December 28, 2021 • 24 mins
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/08/01/a-trip-back-to-pittsburgh-and-sacramento/
A Trip Down Memory Lane Through Archival Sound Bites
Aug 1, 2018
RUSH: Now, I said at the beginning, we don’t have a lot of audio from way back. We’ve done all that for the 10th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, and some for the 25th. But we do have some things here that I don’t think that we’ve aired — and if we have aired them, it’s been so long ago that I don’t even remember.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, I said at the beginning, we don't have a
lot of audio from way back. We've done all that
at the tenth anniversary, at twenty anniversary and did some
of the We do have some things here that I
don't think that we've aired um and if we have
aired them, it's been so long ago that that I
don't even remember. And some of them are actually kind
(00:23):
of instructive in explaining how we got here because they
go back to which was a year after this program
and started. But grab audio SoundBite number one, This one
I have not heard now what this is. Cookie found
a She's put together a montage of me when I
(00:46):
was a disc jockey in suburban Pittsburgh Mckeyesport, Pennsylvania this
nineteen one. I was twenty and this was my first
job away from home, and I remember I moved there
in in February of nineteen seventy one, arrived in the
middle of a blizzard with the windshield wipers on my
(01:07):
ninete Pontiac Lamon's having shut down, and the last thirty
miles in the town were harrowing. But there was no
way I was gonna stop. I was going to get there.
I don't know how I did it without running into something.
But I got there. Now. Anybody who does what what
(01:28):
I do here will tell you they don't. They don't
like looking at years old stuff. It's embarrassing. Like Sean
Hannity has told me, he that he cannot stand watching
tapes of the old Hannity and Comb shows. He can't
believe he looks so nerdy and and and it's the
same thing here. I don't watch myself on TV ever,
(01:51):
even two hours after it's done, and listening to old
radio tapes. It's painful. It really is painful, you know what.
I just about the top of the hour break when
when some people have said and by I don't take
this personally, don't misunderstand these people that made this comment
to me. We're not trying to be offensive. Everybody wants
(02:11):
to help. I have found that over the years, friends, acquaintances,
everybody wants to help. And people have said everything, My
show has never been better. You know, I kind of
liked it a little bit better way back when there
was a lot more production value in it. He ever
thought about going back to that, I said, yeah, I have,
And in fact, I've even done it a couple I've
(02:32):
gone back and done some of those old updates, and
I feel ten years old again. That was that was
appropriate for who I was then, But it just doesn't
feel appropriate, except to do it as the greatest hits
kind of thing, but to start sneaking that stuff back
in as part of the regular ingredients of the program. Believe,
it just doesn't. It doesn't feel right, it doesn't fit.
(02:53):
And the reason for that is really it's quite simple.
And it's back to this note that I got from
friend last night. Do you do you know? And again
I do not know. I don't stop to think about
things like this because honestly, I'm too busy thinking about
(03:14):
the next day. I don't know how else to say this,
but I don't reflect. Before I got to this point,
I thought that I would. When I gazed around it
other successful people in any field, be they athletes or
business people, I wondered, what are their lives like? What
(03:37):
do they do? Do they go home at night and
think about all they've done? Do they just sit alone
and think about what they've done and and and feel
really good about it? And I eventually got a chance
to ask that question to a lot of people, and
I can I tell you the honest truth is that
(03:59):
not a one of them said Yes, They've all never
occurred to me. Um, And it doesn't occur to me either,
because the next day is too important if you take
what you do seriously, and I do. And when I
talk about meeting and surpassing all of the expectations of
(04:21):
you people in the audience, I mean that more than anything.
And so I'm always thinking forward. And I will beat
myself up if I think I've done a lousy show
or a lousy job, but then I'll console myself by
saying others tomorrow to fix it. So she sends me this, No,
she says, do you know how few people can say
(04:41):
they've had the same ethics, morality, conscience, political core beliefs,
connectivity with themselves in their twenties, through their forties, and
into their sixties, into their best years. Do you know
how few people can say that? I don't think about it.
I have had friends of mine say in the recent past,
(05:03):
the last five or six years, why don't you do
something else? What else do you have to prove? How
many times can you say what you think for crying out?
These are all people who have stopped doing what they
were doing when I met them and either not doing
anything or trying to do something new, Why why don't
you just God, you could do anything, why don't you do?
