My mind wasn’t geared toward returning to the air when I hosted a cruise in early 1999  that ended in Ensenada, instead of San Diego. Disembarking there involved getting off the ship, lugging my own luggage to the bus and traveling three hours including a border inspection until finally, I was back in San Diego, all of this because of an archaic *Act. I was in the company of 1500 traveling companions, mostly elderly. I vowed to return to the air, and use what influence I had to mount a campaign to abolish the law that inflicted such hardships on America’s Finest Generation. .

*The Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886.

This Act allows only ships either built in the U.S or sailing under a U.S. Flag to carry passengers between two U.S. ports. If a foreign vessel, which is most of them, stops in Seattle, or San Francisco or L.A., it can’t stop in San Diego without first visiting a foreign port………… (This Act  applies to all 20 U.S. ports.)

Do you want to sail from San Diego to Hawaii? You will watch them load their supplies on your liner in San Diego, but you will have to bus to Ensenada to catch the same liner bound for Hawaii. San Diego isn’t the only loser. San Francisco to Hawaii? The Act forbids it. This was the windmill  I was out to tilt.

Fate intervened as it almost always does with me. Mike Glickenhaus, the boss of 11 Clear Channel stations approached me at a Roger Hedgecock garden party, and asked me to “help” a pop standard boutique called KPOP, a 65+ demo radio station, the very people most affected by the “Act.”. What a rich play ground!

I couldn’t help but wonder: how was my upbeat rock and roll style going to play on a staid Big Band and Ballad  65+ demo radio station where Dean Martin’s “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime” was in heavy rotation? No time for introspection. My patented jock style was high-energy one-on-one. It worked for years until I  “pulled  the plugs.”…. Sorry!  Those jock one-liners are hard to stifle.

Fast forward to the day when I was in front of a KPOP mike in the maze of studios at the Clear Channel headquarters in San Diego. I was into the first hour on my first Saturday 10a to 2p show. In this format, saying hello at the top of the hour was out. It was 20 minutes after, and time to back-announce the songs and launch into a four minute stop set. Happy Hare back-announcing five dirges! What the hell was I thinking? Actually, I was thinking that I had returned to the air to help thousands of cruise travelers break the bonds of the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886, but this wasn’t going to cut it.  How I got into this mess calls for a Flash Back! 

 In mid 1999, Roger Hedgecock asked me to sub for him on his top-rated KOGO talk show on the same day that Senator John McCain was scheduled to guest..

 Last week. (Click on the  “Happy Hare archives… Mad as Hell” Part 1)  I told you about McCain’s appearance with me on  #1 12+  KOGO, my description to him of the hardships endured in Ensenada by America’s Finest Generation, and his pledge to  introduce a bill  to veto the Act. He did, in latter1999: SB 1551,.but as powerful as McCain is, his effort was smothered by a pile-on of senators beholden to various  conflicting interests. Yet, he created the initial impact for me to get going on my own. If you want to create attention, call on John McCain, I always say.. Now, it was up to me……. and radio.

This was going to be harder than I thought. I knew about the standard Clear Channel music sweep and four spot cluster format, but the reality of it didn’t sink in till I was actually sitting there running it.

I had been told that I would not be able to pull my own songs. *The Prophet System selected, shuffled, and played the music. All the jock had to do was to read the screen and punch the return key that kicked off the songs. Steve Blessing, my Producer, did that. The system segued from one song to the next in the sweep, playing such songs as Nat Cole’s ”Smile,” Tony Bennet,’s “Stranger in Paradise,” Peggy Lee’s “Fever.” Forget instrumentals. No Harry James, Dorsey, or Shaw….or Buddy Morrow’s  Night Train.” Not even Ralph Flanagan. I snuck in Bob Crosby’s  “Big Noise,” 

No one as cutting edge as Neil Diamond or Barbara Streisand or Count Basie’s Beatle music were allowed. How about  Bette Midler’s “In the Mood?” Nah.  It was mainly slow ballads from the mid 50’s, a self-fulfilling prophecy that our audience was going to average 65+. Often, the Prophet would spit out three slow male songs in a row, sound alikes: Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, and Jack Jones, or three females Hardly a set-up for me to get their blood going, so they would run out and buy a car.

