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DRAFT … in progress … done.
‘There Was No Going Back’
(29 Apr 2024)
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Dear Reader:
Social media friend Melissa asked this question today:
– How different was your first job compared to your favorite job?
Uh oh! It’s been a l-o-n-g time, another Sharon essay.
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‘First job’ as in first adult on-my-own job? Rather than a first job ever such as childhood or teen jobs?
How did my parents influence my career choices?
My mother worked in radio during the 1950s, the 1960s, and into the 1970s. Initially, at KUPD, she was in promotions, as I recall. I remember when the station awarded her a weekend trip to Las Vegas. My sister Kathy and I came with our mother. I best remember the air flight on Bonanza Airlines (Banana Airlines), my first time flying.
My mother would bring me to the radio station, rather than put me in daycare, before I was school age. I was well-behaved. I most remember a big guy who wore a grey cowboy hat; of course, any adult is big to a small child.
Remember, my mother began her acting career in the 1950s in a minor role on the TV show ’26 Men’. By the 1970s, my mother was working through a talent agency doing radio voice-overs and TV ads along with acting in community theatre and in movies as an Extra or small parts. There was one time when I was visiting her, we were watching TV, one of her commercials came on. Her talent agency sent her to several movies, including ‘A Star Is Born’ (1976) and a Clint Eastwood ‘Dirty Harry’ movie. She continued starring in community theatre well into the 1990s.
My father had a career in aerospace from the late 1950s to mid 1960s. His team designed and drafted aircraft and spacecraft, I remember when he brought home the company magazine and showed the projects that he worked on.
My father was a teacher and school administrator from the 1960s to 1989. He taught Mathematics at Pinewood High School (Greece) for two years, also two years at the American school at Sao Paulo, Brasil. He got his New Mexico school district to approve me to work as a Substitute Teacher at his elementary school and at the local high school for a school year (1977 – 1978). I also worked as a Catechist and a youth minister at my Catholic parish (1981 – 1985); I taught 1st Grade and was occasional Substitute Teacher for high school students.
My first adult job was a radio DJ at KTAN AM/FM. It began during my high school when I was in the radio club and we produced a one-hour weekly program. After high school graduation, I worked as a Monitor – listening to network feeds and playing local inserts when they happened. I also helpt the regular DJs – getting records, cueing records, setting up tapes during news broadcasts, programming the FM station (1973 – 1977). I worked mostly with Bob Melvin, ‘The Rock’ – he did the Rock music shift beginning from the evening newscast to sign-off at 11pm. He taught me how to operate all the various Control Room equipment, I made extensive notes. I also helpt Randy Price during his shift from midday to 6pm playing Country and Western format.
I worked a few grunt jobs in addition to the DJ job. During Summer 1975, I worked at a mobile home park helping set up mobile homes and helping move mobile homes. During 1975 and 1976, I worked as an automotive mechanic at a local Union 76 service station.
I had a career in Personnel Management with the federal government (1977 – 1985).
My first federal government appointment was as a Clerk at the Department of the Army (1977). I typed keypunch cards at the Civilian Personnel Office. I also helpt with other tasks required of the Clerk. The agency issued a performance award to me for my excellence.
My appointment with the Forest Service began December 1978. I began as a Clerk and eventually promoted to Personnel Specialist. I was doing Recruitment and Placement at first – working in ‘S/STEP’ hiring authorities. I was a member of our office’s Safety Committee and taught Defensive Driving to new-hires who drove government vehicles. I conducted a major Personnel Office audit during 1981 and 1982 which led to being recognised by the agency – the Washington Office approved additional Personnel authority to our Employment Office (expanded authority from GS-9 through GS-13) (1983). Along that same time, our agency office’s Director chose to break the law, to violate federal Personnel regulations under the guise of illegal personal services contracts: he hired several friends, paid them far beyond the equivalent of the Civil Service pay rates, paid them with personnel benefits far more excessive than provided to Civil Service appointees.
As Personnel Specialist, working title Assistant Personnel Officer, I took my job responsibilities seriously when I repeatedly advised our local Director against continued violations. I lost this career because the Director chose to retaliate against me: first he demoted me, then he was required to restore me, then he eventually took action to fire me. During that time, in my efforts to retain my career, I filed Whistleblower reports; nothing saved my employment. I eventually won my case through the Unemployment Insurance process, but there was no going back.