(05:25):
Because I love what I do, I absolutely love. There's
nothing else I want to do. There's nothing I'm not
sitting around thinking what else could I do? If it
do anything else, it would be an add on to this,
with this remaining as the foundation. But to drop this
and do something that would never even occur to me,
just like changing my core beliefs would never occur to me.
(05:48):
Changing my beliefs and what I considered important and hold
it would never occur to me. And so in that sense, um,
the note goes on this, this is why you're perceived
as reliable, But I don't. I don't actively think about that.
(06:10):
I just try to be who I am day to day,
and I have an opportunity to do it in public.
So anyway, we get these old tapes, old examples, and
they're always embarrassing. But at the time I thought I
was hot stuff. I mean, at any time this Pittsburgh
(06:32):
DJ stuff or during the Clinton years thought it was
hot stuff. Go back and listen to some of them now. Honestly,
some of it is good. I'll admit some of it like, yeah,
that's but a lot of it. Gee, but it's true.
I think of anybody, but I look at pictures of
themselves from the past, or have audio or video reminders
(06:54):
of themselves in the past, and not just appearance, but uh,
maturity level and all that. So I played this with
some trepidation. I haven't heard it. I vaguely remember it. Well, no,
I don't vaguely. I remember this like it was yesterday too.
So again this is a station. It was called w
I X Wixie. The format was old is called salted
(07:18):
solid rock and gold. I called it salted rotten mold
after having to play the same twenty five oldies for
three years. Anyway, Cookie put together a montage and this
is it. No w I x C. The keys port
continues with much more WAXE thirteen sixties Solid Rock and
Gold seven Hello, goot bye. At seven oh three in
(07:49):
the morning, I which the solid rock and gold for
the morning rush hours. Sunny and cold today, radar says
a near zero percent chance of precipitation. A big hand
for Mr. And Mrs Arnold Paluski celebrating refrigerator pavement today,
Little off the cup hum Bis medial Hey Canadian group
(08:19):
which is INFI trained to the usa A back in
nineteen sixty nine, Motherload when I died sixty where the
hits rule on, Brothers get it on, Little hippiel go there.
Currently downtown, it's nineteen degrees again, shooting for a high
today of thirty one. This is Mercy Women's liberation theme
(08:43):
song love can make You Happy Mercy read chicks from
New York City. This is w I x Z mckeysport right,
love can make You Happy, Women's Liberation themes. It was
on the Feminazis even back in nineteen seventy one. Of
course I hit the posts. There was nobody better at
hitting the post. That's talking of the music intro right
(09:03):
to where they began singing it was. Of course I
can still do it absolutely, that's the timing talent. Now
I want to jump forward to let's see UM, let's
go SoundBite four and five. UM. Sacramento, California was the
first place in my radio career where I had any
(09:24):
kind of success. I spent ten years in Kansas City
prior to that, five and radio and five working with
the Kansas City Royals, and in none of that could
I honestly say I had any success. And in some
of those places, some of those ten years, I wasn't
even viewed as somebody who might be successful. And after
(09:46):
five years at the baseball team, and I figured out,
I I just can't stand corporate life. It was too constricting.
I'm not enough of a conformist. I don't collaborate. I
don't want to collaborate. Those five years at the Royals,
I met people I have another otherwise met. But I
also learned what I was not good at doing. Uh,
(10:08):
And so I ended up back in radio because it's
the one thing I was I was happy at doing.
And Sacramento, California's where I went, And that was the
first time I was that. And I started radio nine
twenty years. I was six or fifteen when I started.
In twenty years. It took twenty years to have anything
(10:30):
like success. The first time in my whole broadcast career
that I had any idea what a success track felt
like and looked like. I knew what it didn't look like,
I knew what it didn't feel like, but I had
never experienced it until Sacramento, which is why I've always
said that my adopted hometown, and it was the first
(10:52):
place I had lived outside of my hometown were actually
planted roots and became part of the community rather than
just a passing personality, UH, passing through town onto the
next town, hoping for the next break. So after I
left KPK to do this program nationally, there was a
natural pull to go back there and to express gratitude
(11:15):
for all of the people there who had made it possible.
So we started a Rush to Excellence Tour, which if
you've seen a Trump rally, it's what the Rush to
Excellence Tour was. When this program started, nobody knew who
I was, and nobody thought syndicated radio in the daytime
had a prayer. A bunch of people had tried it
moderate success, and I was just the next one. And
(11:36):
if it didn't work, nobody would think of any of
it other than nice try. I figured it would set
me up for a better job later if it didn't work.
