Sitting on Mellenkamp's face

Crystal Taliefero of Billy Joel fame came into the new studios Tuesday and told a story about sitting on John Mellenkamp’s face.

Crystal, as you might remember, went to Maywood Elementary a few blocks from WJOB and then Eggers Middle School and Wirt High School. In 1985 she got an audition with Mellenkamp and did that for four years before hooking up with Billy Joel, with whom she’s been singing and playing for 25 years. You could tell she enjoyed talking with the hometown folks.

Evidently during one of her early stage performances with Mellenkamp he bent back and somehow they got tangled and “I sat on his face," she kept saying. She and Mellenkamp tumbled to the ground during “Crumblin’ Down” and she thought she may had lost her job for a moment.

But she didn’t. When Mellenkamp left touring in 1989 to become a painter, she went to New York. Crystal told the story of how she came in for an audition with Joel and they brought out this behemoth percussion instrument and she hit it once and said, “I can’t play this” and Joel immediately gave her the job.

A number of you called in with questions and congratulations for Crystal and we’d probably still be doing that if authoritarian local radio guy didn’t wind things up to move on to the next segment.

… One of  the segments has to do with doing radio naked. You know how we do radio in front of this huge window that looks out on to Indianapolis Boulevard. Somehow I started rambling aimlessly and landed on the idea that maybe I could do radio in nothing but my construction boots one day.

For charity, you weirdo. We’d have to put shades up on the windows and buy a new chair after the show and turn off the video stream, but do you think we could raise money that way?

And which charity exactly would take money from a guy with a hairy white fish belly doing Naked Radio?

A weird turn of events is that longtime sponsor Wayne Micka of Micka Cabinets volunteered to produce the Day of Naked Radio. Producer Ryan Walsh already refuses. I’m okay with Micka doing this as long as I’m the only one in the room naked. Me standing on the set naked and Micka sitting at the production booth naked just doesn’t do anything for me. Time for another round of local radio in 53 minutes. It's raining like hell outside and that always means something to talk about.