Sunday Morning With Rick Kogan>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 7

Being on Kogan’s program was a thrill, not to mention absolutely plain weird! After being let inside, I was led to what they called “the green room,” which was nothing more than a couch, with a huge gray filing cabinet. I sat and waited, occasionally seeing one or two other people, still texting to Pedro that I had made it inside and was just waiting for them to come collect me to take me to the radio broadcast room. Time ticked slowly and I just wanted it to come faster than it did, but that the trouble with time and how those things work. Finally, at twenty five minutes after seven, I was taken by the producer and brought over to formally meet Rick Kogan, the radio broadcaster-but not a lot had changed between the time I had met him back in the fall of 2008 up until now, meaning, he still looked pretty much the same to me, low voice-the kind of voice I admired and made me think of all those old time radio broadcasts that I listened to on varying stations around the radio dial.

We said hello to each other and then he instructed me to sit down and slip the headphones on and I waited in silence for the news to be read, the commercials to run and so on and so forth. At last it was the moment of truth, 7:35 am, when Kogan introduced me to a waiting and perhaps an unsuspecting Sunday morning audience. In his introductory monologue of me, he read from the beginning of an article he had written for his Sidewalks column, in the then-Sunday Chicago Tribune magazine, in which he said, “We first saw and heard Sid Yiddish at a gathering of writers and entertainers one rainy September night at El Jardin, the Mexican restaurant popular for, depending on whom you ask, its food, its brain-numbing margaritas or its proximity to Wrigley Field.

He was part of one of the series of events that eventually became a book, "Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting till Next Year," which also features a short piece by me. Yiddish did a bit of singing and played the Shofar (ram's horn). He fooled around with a Ouija board. His act was at once appealing and odd. Some people scratched their heads, others laughed and some did both. When he asked what I thought, I said, "I think you make Andy Kaufman look like Jack Benny." He took this as intended, as a compliment…”

At that moment, I felt weird, but defiantly proud and weird and tired at the same time, since I stayed up all night just to catch the night bus, having been performing the night before at a hair salon opening in the city. And then Kogan said something like, “Sid, welcome to the program. I’ve seen a lot of entertainers in my time, but nothing quite like you.” That was an understatement! And on top of that, Kogan, like many before him and many after him, didn’t seem to know where to begin with me, but he found his way rather quickly and the questions started. Somewhere in the midst of all that, as I rattled off everything that I do, he asked me about throat singing and asked me to explain it and so I gave him the quick, short answer.

Then I asked him if he wanted me to demonstrate it for him. As he gave the listeners a word-picture description, I stood up and began to do a quick version of “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer.” I had often wondered myself if I could actually throat sing at 7:45 on a Sunday morning and if there was any doubt in my mind that morning that I couldn’t, all of those what ifs were quickly erased, as I launched directly into it.

Another commercial & and a quick mad dash out-in cigarette break for Kogan and then in came Pedro, who had been called up by Kogan’s producer. Kogan asked Pedro how we hooked up, the concepts of the projects itself and a few other questions along the way.

By the time all was said and done-our mission was accomplished. Must have made a dent in something, because by the day’s end, I had 45 hits on my MySpace page-a personal best at that point for me. We were headed toward fruition-the Swing State recording session was right around the corner and while I had hoped for all the best the following Saturday night/Sunday morning, I had no idea neither what was in store nor what was waiting on the other side...as usual...