Has it never had people thought you had to be local, local,
local in the daytime doing radio. I didn't believe that.
I wanted a chance to show it, So UH I
started the Rush to Excellence Tour. Every time we got
a new affiliate. I would go there. I would go
(11:56):
for a weekend. I'd I'd arrive on the Friday night, UH,
have dinner with the radio station people, and do a
personal appearance on Saturday. I didn't fly back to New
York on Sunday. And I did that forty eight weekends
a year for the first two years, to cement a
relationship with the stations that took the show, and to
cement a bond with the audience. I was stunned at
(12:18):
how many people showed up. I'm going to have five
thousand if the place held ten thousand. That's how many
showed up. And I would do an hour and a half,
sometimes two hours, with just some notes to remind me
things I wanted to say. And that's why when Trump
started his rallies, I knew exactly what was going on.
I was able to spot the bond because I had
lived it, and I knew exactly what was going to
(12:41):
happen with Trump's supporters sticking with him because I had
lived it, and it happened well. One of those rushed
to Excellence tours. I was hell been on going back
to Sacramento, and because I felt I owed them so much,
kf b K, the city Sacramento, the the audience there,
the people lived there, and this was in I love
(13:06):
for what month this was, but I think it was
summertime because it was very hot. And I put the
roof at Arco Arena opened during the day for what
reason I don't know, probably some live who wanted me.
We were videotaping this. I said, I show up, you know,
three hours before they event in the roofs, So what
do you what do you do with the roof? But
don't worry, it closes and it cools down real fast.
(13:27):
Well it didn't. By the way, the place was over
fifteen thousand people in the place. Clarence Frogman Henry showed
up and saying I got no home, and the local
paper wrote a very caustic piece of Frogman claiming he
was closest, didn't know how he was being used. He
he loved it. His career was being revived. He had
(13:49):
the greatest time. But we got a couple of sound
bites from that Rush to Excellence appearance, and it's I
think it cuts four and five and we have time
to squeeze them both in. So he was the first
six years ago. I was working for the Kansas City Royals.
I had been a radio twelve years previously that I
was working for the Kansas City Royals. Six years ago
is the end of five years there. After five years there,
(14:12):
I was making eighteen thousand dollars a year. Now. I
don't know what kind of money that sounds like to you,
but believe me, in Kansas City, Missouri, at age thirty two,
it's an embarrassment if you take yourself seriously. And I was.
I was miserable, I was unhappy, I was aimless. I
had given up on radio. I thought I had already
(14:34):
failed at that I bombed out as a DJ. All
I knew was Donny Osmond's birthday, a couple of other things.
And nobody is going to take DJ seriously. It really
I was down to the dumps. I had nowhere to go.
I was really without any self esteem whatsoever. And I've
talked to some friends and they said, you know, you're
(14:54):
blaming the wrong people for this. It's not the Royals,
it's not your friends. You're sitting there a miserable Why
do you put up with it? If you don't like it,
do something else? Who What am I gonna do? I said, well,
what are you best at? And I said, probably being
on the radio. Well there's your answer. Do what's your
best at and you'll at least be happy regardless how
(15:16):
well you do it. So I decided to give radio
one more chance, and it brought me here to kfb
K Sacred But is actually a broadcast consultant who was
consulting the station in Kansas City that I really went
back to work for after the Royals five years, and
he was the one of a rain. This guy's got
(15:37):
a chance to be something. So they actually was hired
to replace Morton Downey Jr. Get fired for telling an
ethnic joke. Uh So, anyway, here's the next continuation of this. Nope, Nope,
we don't because I gotta take a break or we're
gonna be in big trouble. So the part two of
that is coming up right after this. We're back on
our thirtieth anniversary. Today. We're combining a number of elements
(15:57):
into our usual program. We're doing some archival stuff, some
memory things, you know, things popping into my head. There
is there is no way that I could begin to
touch on or cover all of what I think are
the important things that have enabled this program to thrive
(16:19):
because there's so many different events, there's so many people
that have been involved and starting down the road of
trying to remember them. And it started the beginning your
chronological order. The minute you forget somebody. Uh, we got problems.
You can't mention them all. Maybe it's better not to start,
but then some of them are so important you have
to mention them. Um. So I'm hoping there's enough time
(16:43):
left today to do as much of this as as
I can, because that's what anniversary days are. Four. Remember,
Johnny Carson, on his last show for the Tonight Show,
made a point of saying, this is not a performance show,
meaning there were no guests, no monologue, no jokes, no
nothing was. It was strictly a recap. You've had some highlights,
(17:04):
it had some heartfelt remembrances from Johnny Carson himself, and
he made a point of saying that wasn't a performation,
and then that was not an anniversary was his last show. Uh,
this is an anniversary show, and parts of an are
performance show, but parts of an are archival and filled
with remembrance. It's what I mean about combining these elements.
