Before the Algorithm: Victor Cruz on Radio, Prince & the Future of Music | EP 14

0:00 Now, with AI, you don't even have that anymore. You don't need a person. You can literally type in, "Make me a female DJ, a jock, who's 36 years old. We're gonna call her Maria. She's gonna be stationed out of El Paso, and she never misses a day. She's doesn't get sick. She doesn't have to go home and take care of her kids," because it's AI. Okay? Again, a, a harsh reality, but that's where the future of radio isn't heading, it's already here. Every result has a price. Every goal requires a choice.

0:32 Comfort keeps you where you are. Discipline takes you where you want to go. Welcome to Discipline Over Comfort with Bob Terrio, real world conversations on leadership, business, marketing, and execution. So tonight's show is a little bit different. I'm sitting down with someone that I've known for 20-plus years. I lost count. Long-time El Paso radio personality and DJ Victor Cruz. We're gonna be talking about the glory days of radio, how music has changed, life before algorithms, his next chapter in podcasting, and because Victor and I are both huge Prince fans, there's obviously gonna be some of that involved.

1:16 So Victor, welcome brother. Nice to have you here. Bob, Bob, it is, it is my absolute, my absolute pleasure to be here. You know, I'm, I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the screen as we're recording here, and, and obviously, or maybe you don't know this, but, but podcasting and videos and, and things are still really new to me. Mm-hmm. I'm used to not having eyes on me, you know, even if it's one-on-one. I mean, you've seen me a couple of times in the studio, and that was always my element, where the nobody was...

1:43 And I'm, I'm looking at, it just, it looks a little, looks a little odd. I've, I've got my ring camera, I mean, I got my ring lighting, and you can see it in my glasses. But something is missing, Bob. Something's not quite... I know what it is. I know what it is. What is it? What is- Here, let me, let me make some adjustments here real quick. I mean- Okay... let's do this. I, a- and give me a quick moment, you know. All right. I'm trying to use a fancy schmancy background that obviously it's from the Dollar Tree, but something's missing.

2:07 Give me, give me a second. Let me, let me fix this real quick and- Okay. All right. You- Let me do that... you'll appreciate, yeah, you'll appreciate this. Here we go. Here we go. All right. Oh, wow. Wow. That's better. Okay. Yeah, it's just- The cap- The vibe changed... the cap was missing. Yeah, and, and- Yeah... it had to have the symbol. Had to have the symbol. Bob, how you doing, my man? Man, I'm doing fantastic. I was a little bit under the weather, but, you know, I just felt better and said, "I'm doing this tonight," you know, so.

2:33 And, and I will tell you this much. Um, I, I tend to get a little bit lengthy and long-winded, so please, you know, reel me in if I do, but I, and I mean this with all sincerity, hardly anybody really ever asks me to be a part of their, of their podcast, a, a part of their video blogs anymore, since I haven't been in the industry. And even when I was in the industry, I didn't get that, I didn't get asked that too often. But, but I will say this, I'm here for you. The minute you said you wanna be a part of it, you wanted me to be there, absolutely, 100%.

3:01 You're one of the few people that I will stop pretty much anything and everything I am doing to accommodate you for, for your show. And, and I mean that with all honesty. I, I hear you. It's my- I hear you. Thank you. It's- My pleasure- It's, yeah... to be here, and, and, and cheers to you as, as... I know you're feeling better. A little bit of mango cart on your behalf, okay? Great. Perfect. Yeah, no, I'm feeling a lot- We can, we can drink, right? We're not against FCC rules. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

3:24 I mean, I, I have my, my, my ice drink here, you know. Okay. So no alcohol in it, but- That's all right. Yeah, I'm so used to, to being strict... And again, we can talk about that, but I'm so used to being under strict rulings of FCC, of what's allowed and what's regulated, so if I... I'm actually, this is my second mango cart. I was doing some things before this. Yeah. So as the, as the, uh, interview goes on, we'll see what happens. Well, Vic, just, I mean, you pulled out your hat, so I mean, this is...

3:49 I'm gonna move my microphone here, but check this out. Let's see. Absolutely. There you go. There you go. This is, uh, Prince performing in the Superdome in New Orleans. You know my family's from New Orleans. Right. And I think that's how- July 4th... as we start getting into it, I think that's pretty much how you and I started really talking, how we became friends. If, if memory serves correct, it, it actually had a connection to... I don't know if you remember this. It actually, actually had a connection to finding out about Louisiana.