Back to the show: I  waited for the strains of the music to fade, then said in a restrained version of my usual lack of restraint, “Hi there, this is Harry Martin  on  KPOP and that was Nat Cole singing”……..…I read the laundry list of songs and hit the I.D. stab into the  four minute stop set. The phones lit up….all ten lines igniting.

 I picked up the phone, greeted the caller and a sobbing female voice on the other end asked , “Is it Happy Hare?” 

“Yes,” I replied.

“Oh Happy Hare. You’re back. I’ve  missed you so much. I love you. Happy Hare.” One caller said knowingly, “You can’t fool me. You’re Happy Hare.”

I took it for a week or so, then I began sneaking in more up-beat music.…subtly at first , but grew  bolder as I plowed on without any negative feedback from management.

Few in lower management thought weekends were worth much, anyway, so my busting into the music sweep probably was not regarded as a mortal wound to the station...

Fact is: Weekends, especially Saturdays, are when consumers are in their cars, running errands and shopping.. This immediacy is why I obtained such dramatic results with my live pitches. Hot bargains created instant feeding frenzies. Energy, the secret of life.

            Then, a breakthrough: Sales reps began to feed me live adlib accounts. The first was for the Viejas Gambling Casino. More adlib accounts came in, giving me excuses to bust into the music sweeps at the 10^{th,,  30th,} , and 50^th  minute on the hour. The slot openings evolved naturally as new orders, and new dollars flowed in... ..

   Rule #1: Never ask permission of an immediate superior who is paid to say no 

I wasn’t taking these liberties just to be ornery  but, I was spending at least 90 seconds on each adlib, and I isolated them because I didn’t want to butt a 90 second live adlib up against a four minute stop set…and,… isolating them created more impact.. 

For Viejas, I often said little about gambling. It was more about the fun of going to Viejas.. I would do 30 or 40 seconds of joking around before getting into the core of the adlib. The principal Viejas tribe was the Kumeyays, who were the first humans in this region. They willingly gave me freedom to kid.  No P.C. here.

I would say things like, “The Kumeyays (Koomi- yies) were not just the first Indians, but the first cowboys. They wrote the first cowboy song ever,” and then, I would  sing a few bars of ”I’m an old cow hand from Viejas land. And I learned to hunt before I learned to stand., “Kumi yi yi yippy yippy yay yippy yay. The Kumeyays loved it and invited me to host a big band dance at the plush Viejas casino, which drew over a 1,000 in a ballroom with 800 capacity.

The slow music was dragging me down. I began to mix the music instead of allowing The Prophet machine to mandate the order of songs. I began to sneak in rhythmic Neil Diamond songs, and up-beat Andy Williams, and Roy Orbison. I programmed by sound and tempo, not chronology.  The  Harry James and Artie Shaw bands were not 40‘s music, but great show tunes. Try tuning out Dorsey’s “Well Git. It.” Of course, I wasn’t totally nuts. I didn’t sneak Basie’s Beatle album in, because it would have blown my cover.

I stayed away from 70’s AC although much of that era was melodic and would have fitted in. It would have been great to play Rita Coolidge’s “We’re All Alone.” She is local and the song is a top one from 1977. I was burning to play Deodato’s “Also Sprach Zarathrustra” and a thousand more great melodic compatible songs that sounded like the 50’s.”All Night Long” by Lionel Ritchie is a killer. However, I limited myself to no more than three illegal, but safe songs per hour. Leave well enough alone, Hare.

There is more compatibility between oldies, pop standards, and melodic 70’s and 80’s than many think. There is a potentially happy (35-54) marriage of extremes there.

Boomers forgave an occasional bit of trivia aimed at the older seniors. For example:“What has four legs, feathers, and goes bah bah?” In the rich tradition of quarter hour maintenance, I would tease and give them the answer later: “Two Indians singing the Whiffenpoof Song.” Boomers probably had no clue about the 30’s Whiffenpoof Song,  but they knew I was paying tribute to their parent’s generation, and let it go.