Now Here is the second half of the bite. This
(17:26):
is from the Rush to Excellence tour stop in n
I hadn't even been in New York a year yet,
maybe maybe thirteen months. It could have been a year,
but I don't think so. Kept being pulled back to
Sacramental because how important it was in making uh, this
program possible. So here's the second part. There's there's fifteen
(17:48):
thousand people in the crowd here. This is what's called
Arco Arena. Then um, yeah, this hit it. This whole experience.
Not one bit of it is work, not one bit
of it. It is all just more fun than I've
ever had in my life. It is absolutely no hardship
whatsoever to fly around the country to see people, to
(18:11):
be on the radio or any of that, but especially
to come back here. You know you enjoy my show,
and I appreciate that more than you'll ever know. I
don't want to beat this into the ground. I'm sure
(18:32):
you've all felt like you weren't going to ever amount
to anything, even though you knew you were capable of it.
I felt that way. The only difference between you and
me is that I'm up here and you're out there,
And the only reason I'm up here is because you're
out there right. It's true you may enjoy my show,
but I'll tell you you people, especially you people in
(18:55):
this town, in this area, you don't know it. So
I'm gonna tell you rejuvenated my life. Because a successful
radio person is not a success simply because he does
what he does. People have to listen to it, appreciate it,
and support it. And everybody in this room has. I
mean for me six years ago, to be mired in
loneliness and aimlessly walking through life and then to come
(19:18):
here and have tickets sell out in two hours, my friends,
that hits me in the heart like nothing you can
ever imagine. Will I mean, I'll tie you I. You
have rejuvenated my life, and you have made me something
I never even thought I could be. And I have
(19:40):
just one thing to say to you, a sincere and
heartfelt thank you. That was in Sacramento. I wish I
knew the month it was. I'd have to look it
up on account of the rushing access to it had
to be summertimes as hot as hell, I mean degrees
in a daytime out there, and as I say, if
they had the roof open all days, Helen's I mean
I did this thing in the tucks. We're videotaping it.
(20:03):
It would off like a like a dream. Anyway, It's
fun to relive these these little things, Uh, these old moments,
that stuff sounds that I remember Sacramento like it was yesterday.
It doesn't seem like thirty years ago. One more archival
sound bite, her little trip down memory lane. Uh, it's
(20:23):
hard to illustrate thirty years in sound bites, but we
can teach a couple of lessons. You know. The Update,
which was a musical portion of the program. One of
the principal ways that I pioneered combining politics with comedy
and music. Uh. A lot of people have done it since,
(20:47):
but it first happened here. The combination serious discussion, irreverent humor,
the playing of rock and roll music on programs that
people thought the dance would not be interested in, pioneering stuff,
and it was used to educate, to laugh, to create humor,
and also inform people of things I wanted them to
(21:10):
know about. The left Barney Frank Update Time you need Homeless,
ain't gotten No. Sometimes I sing with this, I'm a
(21:31):
lonely wrong to bring out Update time in a Yuko
and the rush Limball programmed miles to the gun Mmies
on logistic little Seling roll the roost in General Dinkin's Update,
(21:55):
The hold up in the bunks, let's be can know
in fights. There's a traffic champion Harmon that's back. Dr
Jackson Heightson, there's this country chart a child sister, General
David Diggins, where are you? It's time for a timber update.
