EchoBooming in Birmingham

I love Kyle Whitmire….

Proclamation of the Hypocalypse via. Birmingham Weekly’s Mixed Media Blog

I’m sure Chapter 4 will be all about the the Federal case the SEC just filed against LaLa.

Even a washed up football coach:
http://cgi.ebay.com/UAB_COACH_WATSON_BROWN_ViewItem

I knew something was up this morning when Beaner and Ken were preempted by nothing but mostly good, deep cuts of music.

Then I got in and my Google News Alert for WRAX was sitting in my inbox:

Alternative to sign off at 100.5 FM
Sports-talk station WJOX replaces The X starting today
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
BOB CARLTON
News staff writer

Birmingham radio listeners can expect a major lineup change today.

Alternative rock station The X at 100.5 (WRAX-FM), once one of the most popular stations in town, will go off the air this afternoon to make room for sports talk station WJOX, which already airs on the AM 690 frequency.

Staff members at The X were told they no longer had jobs at a Tuesday afternoon meeting with Dale Daniels, the general manager for both stations.

“The X is no more,” Mark Lindsey, that station’s former music director, said following the meeting. “He (Daniels) said that he’s sorry and he appreciates everything that we did.”

Daniels declined to comment on any changes Tuesday.

Both stations are owned by Citadel Broadcasting. For the time being, it is expected Citadel will broadcast WJOX on both the AM 690 and FM 100.5 frequencies.

During its heyday as 107.7 The X, the 100,000-watt WRAX was one of top stations in Birmingham and the highest-rated alternative rock station in the country.

But ratings gradually started to slide over the past few years, and last spring, the station changed frequencies from 107.7 to the less powerful 100.5 signal.

“It was a very influential station, not only locally, but nationally, for years,” radio consultant Mark St. John said. “I don’t think it was ever able to recover from that move because the signal wasn’t as good, among other things.”

Scott Register, who hosted the popular Sunday-morning show “Reg’s Coffee House” for almost 10 years on The X, informed his listeners in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon that the station is going off the air.

“The powers that be decided sports talk was the answer, and with one swift move, The X is no more in Birmingham,” Register wrote. “A station that was once known as one of the top tastemakers in the country has met its Waterloo.”

Register will continue to host a one-hour syndicated version of his show.

As more listeners turn to satellite radio to get their music, the demise of alternative stations such as The X is part of a growing trend, said Don VanCleave, president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores.

“I’ve got Sirius and XM, so I’m a big fan (of satellite radio),” VanCleave said. “It’s one of the big reasons I haven’t listened to them (The X) in a while.”

E-mail: bcarlton@bhamnews.com

I don’t know, maybe no one listened any more because the music you played (for the most part) sucked.

I actually think that the worst part of all of this is the lack of concert promotion for the Birmingham area that will result from no alt station.

Luckily there are several groups in the area that are working to put their own radio station on the air:

Fried Green Radio and
Radio Revolution Birmingham are the only two I can think of off the top of my head right now.

We’ve played Memphis 8 times in our 10 years of D1 Football.

We’re 6-2 in that series with all 6 wins coming in the last 6 years.

We hope to make it 7 in a row this weekend (we seem to have Memphis’s number, much like Southern Miss has ours, and Memphis has Southern Miss’s).

Well, a few creative Blazer fans had an idea to start a tradition (as we often have to do with a Football team as young as ours is), and they sent a few emails to some people in the UAB athletic department.

A few more calls were made to some local artisans over at Sloss Furnaces, and they put together a little 100lb cast iron slab of ribs that the winner of the Football game gets to take home with them…

Then a few more calls were made and a few big names in BBQ from both Memphis and Birmingham decided to show up and hold a little competition for who can kick out the best in smoked pork…

Confirmed to be there are
Full Moon
Dreamland
Two Brothers
Buffalo Rock

The competition kicks off @ 12 noon, and the game kicks off at 6PM Saturday @ Legion Field.
See http://www.battleforthebones.com/ for more info.

Pick an excuse:

Football season.
Apathy.
My ear infection.
My ceiling falling in.

Oh, you don’t know about my ceiling falling in?

It all happened two saturdays ago (9/23/2006)…

Fairlyn got me up way earlier than I wanted to, so we went to the living room and I put on some baby einstien for her, and I found a nice spot on the couch for myself.

I was about 3 seconds into my early morning nap when I heard what sounded like a tree branch falling outside. I poked my head out the door, looked around, and saw nothing. However, when I turned around I saw this:

Directly above my daughter’s head.

I scooped her up, called DrWife into the room, and then started moving furniture out as fast as I could. I enlisted the help of my neighbor for the large stuff (thanks Jeremy!) and in under 30 mins, the room was empty.

While Jeremy and I were moving all of the furniture around, DrWife went to the Home Depot and returned with some painters tape and two rolls of plastic sheeting. I sealed off the room (to prevent the dust and insulation from spreading all over the house) and taped over the air registers so that I could minimize my cooling losses after the ceiling fell.

About 2 hours later (while I was finally getting that early morning nap) the first section of the ceiling fell (DrWife was at the grocery getting food for the Blazer-Tailgate later on that day, and Fairlyn was sleeping). I didn’t even get up to inspect the damage until DrWife returned (in my mind, there was no use… I was snoozing comfortably and there wasn’t much else I could do at that time).

I took a few pictures and moved a few pieces of sheetrock away from the front door so we could open it again, thought about how much this all sucked, and then started getting ready for some UAB football…

Right as we were walking out the door, we heard another section of the ceiling fall, again ignoring it until we got home.

Here’s a few more pictures of the final damage:

Sunday, my dad and I spent a few hours cleaning up the mess and putting up plastic sheeting over the gaping hole in my ceiling, and Monday I started the claim process with my insurance company.

They called me back that afternoon and said:

DENIED

Why you may ask? Because there was no “cause”. The Ceiling just fell for no reason, and not because of water damage or something else forcing it to fall down!

The nails were still in the rafters, there was no sign of water damage or anything else other than insulation in my attic.

What did I learn from this experience?

Lie to your insurance company. Tell them that you are an irresponsible homeowner and that you store crap ON the sheetrock in your attic. Throw a bucket of water in your attic if your ceiling falls for no reason, that’ll get ‘em to cover it!

I finally found a contractor that I can trust (I used to work with his wife and DrWife’s brother played baseball with his stepson) and he came over this afternoon to poke around my house, and hopefully he’ll be back with me tomorrow and I’ll know what the damage is going to be…