he answered the phones for Larry Morrow, who is a legendary broadcaster in Cleveland, author of a book about himself, too. But Jeff got a gig in Michigan. He worked at– In fact, he worked at the old CKLW for a little bit in a radio station. I think it was in Saginaw or Flint, WCAR. But he got an opportunity. He was 18 years old, and he moved up there and he was having fun. They needed a production director at MMS, and he applied for the job because it’s his hometown. So he came in April of ’73, and we became friends on weekends. And I was telling you earlier about being the board op on the weekend. I did the news in the morning. His schedule was completely opposite of mine. He’d come in about noon and work till late at night, and I’d be there early morning. But on weekends, he would be like a fill in on a Saturday night show or an overnight show, and I’d be on WHK running the board. He’d be on MMS. We knew each other. We hung out with each other. Eventually, when I became full-time, we became friends because he was in production, I was in news. What had happened, how we got together is an interesting story. The first person, when I went on the air, her name was Debbie Ullman. And Debbie was very progressive, lived in Kent, more folksy-oriented. The time she was there for about a year. Not a strong morning personality. I don’t want to be critical, but what had happened? I don’t know if they were thinking of moving her out, but she got into a car accident and, the worst thing that could happen to a broadcaster, her head hit the windshield and her jaw was smashed. She had her jaw wired shut. And she was out for a while and she never really came back. I mean, it was a long time healing, and they had to move on. They hired a fellow by the name of Charlie Kendall out of Boston. And Charlie was there. We’re talking 1975, great jock, great set of pipes. He did a lot. He ended up doing national TV and radio spots. He has since retired. I think he retired about a year ago, and he was there for about a year. Charlie was a great guy, a great personality. Loved the ladies. The ladies loved him. And he loved a party to the point when 6:00 came around, they couldn’t find Charlie to do the radio show. So I’m over there. The shows were like 2 to 6 in the morning, 6 to 10, 10 to 2. So there were four-hour shifts and 6:30 or so, he’s still not around. Well, what they did, they’d contact Jeff. Jeff moved back to Lakewood, and Lakewood was 15 minutes away. In the morning, you just go down the Shoreway. So if Charlie wasn’t there, he’d get a phone call. And two or three times a week he would get that phone call. Well, it got to the point where Charlie said, well, they had enough of Charlie. And he went on. And the owner of the radio station, Milt Maltz, kind of liked what we sounded like because he was filling in and it was Jeff Kinzbach and Ed Flash Ferenc with the news. And it started to evolve. So December 26, 1976, Jeff and Flash was born. It was the day after Christmas, or maybe it was the 27th one of those days. It was right after Christmas. They basically– It was the Jeff and Flash show. We had a way to go. The ratings– When I first worked at the radio station that morning show with Debbie Allman had like a two share, and Charlie brought it up to probably four or five, got things really going there, and we started to gel ’78, ’79. The top morning show personality at the time was Gary Dee, who worked at we and eventually across the hall from us at WHK because they couldn’t afford him anymore. But Gary Dee was what they call a shock jock, very popular for his day and just electrified listeners. It was an all talk show, really, but it got old, like a lot of things do, probably. It was the late seventies, early eighties. We really, really started taking off, and the show started taking on some characters. We had a janitor by the name of Kenny Clean who joined the show. Len Goldberg, who was the voice of the station, became a part of the show. We added an astrologer. We had sports. We started doing traffic reports. It became what we call a full-service morning show. Ruby Cheeks came on in, I would say about ’84, ’85. I think that’s probably what we peaked in the mid eighties, I told you it was a two share when we started. It became a 20. The ratings were ten times what they were in the mid seventies in a ten-year– And to give you, to show dominance in the market, Lanigan was the other personality in town, and he had a sixth share, and that was second place. We had a 20 for number one and a six for number two. There was no touching us. It was just full– I mean, the governor at the time was Celeste. He would listen to the show. We’ve had national comedian Sam Kinison for one. We had both of them in the studio at one time. Sam Kinison, the screaming comedian and the governor of the state of Ohio the day after he got reelected in 1986. It was a revolving door of rock stars, of governors, of you name it. Anything that was happening in Cleveland was happening in that morning show. We often called it the soundtrack of the city. And it was, it really was. It was, it was, it was– People wanted to get on this show. The advertisers, we were sold out. We were getting five, $600 for a commercial, which is unheard of today.
