Casey Kasem (1932-2014)
I remember his disembodied voice saying the most inane things (‘keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars’?!) but with measured aplomb. Weekend afternoons that seemed endless and I’d be sitting on some amber shag carpet, bunk bed, or dog-gnawed beanbag chair flicking through my cousin’s teen magazines, and waiting for some music or anecdote that might stick in the head for some good reason rather than the horrible catchiness of the utterly average from the Bay City Rollers to Shaun Cassidy. This is how I recall my experience of listening to the seemingly ubiquitous Casey Kasem in the 1970s. Now dead and gone, following Dick Clark and John Peel to wherever it is that dead radio personalities go…You can read New York Times critic Jon Pareles’ more thoroughgoing sketch of Kasem’s pop cultural significance here.
