Bob Rivers
Robert Rivers was an American rock and roll radio on-air personality in the Pacific Northwest, as well as a prolific producer and songwriter of parody songs, most famous for his Christmas song parodies. His album Twisted Christmas was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Rivers' last regular radio program, The Bob Rivers Show with Bob, Spike and Joe, was broadcast on Seattle oldies station KJR-FM until August 8, 2014, ending a 25-year run in the Seattle market.
Rivers played keyboards for a cover band affiliated with the show, Spike and the Impalers, until 2015.
Early life
Rivers was born in Branford, Connecticut, on July 7, 1956, and raised as a Catholic. On the air, he occasionally referred to the work ethic and competitive streak he learned from his parents. He was the eldest of eight children in his family.He knew from an early age that he wanted to be on radio. At the age of 15, he released a bootleg AM broadcast from the basement of his family's home. He also started a high-school radio show. He got his first paying radio job when he was 16, but reputedly was fired for playing too much Led Zeppelin.
On the air in Connecticut
Rivers got his start as disc jockey in Connecticut, where he was heard on WAVZ, WNHC, WCDQ, WELI, WFIF, WCCC-FM, WWCO, and WLIS.WAAF ''Bob and Zip''
Bob Rivers spent almost six years at WAAF in Worcester, Massachusetts, as part of their successful Bob and Zip morning show with fellow on-air personality Peter "Zip" Zipfel.During his tenure with WAAF, Rivers started producing parody and novelty songs, both for the station and for the KATZ/Newcity "American Comedy Network", a radio syndication service that provided comedy material to local U.S. and Canadian radio stations. One of the first parodies he produced was "Breakin' Up Is Hard On You", about the lawsuit and the resulting Bell System divestiture, the court ordered split up of U.S. telecommunications company AT&T's Bell System. The song was sung to the tune of Neil Sedaka's #1 1962 hit "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" and peaked at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop music chart. He followed it up with "Just a Big Ego," a parody of David Lee Roth's version of "Just a Gigolo". It went on to be included on Volume 2 of The Rhino Brothers Present the World's Worst Records and had a music video produced by Steve Rotfeld for Bob Uecker's Wacky World of Sports.
In 1987, Rivers released Twisted Christmas, which contained the Christmas music radio hit "Twelve Pains of Christmas", a parody of the holiday standard "The Twelve Days of Christmas". Twisted Christmas was certified a gold record.
WIYY "98 Rock"
In the spring of 1988, at Baltimore radio station "98 Rock" WIYY-FM, as a lead morning show personality between 1987 and 1989, Bob Rivers gained national attention for an 11-day, on-the-air marathon during a Baltimore Orioles losing streak. He vowed to remain on the air until the Orioles won a game. He kept his vow and became a local celebrity among Orioles fans for his pledge. During the marathon, he took naps only during songs and started to develop health complications from the lack of sleep.During his time at 98 Rock, he and WIYY radio collaborated with Sheffield Recording Studios to continue his campaign of Twisted Tunes.
In just under two years after joining WIYY, Rivers increased the station's morning show's ratings by about 65 percent.
A few weeks before Rivers was fired from WIYY, he met James O'Neill, who was working at a used car dealership. O'Neill's father owned the dealership and advertised on the show, so Spike objected to Rivers's song "Hyundai, Hyundai," a parody of Monday, Monday by The Mamas & the Papas. Rivers met Spike to test-drive a Hyundai, and Spike either "talked his way" into an unpaid internship on the show or, in his own words, " had taken them from worst to first and they offered him an insulting pay increase to renew. He went public with their insult and at that point they took him off the air for the rest of his term. He met me and invited me in as an intern. When he left, he thought enough of me to ask me to join him."
KISW ''Twisted Radio''
Arriving at Active Rock radio station KISW-FM in Seattle in 1989, Rivers debuted a morning show with fellow radio host Sean Donahue, also from Baltimore. Their chief rival was the station KXRX. Rivers brought Spike O'Neill with him; Spike served as sportscaster, writer, and impressionist. They spent "six weeks of 14-hour days doing production and brainstorming and writing" before their first show on air.Rivers released a second album of humorous holiday-themed music in 1993 entitled I Am Santa Claus. Later, three other Christmas-themed albums were released: More Twisted Christmas ; Chipmunks Roasting On an Open Fire ; and White Trash Christmas.