(22:29):
Time for a gay community update theme, folks, A vocal
portrayal here by the late and Great Klaus Norman. What
to say? This is our animal rights update theme. Andy
(22:49):
Williams in his elevator shoes with the two Who Free
(23:11):
Piece update, Swim Witman Sate when the sun shines all
abount the night. A feminist update. The Feminazis are living
at me because of well general principles were fish, you're
(23:40):
done the good man, And that's how we taught, That's
how we laughed and made people aware of the mockery
of the left and what they really were and the
things they believed in. And we occasionally go back to
the grooveyard forgotten hits and relive them. Any way. I'm
out of time here, folks, I don't have time to
(24:02):
thank people, so we'll do that tomorrow. Thank you all
for being with us today and for every day you
have been here in the past thirty years. It is
profoundly and deeply appreciated, and we know how important it is,
and it's taken very seriously and with a great deal
of respect. I look forward to all of you being
(24:22):
back here same time tomorrow, REVD and ready to do
it all over
Now, I said at the beginning, we don't have a
lot of audio from way back. We've done all that
at the tenth anniversary, at twenty anniversary and did some
of the We do have some things here that I
don't think that we've aired um and if we have
aired them, it's been so long ago that that I
don't even remember. And some of them are actually kind
(00:23):
of instructive in explaining how we got here because they
go back to which was a year after this program
and started. But grab audio SoundBite number one, This one
I have not heard now what this is. Cookie found
a She's put together a montage of me when I
(00:46):
was a disc jockey in suburban Pittsburgh Mckeyesport, Pennsylvania this
nineteen one. I was twenty and this was my first
job away from home, and I remember I moved there
in in February of nineteen seventy one, arrived in the
middle of a blizzard with the windshield wipers on my
(01:07):
ninete Pontiac Lamon's having shut down, and the last thirty
miles in the town were harrowing. But there was no
way I was gonna stop. I was going to get there.
I don't know how I did it without running into something.
But I got there. Now. Anybody who does what what
(01:28):
I do here will tell you they don't. They don't
like looking at years old stuff. It's embarrassing. Like Sean
Hannity has told me, he that he cannot stand watching
tapes of the old Hannity and Comb shows. He can't
believe he looks so nerdy and and and it's the
same thing here. I don't watch myself on TV ever,
(01:51):
even two hours after it's done, and listening to old
radio tapes. It's painful. It really is painful, you know what.
I just about the top of the hour break when
when some people have said and by I don't take
this personally, don't misunderstand these people that made this comment
to me. We're not trying to be offensive. Everybody wants
(02:11):
to help. I have found that over the years, friends, acquaintances,
everybody wants to help. And people have said everything, My
show has never been better. You know, I kind of
liked it a little bit better way back when there
was a lot more production value in it. He ever
thought about going back to that, I said, yeah, I have,
And in fact, I've even done it a couple I've
(02:32):
gone back and done some of those old updates, and
I feel ten years old again. That was that was
appropriate for who I was then, But it just doesn't
feel appropriate, except to do it as the greatest hits
kind of thing, but to start sneaking that stuff back
in as part of the regular ingredients of the program. Believe,
it just doesn't. It doesn't feel right, it doesn't fit.
(02:53):
And the reason for that is really it's quite simple.
And it's back to this note that I got from
friend last night. Do you do you know? And again
I do not know. I don't stop to think about
things like this because honestly, I'm too busy thinking about
(03:14):
the next day. I don't know how else to say this,
but I don't reflect. Before I got to this point,
I thought that I would. When I gazed around it
other successful people in any field, be they athletes or
business people, I wondered, what are their lives like? What
(03:37):
do they do? Do they go home at night and
think about all they've done? Do they just sit alone
and think about what they've done and and and feel
really good about it? And I eventually got a chance
to ask that question to a lot of people, and
I can I tell you the honest truth is that
(03:59):
not a one of them said Yes, They've all never
occurred to me. Um, And it doesn't occur to me either,
because the next day is too important if you take
what you do seriously, and I do. And when I
talk about meeting and surpassing all of the expectations of
(04:21):
you people in the audience, I mean that more than anything.
And so I'm always thinking forward. And I will beat
myself up if I think I've done a lousy show
or a lousy job, but then I'll console myself by
saying others tomorrow to fix it. So she sends me this, No,
she says, do you know how few people can say
(04:41):
they've had the same ethics, morality, conscience, political core beliefs,
connectivity with themselves in their twenties, through their forties, and
into their sixties, into their best years. Do you know
how few people can say that? I don't think about it.
I have had friends of mine say in the recent past,
(05:03):
the last five or six years, why don't you do
something else? What else do you have to prove? How
many times can you say what you think for crying out?
These are all people who have stopped doing what they
were doing when I met them and either not doing
anything or trying to do something new, Why why don't
you just God, you could do anything, why don't you do?
(05:25):
Because I love what I do, I absolutely love. There's
nothing else I want to do. There's nothing I'm not
sitting around thinking what else could I do? If it
do anything else, it would be an add on to this,
with this remaining as the foundation. But to drop this
and do something that would never even occur to me,
just like changing my core beliefs would never occur to me.
