With that said, today was the last day of the Morning Show, on MPR . I'm not really sure I can get across the full significance of this event for Minnesota commuters, musicians, acoustic music fans, and public radio listeners to anyone who hasn't lived here, but it's prettty significant.
The Morning Show has been around since 1969--it was founded by Garrison Keillor, before he started doing his Prairie Home stuff--and has had its current hosts since 1983. It's pretty simple: eclectic but warm and funny folk music, punctuated by satirical ads for things like the Sherpa SUV from Intimida ("It's a Mighty Big Car") or Genway genetically engineered supermarkets, and interviews with personalities ranging from pirates to high schoolers to life coaches, all voiced by the same incredible voice, Tom Keith. As far as I can tell, essentially every member of the enormous and brilliant Twin Cities music scene--Peter Ostroushko, Greg Brown, Ann Reed, Pat Donohue, Peter Mayer, and sooo many more--was featured on the show at a fairly important time in his or her career.
Anyway, I'm really sad about this, since listening to it while I take my sister to school is one of the things I look forward to when coming home. So I thought I'd at least make a tribute. You can listen here to the opening hour of the final show, which was recorded live starting at 6am today to a packed house that had begun gathering three hours earlier and featured reprises of all the major characters as well as appearances by many of the artists who have appeared on it over the ages. The first few minutes give an idea of the range these people have, or you can skip to minute 39 to hear my favorite ad, from Intimida. Or listen to the music! And Dale Connelly, the man behind most of the content, will start doing an online radio service tomorrow on radioheartland.org. I can't recommend it enough.