4:16 But yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be a Prince night. If, if I could move the phone around and pan down, I'd show everybody the Prince tattoo I've had for over 30 some odd years. I mean, I am indeed a hardcore Prince fan to the point where I've, I'm a self-appointed snob, Prince snob. Yeah. I get real snobby about it. That's okay. Yeah, yeah. There's only one person that I would say on earth when, and I know you can relate to this, but when anybody talks about Prince fandom, you're the only other person that comes to mind that is a bigger or as...

4:45 This, we're equal, but I mean, you know, we have our own connection. But- Yeah... with the day that he died, my phone, I was in a meeting, in a conference room with a president and a vice president of a company, and my phone would, I had it on silent, but it would not stop vibrating. And I had no idea what was going on, and it just kept going off, on. I mean, just r- people were reaching out to me. I reached over and finally saw what was going on, but people were calling saying, "Did you hear the news?"

5:12 Like, every... I guess the way you have connection with friends is something when Prince related, when he, even when he was alive, you got the call. And the same for me. When that, when that happened, my phone just never stopped all day long. It was, it was weird. Very few people outside of being connected to Prince in that aspect can say this. Mm-hmm. And I think even fewer people can say exactly what you are, are saying. In El Paso, it felt like we were his representatives in town. Mm-hmm. We were his PR people, because immediately- Yeah...

5:46 the phones kept ringing and the texts, and, "Is it true?"... and have you heard, and is everything okay? All of a sudden, I'm the PR guy, you know? Yeah. Wait, hold on, hold on. Let, let me find out. No, it can't be true. Let me see what's going on. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. And, and isn't it something, and again, we can talk about this further, but isn't it something, Bob, to be connected to something like that, that you become associated with? I never dismiss the fact that somebody will send me a text, somebody will send me a picture.

6:17 Um, with social media, anything that happens with Prince, immediately I get copied on it, ad na- ad nauseam, three or four times- Yeah... over, right? But what a, what a great feeling that is to be that expert, if you will, that immediately you're associated with. I, I have a cousin, when I think of Michael Jackson, I think of her. She, she is my Michael Jackson connection. Just isn't that a feeling to, to be associated and connected with an idea and a person that immediately- Yeah... you're, you're associated with them?

6:44 That, that to me is just unbelievable, and it's almost still an honor, you know, every time it happens. And there's- I'm surprised, I'm surprised but I'm not surprised. Does that make sense? Yeah. A- a- and so as I'm talking to you, it's like there's no one else I could talk about to, to, about this with. It's like- [laughs]... 'cause there's nothing else in my life that I would get called for- [laughs]... or be connected to. It's like- Yeah. Yeah. Me- It's just great... it's Prince, it's Prince and Vegas.

7:10 I, I've quickly become the Vegas expert among my friends, right? Yeah, yeah. And I'm not even an expert, but it, it's so odd to be connected to Vegas. You know, friends, "Hey, we're going to Vegas in October. What, what do you recommend? Where should I eat?" I don't even live there. I just visited enough, but I, I have that... Same thing with Prince, right? I never got to meet him. I, I wasn't associated at Paisley Park. I've never even been to Paisley Park, Bob. But- Yeah, me neither... yeah, you're, you make that association, and I think that that just speaks volumes about the individual.

7:41 It speaks volumes about you, um, you know, being connected to Prince. I, I feel like it's an honor, honestly. Yeah. And, and when I was a kid, I didn't think that. 'Cause, you know, I was probably turned on to Prince, I was probably like 11 or 12 when I heard I Wanna Be Your Lover, but didn't really, didn't connect. It wasn't till the Controversy album- Mm... that I got real deep into, like, it was... You know, when I heard him doing the Our Father on that song, I was like, "What is this? What's going on?

8:08 What, why is he praying on... " It was weird, right? Right. And then when 1999 came out, and it just kept going and going and going, it was like, wow. And so but early on in 1999, I mean, all my friends made fun of me. They're like- [laughs]... "What are you listening to? Why do you like that?" You know? Yeah. I was like, "I don't know. I just, I like it." And I like R&B any- so I like all music, but I had a proclivity towards rhythm and blues, R&B, soul music, and when Prince came out, it was different.