Concurrent with my federal career, I worked as a part-time DJ at KBWA (KDKB) (1979 – 1980). We played the Beautiful Music format. I was a back-up working weekday evening shifts (usually two or three times each week) and also weekend shifts. I produced radio spots, PSAs, promos, and station ID recordings.
I also did intermittent work in community radio at KRCL FM, Salt Lake City, during the first half of the 1980s (about 1982 to 1985). I’d help the DJs with their studio duties. I also helpt edit pre-recorded talk show interviews.
I had a few other brief jobs after the Forest Service. One stint was Court Clerk (1986). Another was as a Pharmacy Aid at one hospital (1985 – 1986) and in Health Insurance Utilisation Review for another hospital (1987 – 1988).
I ended my work life employed by the State of Arizona (1990 – 2010). I worked at three different state agencies: Department of Economic Security, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment Administration (State MedicAid), and at Arizona Department of Administration as a Fiscal Specialist in Risk Management (1999 – 2010). In other words, at ADOA, my two work-mates and I did Self Insurance for the State – we worked providing business and liability insurance for State agencies and employees and we advised on State contracts with businesses and individuals. Bad habits followed me. I became a Whistleblower again due to corruption within my office. My Director retaliated and fired me on their accusation that being F-M Transsexual rendered me ‘mentally unfit’. I appealed this for two years and eventually won, but, again, there was no going back.
Concurrent with those jobs was my career in TV (Oasis Network / TCCC, 1986 to 2011). I crewed numerous live and taped TV shows: lighting, sets, audio, digital Toaster, Assistant Director, and Director.
I created and produced two shows: ‘Rock Club Rising’ (I video recorded more than 500 different bands through the course of production from 1994 to 2000) and ‘Dick’s Automotive’ (about electric cars and the annual electric car races held during February each year).
Here is this news article about ‘Rock Club Rising’:
(https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/eat-the-document-6421801)
Phoenix New Times
MUSIC NEWS
Eat the Document
About halfway through the after-the-fact Seattle music-scene documentary Hype, there’s a piece of footage that has the authentic feel of history. You see Nirvana ripping into “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for what the subtitles proclaim to be the first time ever. The hand-held camera work is amateurish, the picture is…
Gilbert Garcia
August 27, 1998
About halfway through the after-the-fact Seattle music-scene documentary Hype, there’s a piece of footage that has the authentic feel of history.
You see Nirvana ripping into “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for what the subtitles proclaim to be the first time ever. The hand-held camera work is amateurish, the picture is grainier than the Zapruder film, and the sound feels like it’s been dubbed from someone else’s bootleg tape. But as the camera frames the beatific smile on Kurt Cobain’s face, you’re struck with the feeling that this is something rare and valuable, a moment that could have easily receded into the faulty memory banks of the relative few who were at the club that night, if someone hadn’t taken the time to capture it.
Some of that same vibe comes across when watching Rock Club Rising, a weekly music show on Access Phoenix (Channel 22) that painstakingly parades viewers through the Valley’s club scene, with fresh live footage of every imaginable local band. The picture tends to be dark, and the sound is fairly raw, but Rock Club Rising is the one place where you can see local music being documented, by people who really care about it.
When shock-industrial band BlessedBeThyName sacrificed four chickens before their Valley Art showcase at the New Times Music Awards in April, Rock Club Rising was there to capture them carefully applying greasepaint to their bodies and rubbing chicken feed into their hair before the show. When Nita’s Hideaway shut down last month in a blaze of creative destruction, Rock Club Rising saved it for posterity. And when Zia Enterprises threw a tribute show for its deceased founder, Brad Singer, only Rock Club Rising was there to preserve it.
The show was started by Sharon Nichols, a community radio veteran who developed an interest in the potential of video while working for the forest service in Utah.
“When I was in Utah, I started getting involved doing film photography, movie footage with my Super-8 camera,” says Nichols. “I would sometimes just go downtown and shoot footage of the people or the events. There was a lot of construction going on, so I filmed that. I did sort of a semi-amateur/semi-professional film on a historical hotel that somebody decided to demolish and make into that. So I did some filming of the demolition. One of the hotels let me have a rooftop vantage point that no one else had.”
Nichols moved to Tucson and began to work for the community station as a crew member on a variety of shows, from music, to religion, to talk, and call-in shows.
