holidays

[Tom Roche]

I say good for jp, taking a month off. It is practically unprecedented, is it not? OK so we have no A+ fresh sounds for a month, we'll manage.

But think back to the dark days when he wouldn't dare even take one day off for fear his job would be gone when he returned. Over-paranoid perhaps, but at least now he finally believes he has the stature to feel his slot is safe (he's always had the stature of course  what's new is that he finally agrees!)

He will return to the air fully recharged... a month off is a wonderful thing. We forget, or take it for granted, that he does a ton of work almost all by himself to get these R1 shows together - plus worldservice, plus all the odd European FM shows. Then there's home truths too. Geez, lets give him a little break, no? Each 2 hr show comes together only after 4-6 hours of auditioning stuff, plus all the unpacking an schlepping of all the mail and parcels... he has no secretarial staff to do all this grunt work that must be done...

I was listening to a Nov 2001 tape and he read a letter from New Zealand and said he was going to NZ with Pig next year... so maybe that's where he is off to.

Last summer I really tried to convince him to consider the South By Southwest annual festival in Austin Texas, it happens each March. He's always claimed to want to take Pig 'round Texas as she's never been, and he's claimed he's just to see Texas again. I even hooked up in advance w/ SXSW honcho's and the put together a formal overture, travel proposals, etc tat I took to him. John seemed moderately interested... this was last summer... I couldn't tell for sure. Then 9/11 happened and I didn't feel like pushing him in that direction, at last not this go round. They were gonna make him the keynote speaker... it'll be great if'n it ever happens. With ISDN he can now do a show from anywhere....

He'll have a hopeless backlog of mail when he returns, this I know....

tom r
atlanta