Of course, there were plenty of “A horse walked into a bar and the bartender said, “Why the long face.?” boomer gags.

 I began to notice a younging  up of the listeners, including one young lady who called and said, “Don’t think that only older people listen to you. I am a cheer leader at Madison High and I love your show.”

I was asked to join Bill Walton, another local Trailblazer,  at Grossmont High to speak on “the future.” I arrived at the school and was introduced to the principal, a dignified woman in her forties. ”This is Happy Hare.” On hearing my name, she yipped and jumped up and down wringing her hands on limp wrists. Suddenly, she was 14 again, and I was…Happy Hare, her idol. My marketing was done. I opened up in 2000, and the numbers started jumping. I morphed into Happy Hare, the one my listeners and I wanted..

            The first quarter of the 2001 Arbitron came out and I was ready to bail if I had sabotaged Mike Glickenhaus, who was becoming a friend. I could exhale. I was  #1  45+  and  #1 TSL in a market of competing stations who were beaming their sharply targeted  music formats on more powerful signals.

            I hosted a trip, one involving a magical train ride from Calgary to  Vancouver, then boarding a ship and cruising down to San Diego. My live isolated 90+ second adlibs enticed 90 KPOPers to that trip vs the usual 30 or 40 trippers scored by the full-time jocks, no reflection on them. I was taking liberties with the clock, and screwing around with the music and doing isolated long adlibs, things full-timers couldn’t get away with..

 During 2001, I made speeches about the inhumanity heaped on the elderly travelers. I spoke to civic organizations that included decision makers, often bringing with me folks with horror stories of the Ensenada gauntlet. On the air, I pitched, in my satire-ridden style, the serious issue of getting rid of the offending PVSA of 1886. I also concentrated on my  core listeners, people who would never cruise. Even non-cruisers empathized with the elderly whose principal pastime in their waning years was cruising. Many listeners  were powerful retirees, still capable of picking up a phone and raising hell with people who could make decisions. It was audience participation in the highest sense.

In the Fall of  2000, I was paid tribute at Roger Hedgecock’s downtown restaurant. Many local VIPs and chums ,including Mike Glickenhaus the Clear Channel main man , were there. Kudos came in from Regis Philbin, Peter Lund, recent President of CBS, Jerry Coleman, a giant in the community and Voice of the Padres, Pete Wilson, and others. It was too much for me. I could dish it out, but take it?  I blubbered in rare incoherence when I tried to get up and speak.

In all four quarters of  2001, I averaged the top AQH in the Arbitron among  45+ demos  and was  #1 with TSL.                                                        

                               2006 EPILOGUE…the power of radio

In the Fall of 2005, the Port Authority of San Diego proclaimed  “Happy Hare Harbor Day,” not because I had succeeded in bringing down the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886, but it turned out that my constant bitching on the radio, and the power of  decision makers converged, resulting in reconfiguring cruises to establish San Diego as the starting and ending point for trips to the Canal,  Mexico, the Caribbean and South America. Local cruise traffic tripled.

A major Port  Authority official told me they had reached capacity, and there would be no room left for the additional ships that would come in if the PVSA of 1886. was repealed. He said they were negotiating for more berths with my brothers, the Kumeyay Indians, who own a big warehouse on the harbor with docking berths.

Senator Inouye found a buyer, Norwegian Cruise Lines, for his two stranded ships in Pascagoula: (See Happy Hare Mad as Hell #1) He finished construction of the ships, not in Pascagoula, but in Europe for far less money, then got an exemption to “The Act” for Hawaii.

Clear Channel gave up trying to sell older demos and changed over to Air America a couple of years ago. KPOP is now KLSD.

I am now active in a Hollywood Film Company, Picture Palace Films.

Why not?  My life has been like a movie.

Mike Glickenhaus is now President/CEO of  “Finest City Broadcasting” that bought three of the four radio stations that Clear Channel shed recently….I bless him for allowing me to play radio. 

From The Clear Channel Play Book:

Dissing, Images, or cartoons of  “The Prophet” System

are blasphemous, and will result in beheading. 

Writer’s note: I meant no blasphemy toward “The Prophet” System in this writing.