Joseph Wickens [00:25:06] That is one of the things I wanted to ask about. I mean, MMS is one of the first radio stations to have marketing directors, if I’m not mistaken. There really wasn’t something that was common, I don’t think. How did that impact the program? You said selling the, how well you were able to sell–
Ed Ferenc [00:25:26] They didn’t even have to sell it. The phone just kept ringing. We often said that you got the easiest job in the world. Just answer your phone and take the order. No, they didn’t have to sell that radio station. It was amazing. They did such a tremendous job promoting it. The guy that was the mastermind of the glory days was John Gorman. John Gorman. In fact, he wrote a book about the Buzzard from his years. He came there in ’74 to ’86, ’87, I think he left. He was there for a 13-year period. And he was a friend of Denny Sanders. Both Denny and John grew up in Boston. Denny came to Cleveland because of MMS. He liked the station, he liked what was going on. And he was the program director, but he needed help to get the station over. And John was not an on-air guy. He was a, he was a statistician, he was a mastermind. And the thing that John was a big stickler about was programming is so darn important. It’s just like, you have a product. If I don’t have a good product, it’s not going to sell, you know, and okay, let’s get the product really really good. We got the product really good. Okay, the next part is selling that product. And I often say, McDonald’s, they may not have the best hamburger in the world, but they sell an awful lot of them. Why? Because they’re marketing geniuses. And that’s what MMS became. MMS, 50% was product, 50% was promotion. So they made sure the– Well, it was a great logo. The Buzzard. They adopted the Buzzard. David Helton, who was a local artist at American Greetings, kind of scribbled this. What would be flying over Cleveland in the mid seventies would be a buzzard, because Cleveland, you have to understand, Cleveland was dying. Everybody was leaving. It was the Rust Belt. The river was on fire. There was the Arab oil crisis in ’73. There was an economic depression. It was a dying city, and the buzzard was around it. So we adopted the buzzard, but we put a happy face on them, and it worked. It was something that everybody rallied around. It was that people loved the music. They loved the rock. Certainly, they loved World Series of Rock. These were all MMS creations and rock and roll, there was new music coming out every day, and MMS was the vehicle to get that music on the air. We sold more records per capita than any other city in the country, per our population, because when they– When people listened to MMS, they knew they were going to get something good, something new. We would break new artists. Even when the record company told us not to play it because it wasn’t supposed to be out. So it had that rebel status to it. And that’s what it became, a freight train, pretty much. It really did, because going back to that strong foundation that I talked about, being local, being homegrown, being strong on the product, strong on personality, understanding what was going on in the neighborhoods, relating to it, and having fun. The bottom line is entertainment. We had a fun morning show people. We put people on the show. We had guests, we had jokes. We blew people up. The blow ups were interesting. That was a big feature of the show that started because of the mob wars in Cleveland back in the seventies. There was a Mafia war going on, and cars were blowing up left and right. So we decided, well, let’s just blow stuff up on the air. And mostly it was people that girlfriends cheating on them or husbands cheating on their wives. I want to blow them up because I caught them with another woman. But it was a vehicle for people to vent. But it was done in a fun way. That was the beauty of it. It was done in a fun way. And that’s what made it so special.
Joseph Wickens [00:29:31] Some of the other stuff, Go Back to Bed, and the shower bits, those are ones that, when I was doing background for the interview, that really stuck out in my mind. How did the Go Back to Bed bit start? And what was the shower bit? I didn’t really get a good description of the shower bit from what I read.
Ed Ferenc [00:29:43] The Go Back to Bed was, what we did, we made an arrangement with the employer so you could have a day off. We would call up somebody, and you have to understand, it’s one of the big, the popular songs, it was a country song at the time, was “Take This Job and Shove It.” I mean, Cleveland is a factory town. Not so much today, but we’re talking seventies and eighties, and people’s blue-collar hard work, okay, you get up. Uhh, I gotta go to work and can’t wait to get out and go to the nightclub, go to a bar, go what? Do whatever. Listen to MMS, go to a movie. So what we did, we made an arrangement with employer. If, you know, if we would salute that employer on the show, if they would give that specific person a day off, and it worked. We’d call the employers and said, you know, let ’em know in advance. And then they say, well, Joe Smith, who do you think deserves a day off? Joe, man, he was a hard worker and all this stuff. Let’s do that. So we’d get Joe’s number, call him up. Joe, what are you doing today? You gotta go to work. No, you don’t. [laughs] Boss says you can take the day off. Boom. I mean, it was like, wow. Got a day off – with pay. It was that kind of stuff, that kind of fun stuff where they would have that opportunity to do that. The shower one. I’m trying to think of that one. What?
Joseph Wickens [00:31:15] You take a shower and be with you in the morning.