8:33 It was rock, and it had all the elements. It was just different. I didn't know what funk was, you know? Hindsight 2020, you know it was that Minneapolis sound that, that he- Yeah... almost created, almost created, but he also made it his. For me, it was just a few years after that, that I got into Prince. I mean, you know, watching MTV. Let's be honest, MTV wasn't playing that many Black artists to begin with, and when they were, it was just the big names, the Lionel Richies, the Michael Jacksons, and, and every once in a while you got a Prince song, you know, from 1999.

9:06 Yeah. But when- Little Red Corvette was the first, I think. Yeah. On MTV. But when, when Purple Rain hit, my, my best friend in the whole wide world, who I'm still real good friends with, figure that, some 40, 45 years later, he is the one who turned me on and said, "Man, you gotta see this movie. The guy's jumping around, and in the first 10 minutes he's on a piano, and he jumps off the piano, and he's playing his guitar," and it was like, and it was Prince. And again, like you, I knew who he was, but I didn't put that connection in.

9:34 Right. But once I saw Purple Rain and got into the Purple... Everybody listening, and this is gonna be Prince geek talk for about the next five minutes. Once I saw Purple Rain and got the soundtrack, you know, cassettes, albums maybe. Then I went backwards and I said, "Okay, this guy's good. Who is this?" Mm-hmm. "I need to find out more." So then I started from the earlier stuff, the For You, Prince, Controversy- Mm-hmm... 1999. I knew who he was, but I wanted to know more. And I'm sure just like you, kids, back in the day when, when you bought the albums, you had full liner notes, you had lyrics, you had everything on that album.

10:09 Yeah. What blew me away, what blew me away and wanted me to know more about him was that one tag on every album that said, "Produced, recorded, arranged by Prince." That blew me a- What? Yeah. One guy is doing all of this? Mm-hmm. That's what was amazing to me. Yeah. People didn't believe it, right? 27 instruments. Yeah. Yeah. They counted and- And, and, and I, and I, we know there was probably more. He, I guess what you could say, you could probably name the instruments he couldn't play more than you can what he could play.

10:40 I think he couldn't do brass and, and, and saxophones and trumpets, right? But again, to produce it, and now that I've been, I've gotten older and I was with him through that whole ride, I understand how much it meant to have production and have control, almost megalomaniac style, okay, I get it- Yeah... egotistical style. But he was in control of everything for the longest time, and that's what, to this day, gives me the most respect for him and, and any artist. Any artist who's in control of their music, who gains control of their publishing rights and, that's for a whole nother topic.

11:12 But- Yeah, yeah... your Taylor Swifts. Yeah, your Taylor Swifts, anybody... I'm not a fan of Taylor Swift, okay? I don't know her music. But my hat's off to her for having control of her music rights, for her publishing. Prince preached it for many years. Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. I mean, it's a very short list of people who have it, but- Well, you hear, did you hear the story about Tayl- Taylor Swift when she found out about the publishing rights after she had a few albums? I'm not sure how many, but she had a few albums.

11:39 Once she found that out, she went back into the studio- Re-recorded... hired all new [audio glitching] and re-recorded everything. Really? She could retain- Right... everything. After she realized many years in, she was smart Yeah, and, and again, you know, the Prince, so this is where I get real snobby, right? The Prince snob in me says, yeah, she listened to Prince. She knew that's what Prince was talking about. If I can't have my rights, well then I'm gonna go back and re-record it. And I, I kinda think if he didn't do it, he would've done it anyway, if he never received his, his, his copyrights, if he never got the royalties, if he never owned his music.

12:12 You know, the best way I explain it to everybody, and, and Bob, I don't, I don't wanna take over and make this a Prince topic, but- No, no, no, go for it... the, the way that I explain to people about owning publishing rights is let's say you create something. You- you're making something. You're a baker. You bake cupcakes. All day long, that's what you do, and you know you're good at it, and these are the best cupcakes, and people tell [laughs] you, "These cupcakes are great." So then you need to find somebody to distribute these cupcakes.