(05:48):
Changing my beliefs and what I considered important and hold
it would never occur to me. And so in that sense, um,
the note goes on this, this is why you're perceived
as reliable, But I don't. I don't actively think about that.
(06:10):
I just try to be who I am day to day,
and I have an opportunity to do it in public.
So anyway, we get these old tapes, old examples, and
they're always embarrassing. But at the time I thought I
was hot stuff. I mean, at any time this Pittsburgh
(06:32):
DJ stuff or during the Clinton years thought it was
hot stuff. Go back and listen to some of them now. Honestly,
some of it is good. I'll admit some of it like, yeah,
that's but a lot of it. Gee, but it's true.
I think of anybody, but I look at pictures of
themselves from the past, or have audio or video reminders
(06:54):
of themselves in the past, and not just appearance, but uh,
maturity level and all that. So I played this with
some trepidation. I haven't heard it. I vaguely remember it. Well, no,
I don't vaguely. I remember this like it was yesterday too.
So again this is a station. It was called w
I X Wixie. The format was old is called salted
(07:18):
solid rock and gold. I called it salted rotten mold
after having to play the same twenty five oldies for
three years. Anyway, Cookie put together a montage and this
is it. No w I x C. The keys port
continues with much more WAXE thirteen sixties Solid Rock and
Gold seven Hello, goot bye. At seven oh three in
(07:49):
the morning, I which the solid rock and gold for
the morning rush hours. Sunny and cold today, radar says
a near zero percent chance of precipitation. A big hand
for Mr. And Mrs Arnold Paluski celebrating refrigerator pavement today,
Little off the cup hum Bis medial Hey Canadian group
(08:19):
which is INFI trained to the usa A back in
nineteen sixty nine, Motherload when I died sixty where the
hits rule on, Brothers get it on, Little hippiel go there.
Currently downtown, it's nineteen degrees again, shooting for a high
today of thirty one. This is Mercy Women's liberation theme
(08:43):
song love can make You Happy Mercy read chicks from
New York City. This is w I x Z mckeysport right,
love can make You Happy, Women's Liberation themes. It was
on the Feminazis even back in nineteen seventy one. Of
course I hit the posts. There was nobody better at
hitting the post. That's talking of the music intro right
(09:03):
to where they began singing it was. Of course I
can still do it absolutely, that's the timing talent. Now
I want to jump forward to let's see UM, let's
go SoundBite four and five. UM. Sacramento, California was the
first place in my radio career where I had any
(09:24):
kind of success. I spent ten years in Kansas City
prior to that, five and radio and five working with
the Kansas City Royals, and in none of that could
I honestly say I had any success. And in some
of those places, some of those ten years, I wasn't
even viewed as somebody who might be successful. And after
(09:46):
five years at the baseball team, and I figured out,
I I just can't stand corporate life. It was too constricting.
I'm not enough of a conformist. I don't collaborate. I
don't want to collaborate. Those five years at the Royals,
I met people I have another otherwise met. But I
also learned what I was not good at doing. Uh,
(10:08):
And so I ended up back in radio because it's
the one thing I was I was happy at doing.
And Sacramento, California's where I went, And that was the
first time I was that. And I started radio nine
twenty years. I was six or fifteen when I started.
In twenty years. It took twenty years to have anything
(10:30):
like success. The first time in my whole broadcast career
that I had any idea what a success track felt
like and looked like. I knew what it didn't look like,
I knew what it didn't feel like, but I had
never experienced it until Sacramento, which is why I've always
said that my adopted hometown, and it was the first
(10:52):
place I had lived outside of my hometown were actually
planted roots and became part of the community rather than
just a passing personality, UH, passing through town onto the
next town, hoping for the next break. So after I
left KPK to do this program nationally, there was a
natural pull to go back there and to express gratitude
(11:15):
for all of the people there who had made it possible.
So we started a Rush to Excellence Tour, which if
you've seen a Trump rally, it's what the Rush to
Excellence Tour was. When this program started, nobody knew who
I was, and nobody thought syndicated radio in the daytime
had a prayer. A bunch of people had tried it
moderate success, and I was just the next one. And
(11:36):
if it didn't work, nobody would think of any of
it other than nice try. I figured it would set
me up for a better job later if it didn't work.
Has it never had people thought you had to be local, local,
local in the daytime doing radio. I didn't believe that.
