Chad Bowar: If a metalhead tuned into a typical show, what will they hear?
Chris Akin: The Classic Metal Show is a unique listening experience upon itself. It's been called an Opie and Anthony like show if the b-b-b-boys decided to do six hours talking about heavy metal. The reality of it is that Neeley and I both worked to develop a show that is a comedy-tinged talk show based solidly on metal, but metal as it used to be. It's highly interactive with the fans, the artists, and of course Neeley and I.
Every week it features interviews with two or three artists that are making music that we loosely classify as “classic metal”. The term is highly misunderstood though. “Classic Metal” is a sound, not a period. Our thought is that a band that continues the musical values created by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, etc., then their music is what would be featured. We jokingly state that you could hear something ranging from “as pussy as Poison to as tough as Testament.”
Being honest, this driving hard rock and heavy metal scene is actually thriving right now, but most people don't know it because they are too locked into wishing it was 1989 and running out to see bands that should have retired years ago embarrass themselves in the name of rock n' roll. The Classic Metal Show covers all of that, and exposes so many of these artists for the hypocrisy of their careers now, as so many of them think that their legacy gets them a pass to be idiots today. We go out of our way to expose that.
When and where does the show air?
The Classic Metal Show is actually two shows. First, and most important for our audience, we have the six hour live and uncensored show that airs on Saturdays from 9p-3a EST. It can be heard on our online radio station, www.cmsradio.net. It also airs on six or seven other online affiliates live, and on 12 online stations in rebroadcast during each week.
Additionally, we do a weekly, FCC friendly two hour version of the show which airs in several terrestrial stations throughout the United States and the UK. It's basically highlights of the uncensored show with beeps put into the right places in order to mask the fact that we talk like real people do. After all, you wouldn't want the children to hear any bad language, or make any parents actually have to pay attention to what their kids are listening to, would ya?
How did it get started?
Neeley actually stated the show in January of 1996. He was an over the road truck driver at the time, and became sickened by the amount of bad radio that was going on around the country. He decided to do something about it, so he went to broadcasting school and then found a station just outside of Akron, Ohio which would let him do a show more in the vein that he wanted. During this time, I was doing a show called The Metal Show on WMMS in Cleveland that catered to basically all styles of metal. After meeting Neeley, I went and hung out a few times when he was doing his show, and there was an immediate chemistry, a real good cop, bad cop thing.
Neeley moved to Chicago in 2003 for a job opportunity, but between him and me, we decided that keeping the show going was a priority because it had a pretty large following in Akron. So we took it to the web, which Neeley hosted solo for awhile. In 2004, thanks to the joy of technology, I was able to join the show full time. Interestingly, we've only done two actual shows where we are in the same room. Weekly, I'm in Cleveland and Neeley's in Chicago. But thanks to some enhanced high speed internet, some professional mixing boards, an army of computers and a little practice, we've been able to hone our craft to where people don't regularly think that we're not in the same studio when we are live.
What makes a good interview?
In a perfect world, it would be the artists actually sharing some reality into their psyche. We go out of our way to not ask the same dumb questions you would hear in every other interview to these guys. The reality is that outside of a very few super hardcore fans, no one cares what studio anyone recorded in. No one cares about what type of head a guitarist plays through, or how this band ended up on this big tour with that band. The reality that I try to keep in mind is that music as a whole is considered good or bad by people based on how they relate to it. Therefore, I'm likely to try to dig into an artist and find out what they were thinking about when they wrote my favorite song, because I want to compare the real meaning with the meaning it has to me.
Additionally, we've really gone out of our way to make every interview interesting. If an interview is dull and going nowhere, it's my job to make it work for the listeners. That might mean that if it's a foreign artist that I ask questions that make no sense to see if they are even remotely understanding what I'm saying, or just going through the motions. It might mean making up names of equipment that they've played to see if they even know who provides them with their guitars or drums. We've had some real dud interviews that were salvaged through quick talking an interviewee and them not understanding exactly what I was saying. Ultimately, an interview on the radio is about keeping people listening to it. If it's good, people will stay. If it's bad, they won't. If it's unpredictable, there's no way to turn it off because you just don't know when that “special” moment will come out.