12:37 I'm just baking 'em, I know what I'm doing, but I've gotta get these cupcakes out into the world. Yeah. So your distributor comes along and says, "Hey, we'll take those cupcakes and we'll distribute 'em for you." Mm-hmm. And that works for a little while. Then that individual tells you, "You know what? These cupcakes, we don't like the way they look. You should do it this way instead." Mm-hmm. "Oh, okay. I can distribute it better if you make it this way. And how about you change the recipe? Instead of having that, you do this instead."

13:04 So now your distributor is telling you how to create your products. Mm-hmm. And you turn around and say, "No, these are my cupcakes. These are what I'm do-" "No, wait a minute. You, you signed a co- you signed a contract, now I own your cupcakes." That's all Prince did. Yeah. And that's where I think every artist gets screwed, basically, because they don't know what they're signing away. They wanna be famous and rich and have that notoriety, but you're losing the rights to your, to your art, to your cupcakes.

13:31 And that's what I've learned from Prince, even as we kinda, you know, segue into maybe what the topics will be tonight. But that's the one thing that I've learned about Prince is really all you have is what you create. You need to take ownership in your creation and what you do. Whether it's good or bad, it's gotta be your ownership. You can't let somebody else dictate how you should do something. They can, they can help you move that product. They can help you promote that product. But they should never tell you, "You know what?

14:01 I don't hear a hit. I don't see a single. I, I don't taste the quality, you know. You should change it instead of you can make more if you put this in the cupcake," you know, to further beat the [laughs] analogy to death. But that's, that's the one thing that I've, I've taken away and, and have learned from. Prince, yes, but anybody, any artist who's in control of their product. At the risk of being, like I said, megalomaniac, okay, we get it, he was in too control of everything, but how many concerts did you see Prince in?

14:31 So I saw him at the Pan Am for Purple Rain. Right. I sat in the purple circle. Were you there? No. But- Went to the Emancipation. Go ahead. The Emanci- I was gonna say, the, uh, Jam of the Year. The Jam of the Year tour. Jam of the Year. Jam of the Year tour. I was front, I was front row because of obviously where I was working at at the time with the radio station. Yeah. And not only did I enjoy the concert, hey, it's Prince, and I know he saw my cap. I've had these caps... I gotta have these made at least once or twice a year.

14:58 I know he saw the symbol. I know he looked at me, right? I do. You know, the whole fan thing. But the one thing that, that I took away from it was he was in absolute control of that show. Yeah. Nothing happened without him acknowledging it, planning it, acknowledging it, and then making it. I remember him turning at one point, nodded his head, and everything changed. Mm-hmm. And I thought, "Wow." That's... And, and there was a, there was a quote I, I posted a couple of days ago, and I, I think you saw that if you didn't see it.

15:28 One of the best quotes I, I ever heard from Prince, I forget who he was telling it to, but the quote was, "You practice at home. When you get here-" Yes..."you rehearse." Right. There was a difference to him. Oh, yeah. 'Cause he ran through the whole show. Right. In music, in just everything. Yeah. You should already know what you're doing. Now we're gonna, we're gonna rehearse it. And again, it's difficult, [laughs] I get it, these days to do it, but I try to keep that in my own personal life as well.

15:52 Do what you're doing beforehand. Then when you get there, you rehearse it again, and again, and again. Even if it's scenarios in your head, okay? That's a little bit cuckoo for me to say sometimes. But I'm, I'm always pre-planning everything so I know what to expect, how it's gonna happen, when it's gonna happen. Does that make sense? Oh, it makes ab- perfect sense. Now, speaking of that Jam of the Year tour, did you go to the after party concert? No. So can I tell you a gr- Okay, do you, do you know the story?

16:20 I mean, I, I was there. Okay. Tell your story, and then I'm gonna- Okay... I'm gonna overlay my story with that. Okay. So I was deep, again, knowing, you know, reading liner notes, keeping up to what was going on. Again, this was in '96, so the internet still wasn't what it is now, right? And I had heard rumblings, and I don't know if I read an article that he was gonna... He had a album, the Crystal Ball album, that he was thinking about releasing or he had it, but it didn't come out, so he held it back or whatever.

16:51 It was another three-CD compilation that he held back, like always. And after the, the concert was over and everybody started leaving in Las- in, uh, the Pan Am in Cruces after the Jam of the Year tour, awesome s- awesome show. I was with a couple of friends, and we all had dates, and the lights come on, and somebody walks up on stage and says, "The Crystal Ball is happening at Wild Wild West," I believe, and I've had this conversation with Joe Dorgan, and Wild Wild West, and he just walks off the stage.