I wanted a chance to show it, So UH I
started the Rush to Excellence Tour. Every time we got
a new affiliate. I would go there. I would go
(11:56):
for a weekend. I'd I'd arrive on the Friday night, UH,
have dinner with the radio station people, and do a
personal appearance on Saturday. I didn't fly back to New
York on Sunday. And I did that forty eight weekends
a year for the first two years, to cement a
relationship with the stations that took the show, and to
cement a bond with the audience. I was stunned at
(12:18):
how many people showed up. I'm going to have five
thousand if the place held ten thousand. That's how many
showed up. And I would do an hour and a half,
sometimes two hours, with just some notes to remind me
things I wanted to say. And that's why when Trump
started his rallies, I knew exactly what was going on.
I was able to spot the bond because I had
lived it, and I knew exactly what was going to
(12:41):
happen with Trump's supporters sticking with him because I had
lived it, and it happened well. One of those rushed
to Excellence tours. I was hell been on going back
to Sacramento, and because I felt I owed them so much,
kf b K, the city Sacramento, the the audience there,
the people lived there, and this was in I love
(13:06):
for what month this was, but I think it was
summertime because it was very hot. And I put the
roof at Arco Arena opened during the day for what
reason I don't know, probably some live who wanted me.
We were videotaping this. I said, I show up, you know,
three hours before they event in the roofs, So what
do you what do you do with the roof? But
don't worry, it closes and it cools down real fast.
(13:27):
Well it didn't. By the way, the place was over
fifteen thousand people in the place. Clarence Frogman Henry showed
up and saying I got no home, and the local
paper wrote a very caustic piece of Frogman claiming he
was closest, didn't know how he was being used. He
he loved it. His career was being revived. He had
(13:49):
the greatest time. But we got a couple of sound
bites from that Rush to Excellence appearance, and it's I
think it cuts four and five and we have time
to squeeze them both in. So he was the first
six years ago. I was working for the Kansas City Royals.
I had been a radio twelve years previously that I
was working for the Kansas City Royals. Six years ago
is the end of five years there. After five years there,
(14:12):
I was making eighteen thousand dollars a year. Now. I
don't know what kind of money that sounds like to you,
but believe me, in Kansas City, Missouri, at age thirty two,
it's an embarrassment if you take yourself seriously. And I was.
I was miserable, I was unhappy, I was aimless. I
had given up on radio. I thought I had already
(14:34):
failed at that I bombed out as a DJ. All
I knew was Donny Osmond's birthday, a couple of other things.
And nobody is going to take DJ seriously. It really
I was down to the dumps. I had nowhere to go.
I was really without any self esteem whatsoever. And I've
talked to some friends and they said, you know, you're
(14:54):
blaming the wrong people for this. It's not the Royals,
it's not your friends. You're sitting there a miserable Why
do you put up with it? If you don't like it,
do something else? Who What am I gonna do? I said, well,
what are you best at? And I said, probably being
on the radio. Well there's your answer. Do what's your
best at and you'll at least be happy regardless how
(15:16):
well you do it. So I decided to give radio
one more chance, and it brought me here to kfb
K Sacred But is actually a broadcast consultant who was
consulting the station in Kansas City that I really went
back to work for after the Royals five years, and
he was the one of a rain. This guy's got
(15:37):
a chance to be something. So they actually was hired
to replace Morton Downey Jr. Get fired for telling an
ethnic joke. Uh So, anyway, here's the next continuation of this. Nope, Nope,
we don't because I gotta take a break or we're
gonna be in big trouble. So the part two of
that is coming up right after this. We're back on
our thirtieth anniversary. Today. We're combining a number of elements
(15:57):
into our usual program. We're doing some archival stuff, some
memory things, you know, things popping into my head. There
is there is no way that I could begin to
touch on or cover all of what I think are
the important things that have enabled this program to thrive
(16:19):
because there's so many different events, there's so many people
that have been involved and starting down the road of
trying to remember them. And it started the beginning your
chronological order. The minute you forget somebody. Uh, we got problems.
You can't mention them all. Maybe it's better not to start,
but then some of them are so important you have
to mention them. Um. So I'm hoping there's enough time
(16:43):
left today to do as much of this as as
I can, because that's what anniversary days are. Four. Remember,
Johnny Carson, on his last show for the Tonight Show,
made a point of saying, this is not a performance show,
meaning there were no guests, no monologue, no jokes, no
nothing was. It was strictly a recap. You've had some highlights,
(17:04):
it had some heartfelt remembrances from Johnny Carson himself, and
he made a point of saying that wasn't a performation,
and then that was not an anniversary was his last show. Uh,
this is an anniversary show, and parts of an are
performance show, but parts of an are archival and filled
with remembrance. It's what I mean about combining these elements.