Ed Ferenc [00:31:18] Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s theater of the mind. [laughs] Radio is theater of the mind. There’s so many things that you can do, but it was just to get people talking. And who would you like to take a shower with? [laughs] So it would be some– And then we’d have the shower sounds. Put the shower sounds on. Oh, how you doing? Oh, hey, don’t pick up the soap. [laughs] But it’d be, it would be fun. It was just, it was just using the sound effects and the animation involved. It was just one of the many things that we did. We had the Morning Show Auto Races. That was something that we would compete against other people. We’d have sound effect of a racetrack and who was going to be driving at who would crash and you’d have a prize at the end. Just kind of silly stuff. A lot of it was impromptu, just to get audience participation. People love to be part of something fun. That’s what that station was all about. And anytime that they can get away from anything routine, whether it’s taking care of the kids, whether it’s working on the job, we gave ’em that opportunity to do that. And if they took part in it, they won something. What’s wrong with that? You know? It’s a good thing.
Joseph Wickens [00:32:36] Absolutely. You also, you mentioned a little bit ago the World Series of Rock. Some of your personal experiences with that and how it started by the radio station.
Ed Ferenc [00:32:47] Well, they were looking for, always looking for venues. And at the time it was– Well, it started out, I remember when I, when I first in the early seventies, the main venue was Public Music Hall, and Music Hall on one side and Public Hall on the other. Public Hall would hold maybe seven, 8000. Then they built the Richfield Coliseum, which was in Richfield, of course, and that held about 20,000. It was packed all the time. Led Zeppelin was there in the seventies, and anybody that came through there through the promotion department through MMS with the commercials that were aired, usually nine times out of ten packed the place. A lot of times the artists were looking for a larger venue. And we were thinking that there was an opportunity with the Municipal Stadium. Belkin Production, Jules Belkin, Mike Belkin were actually on the– They started in the late sixties, but they were talking to a lot of bands because it was happening in various parts. There were so-called stadium concerts where they were looking for pretty much a daylong venue where you would get not one or two bands, but maybe four or five bands and get some big names and literally fill that stadium. And that’s what we did. And it just so happens that the Indians sucked. There was no World Series ever to be. Well, the last World Series that they won was 1948. They were in 1954. The team sucked. So we just called it the World Series of Rock because that’s the only World Series we’re gonna have in Cleveland. [laughs] So it’s kind of tongue in cheek. So let’s call it that. And bingo, we packed it. They, they had Peter Frampton, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, legendary Pink Floyd concert there in 1977, where they flew a plane over the stadium. Yeah. It was short-lived. There were some issues when you’re dealing with 80,000. I mean, it went on for several years, but when you have 80,000 people, yeah, you got some. You got some problems and they were, they were amplified by the media, and that’s how the media likes to handle stuff. But they didn’t call ’em the World Series or, I mean, it was kind of a lull after, after a while. And then they brought, they brought stadium concerts back. They just didn’t call ’em the World Series of Rock concerts because I remember being in the stadium in 1989 when the Stones played there, and that was the Steel Wheels concert. And they, it wasn’t just, wasn’t called World Series of Rock, though, that’s all.
Joseph Wickens [00:35:48] You mentioned venues and looking for venues. And there was, it seems that there was a pretty strong relationship between the radio station and the Agora. Can you kind of, I guess, elaborate upon that and some of your personal experiences with that through MMS– [inaudible]?
Ed Ferenc [00:36:01] Well, that’s pretty interesting how it happened. And the sad part about it is the guy that put that all together just passed away. Hank LoConti, great guy. He started the Agora in the sixties and he was looking for, he was looking [for] a way to expand. It was a small hall. A lot of local artists went there, and that was their start in Cleveland. But he wanted, you know, typically nightclubs are big on Friday and Saturday nights. What he wanted to do is expand it to more nights of the week. So what he started was the Monday Night at the Agora, and he started Monday night. Who goes to a concert on a Monday night? Well, he started on Monday night. It started happening. And then they added the Coffee Break Concert. Matt the Cat was the midday show host from 10 to 2 and they would get usually somebody that’s not real electric or folksy like a, well, we had, one of them was Paul Simon performed, and this is after they broke up with Simon and Garfunkel. They were doing the movie One Trick Pony, and he got him to perform. Harry Chapin was another one. They were more folk-oriented. And that Coffee Break Concert was from like 11 to noon. So it would be middle of the week. It was a Wednesday, and they would have that every Wednesday. It was a lot of work. The guy that can talk about that more is Denny Sanders. Denny Sanders was the producer of that. And it was really, it was, first of all, it was very difficult getting rock stars or performers to get up at 9 in the morning, to prep, to be ready to go on the air at 11. That was the hardest part of that job. But he did it. He did it. Didn’t always work perfectly, but he did it. And that w
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