Bob Rivers and his Twisted Radio show also produced many non-holiday parodies covering such topics as pop culture, politicians, and the various sports teams and players in the Seattle area. These "Twisted Tunes" could be heard for free on his website. CD compilation albums are also available.
Rivers claims that more Twisted Tunes were written about the 1994 O. J. Simpson murder case than about any other individual; an example is the Twisted Tune "White Ford Bronco". Rivers has said that there might have been more Twisted Tunes sung about the Seattle Seahawks and Super Bowl XL. Rivers and his colleagues have guessed that his most famous Twisted Tune based on a pop song is "What if God Smoked Cannabis?", based on the 1995 Joan Osborne hit "One of Us".
In 1999, Rivers wrote a "twisted tune" song called "Kosovo", a parody of the Beach Boys hit song "Kokomo", about the Kosovo War. While earning many fans, the song also gained international attention and some controversy when it was used in 2005 by some Norwegian peacekeepers in Kosovo to make a music video.
In late 1999, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted that, after 10 years at the station, Rivers had the longest tenure of any radio personality in the local market.
Rivers and his cast sat out a year's non-compete period when their contract with KISW ran out.
KZOK ''The Bob Rivers Show''
In September 2001, the cast and show moved to KZOK, where it played through September 30, 2010. O'Neill was added to the show for a slate of talents that include vocal impersonations and improvisation. The producer was Mike Jones; Arik Korman, a 2001 Visionary Award winner, joined the show as director in 2002; news and comedic commentary were provided by Maura Gallucci and, for a few years, Kaci Aitchison.The Bob Rivers Show was simulcast on Portland, Oregon's "1980s Rock Hits" radio station KVMX "Mix 107.5" from March 20, 2006, until October 5, 2006, when the station dropped the morning show and switched to a Rhythmic Adult Contemporary format under the new branding "Movin' 107.5".
The cast would occasionally perform on-air skits, such as a famous parody of The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy and the Wizard are trying to bring Brian Bosworth back "home" to Seattle.
Another favorite was a contest between two callers-in to speak the roles of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler in the last lines of Gone with the Wind, beginning with the line "I'm leaving you, my dear. All you need now is a divorce and your dreams of Ashley can come true." Caller-in Kim played Scarlett to Spike's Rhett, and then caller-in Robert played Rhett to Spike's Scarlett. Spike ad-libbed many lines. For example, when Kim as Scarlett exclaimed, "Rhett! Rhett, where are you going?" Spike as Rhett replied, not the film's actual line, "I'm going back to Charleston, back where I belong," but: "I'm going to Rick's in Federal Way! Where I belong." When contestant Robert played Rhett and delivered the line, "Here, take my handkerchief," Spike as Scarlett used the handkerchief in a noisy and unladylike way. Listeners who called in got to vote on the better contestant, and Kim won the prize, probably in part because of her tearful, yearning cries of "Rhett! Rhett!" The prize was Fandango movie tickets.
In 2007, Spike O'Neill, in charge of sports news, persuaded former Seattle Seahawk placekicker Norm Johnson into an extended interview about Johnson's having saved the life of a woman, Virginia Sayson, who was trapped in an overturned car in a ditch in Silverdale, Washington. Rivers's and O'Neill's admiring and humorous interview, and Johnson's modest replies, turned the local-interest story into national news.
KZOK gained world renown when they partnered with World Vision International for what was to be a one-day "radiothon" to sponsor 400 children in poor nations. By the count of listeners who called or wrote to the station, they soon found sponsors for more than 3,000 children in Senegal, Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic, and other Third World countries.
Toward the end of this decade, the station added television cameras to the studio; streaming videos of interviews and musical performances could be seen on station websites. Mike Jones left the show when cameras were introduced.
Rivers's show left KZOK when he could not reach a contract deal with CBS, the owner of the station.
During December 2010, when the show members sat out their non-compete period from KZOK, Bob and his wife Lisa traveled to Bangladesh, where they spent the holiday helping to build schools for the poor in Dhaka.
KJR-FM ''The Bob Rivers Show with Bob, Spike and Joe''
The Bob Rivers Show ran on KJR-FM from April 1, 2011, to August 8, 2014, ending on the twenty-five year anniversary of Bob's first day on air in Seattle.The Bob Rivers Show cast at 95.7 FM included Spike O'Neill, Joel "Downtown Joe" Bryant, newswoman Jodi Brothers, director Arik Korman, and producers Luciana Bosio and Pedro Bartes, a married couple who also contributed news and jokes on air.