Now Here is the second half of the bite. This
(17:26):
is from the Rush to Excellence tour stop in n
I hadn't even been in New York a year yet,
maybe maybe thirteen months. It could have been a year,
but I don't think so. Kept being pulled back to
Sacramental because how important it was in making uh, this
program possible. So here's the second part. There's there's fifteen
(17:48):
thousand people in the crowd here. This is what's called
Arco Arena. Then um, yeah, this hit it. This whole experience.
Not one bit of it is work, not one bit
of it. It is all just more fun than I've
ever had in my life. It is absolutely no hardship
whatsoever to fly around the country to see people, to
(18:11):
be on the radio or any of that, but especially
to come back here. You know you enjoy my show,
and I appreciate that more than you'll ever know. I
don't want to beat this into the ground. I'm sure
(18:32):
you've all felt like you weren't going to ever amount
to anything, even though you knew you were capable of it.
I felt that way. The only difference between you and
me is that I'm up here and you're out there,
And the only reason I'm up here is because you're
out there right. It's true you may enjoy my show,
but I'll tell you you people, especially you people in
(18:55):
this town, in this area, you don't know it. So
I'm gonna tell you rejuvenated my life. Because a successful
radio person is not a success simply because he does
what he does. People have to listen to it, appreciate it,
and support it. And everybody in this room has. I
mean for me six years ago, to be mired in
loneliness and aimlessly walking through life and then to come
(19:18):
here and have tickets sell out in two hours, my friends,
that hits me in the heart like nothing you can
ever imagine. Will I mean, I'll tie you I. You
have rejuvenated my life, and you have made me something
I never even thought I could be. And I have
(19:40):
just one thing to say to you, a sincere and
heartfelt thank you. That was in Sacramento. I wish I
knew the month it was. I'd have to look it
up on account of the rushing access to it had
to be summertimes as hot as hell, I mean degrees
in a daytime out there, and as I say, if
they had the roof open all days, Helen's I mean
I did this thing in the tucks. We're videotaping it.
(20:03):
It would off like a like a dream. Anyway, It's
fun to relive these these little things, Uh, these old moments,
that stuff sounds that I remember Sacramento like it was yesterday.
It doesn't seem like thirty years ago. One more archival
sound bite, her little trip down memory lane. Uh, it's
(20:23):
hard to illustrate thirty years in sound bites, but we
can teach a couple of lessons. You know. The Update,
which was a musical portion of the program. One of
the principal ways that I pioneered combining politics with comedy
and music. Uh. A lot of people have done it since,
(20:47):
but it first happened here. The combination serious discussion, irreverent humor,
the playing of rock and roll music on programs that
people thought the dance would not be interested in, pioneering stuff,
and it was used to educate, to laugh, to create humor,
and also inform people of things I wanted them to
(21:10):
know about. The left Barney Frank Update Time you need Homeless,
ain't gotten No. Sometimes I sing with this, I'm a
(21:31):
lonely wrong to bring out Update time in a Yuko
and the rush Limball programmed miles to the gun Mmies
on logistic little Seling roll the roost in General Dinkin's Update,
(21:55):
The hold up in the bunks, let's be can know
in fights. There's a traffic champion Harmon that's back. Dr
Jackson Heightson, there's this country chart a child sister, General
David Diggins, where are you? It's time for a timber update.
(22:29):
Time for a gay community update theme, folks, A vocal
portrayal here by the late and Great Klaus Norman. What
to say? This is our animal rights update theme. Andy
(22:49):
Williams in his elevator shoes with the two Who Free
(23:11):
Piece update, Swim Witman Sate when the sun shines all
abount the night. A feminist update. The Feminazis are living
at me because of well general principles were fish, you're
(23:40):
done the good man, And that's how we taught, That's
how we laughed and made people aware of the mockery
of the left and what they really were and the
things they believed in. And we occasionally go back to
the grooveyard forgotten hits and relive them. Any way. I'm
out of time here, folks, I don't have time to
(24:02):
thank people, so we'll do that tomorrow. Thank you all
for being with us today and for every day you
have been here in the past thirty years. It is
profoundly and deeply appreciated, and we know how important it is,
and it's taken very seriously and with a great deal
of respect. I look forward to all of you being
(24:22):
back here same time tomorrow, REVD and ready to do
it all over
Rush Limbaugh - Timeless Wisdom News
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