In 1991, she bought a video camera, and shortly thereafter moved to Phoenix. She was struck by how active the local music scene was, and became interested in documenting it. While she regularly credits the 1962 Cavern Club footage of The Beatles and a live bootleg of The Germs as her biggest inspirations, her most important local influence was Psycho Gypsy front man Eddie, who told her about the band’s own cable-access show and encouraged her to start Rock Club Rising.
The show’s debut episode taped in February 1995 at Mason Jar (though it didn’t air until the next season started in September of that year), with Arsenal and Raven Wolf. “It was fabulous,” Nichols gushes. “The guys liked it, and Franco [Gagliano of Mason Jar] was pleased.”
Since then, Nichols–with the help of metal/punk zealot Jim Dawson–has documented between 200 and 300 bands, displaying a catholic taste that makes the show highly erratic, if ultimately a fair representation of what goes on in clubs. One gets the impression that Nichols isn’t a particularly big music fan in the typical sense (she admits to not knowing who Frank Black was when she chatted him up before a show at Gibson’s), but simply enjoys the process of videotaping live performances. As a result, her shows will incorporate the most mind-numbing, derivative grindcore juxtaposed with the wit and ingenuity of a Trunk Federation or Les Payne Product.
Dawson, who dutifully takes his 11-year-old son Daniel with him on video assignments (Daniel even took over the camera at a Windigo show at the Nile Theatre so dad could jump into the mosh pit), offers more of a concrete musical sensibility. He likes it loud and he likes it angry, and that’s the type of footage he usually contributes to Rock Club Rising. He’s currently planning his own spin-off show, Metalize: Local Hardcore, which will focus more consistently on rock of the ear-shredding, teeth-gnashing variety.
Though Nichols and Dawson videotape some national acts, they say that they’re frequently stymied by promoters and agents who refuse to give them permission. Nichols was particularly frustrated about Frank Black’s show, because the former Pixies leader himself seemed eager to have the show taped, but was overruled by a rep from Evening Star Productions.
“I wasn’t even planning to do any taping, but I had the camera in my car,” she says. “Frank said, ‘Sure, c’mon, bring in the camera.’ He was like a child on Christmas morning, pleased as peach that someone was going to tape his show.” When Evening Star nixed the idea, she says, “You could see the dejection in [Black].”
Though the show poses no threat to ER’s Nielsen numbers, Nichols finds that more and more people she meets at club gigs seem to be aware of Rock Club Rising, and bands regularly approach her now, eager to appear on the show. In fact, Dawson first became involved with the show after accidentally catching it one night and meeting Nichols at Boston’s a month later. Beyond the obvious benefit for the bands involved, Rock Club Rising has also changed the way Nichols processes music.
“I guess because of my radio background, my concept of music was recorded music,” she says. “It was more of a concept of a band goes into a studio, puts together a recording, gets it out to radio stations, and maybe goes out live trying to re-create on stage what they’ve done in the studio. Over the course of doing live work, I’ve gone in just about the opposite way. Performance is the real deal, what can the band do live onstage? What you see is what you get onstage.”
–Gilbert Garcia
Rock Club Rising airs on Access Phoenix (Cox Channel 22) and Insight Cable (Channel 1) every Wednesday at 12:30 a.m.
Contact Gilbert Garcia at his online address: ggarcia@newtimes.com
Phoenix New Times
© 1998 Phoenix New Times, LLC.
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So, what was different about these jobs? Not much. I found something to like and enjoy in all of them. Hey, I learned to do my own auto repairs, I learned about government, I learned how to create and produce TV shows (I met at least 500 different bands in the course of RCR, I met a wide variety of guests who appeared on other people’s shows).
I had a good life despite so much bad.
Thank you for joining me on today’s stroll down Memory Lane.
– Sharon
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PS:
Thank you for allowing me to make this my 1100th Post here.
WOW!
– Sharon
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You can occasionally read an alternate, abbreviated version of these posts at my social media page:
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Sharon Nichols
29 Apr 2024
As I remind you, Dear Reader, my Slimandme.wordpress.com web-site is my primary Internet presence.
Today I published my 1100th post:
(https://slimandme.wordpress.com/2024/04/29/there-was-no-going-back/)
‘There Was No Going Back’
(29 Apr 2024)
Enjoy!
– Sharon
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Additional Resources:
1.
This is Crooked Drumpf’s Amerika.
(https://www.facebook.com/414507242439358/posts/732780587278687/)
DNC War Room
1 Sep 2020
Shared with Public
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Slim and Me 