17:22 And I was like, I looked around, I'm like, "Where's the Wild Wild West?" And so everybody's like, "What? What is that?" I said, "I don't know. What is it?" So I started pulling people aside. I, I said, "They, that guy looks like he's from Las Cruces." I didn't know, so I pu- [laughs] I, I found out, yeah, it's some bar down off of Picacho. They started giving me directions. So I tell everybody, "We're going." This is, like, midnight, I guess. So we go, we pull up to this little hole-in-the-wall bar.

17:45 It looked like an old house. And there was a, you know, bouncer standing out front, and there was, like, three or four people standing there. And so I get out there, we all standing there, and I'm just, we're waiting. And they're like We're waiting. It's like 30 minutes. They're like, "What are we waiting for?" I said, "Prince is gonna be here." 'Cause I had known- Yeah... that he used to do these chair- uh, charity events. He would go perform and then leave all the money behind, right? And then about an hour later, or, or maybe a few minutes after that, I look back and I see Joe Dorgan walk up to the line, and I'm like, "Joe knows.

18:18 He's gonna be here, too." So I'm like, "He's gonna be here." Shortly after the- they came out, they made an announcement. They're like, "Prince is gonna be here. We're letting in like 100 people. It's 100 bucks to get in. The money's staying in Las Cruces for charity." And we got in. They were playing Prince music. You know, there's, it's a little tiny house. You could see the back door. You can see... I mean, we're just crammed. There's no stage, okay? There's a bar, a DJ, and a little booth, and it's just, like, tables and chairs.

18:42 So they're playing Prince music. Everybody's dancing. It's like 1:30 in the morning now, 2:00 maybe, and you see the bus pull up, and you see his band start getting out. And they set up, and we're just waiting and waiting, and all of a sudden you hear everybody, like, kind of, like, make a sound, and everyone like gasp. He walks in through the front door with two bodyguards, walks right by us, says hello to my, my then wife, walks right up, grabs his guitar. He's got a veil over his face [laughs] and just starts playing blues music for like two hours.

19:13 He played The Question of You I think was a song that- Oh... I recognized. Everything else was, I don't know what it is, but it was good. And, and that's, a- and so I, I consider seeing him three times. So, so here's, here's where my story kind of branches and dovetails away from that. So yeah, we were front row, right? Actually, and again, legit front row. It was my wife at the time. We got it through the radio station. I know it's been some 30 some odd years. I can say I've nagged the front row [laughs] tickets, never gave them away.

19:42 Yeah. Whatever the case is. And I remember seeing Joe Dorgan there. Joe Dorgan was absolutely there. And- Yeah... I think I knew- If you don't, if you don't know, Joe Dorgan owned a really popular club in El Paso. It was called Club 101. The guy is- Icon... like, he's an icon of El Paso, anything music. He's brought all kinds of bands, artists to his club. It was, it was the club for a long, long time. You wanna talk about, and I know he still does things with the 101, uh, moniker, uh, I think on the west side.

20:09 I forget. But- Yeah... you wanna, you wanna talk about somebody who, who needs to be in the El Paso Hall of Fame of whatever, Joe's gotta be there because he was breaking No Doubt, uh, Nine Inch Nails. He was bringing home- Yeah... all these groups right before they would hit, so absolutely Joe Dorgan. I call him the Rick Rubin of El Paso- Yeah... 'cause he was just- For sure... on top of everything. So I think I knew or I had assumed that he was gonna do, Prince was gonna do an after show because, like you said, he was notorious for doing these after shows, and the after shows were better than the concerts.

20:41 I mean, if you thought the concert was peak, the after shows- Mm-hmm... were stratosphere levels above and beyond, right? Whether he played blues all night or he debuted- Right... new songs, he did covers all night, whatever. So I was asked, I think somebody said, "Are you gonna go to the after show? Are you gonna go?" I was working radio at the time, and I was doing the morning show. And I said, "There's, there's no way." I gotta, I gotta haul ass all the way from Cruces back to El Paso. Whatever time the concert ended was midnight, 1:00.

21:06 I don't know what it was. I felt like I got home in time just to put my head down on the pillow to hear the alarm go off to get my head back up and get ready for work. It was just like that. So '96, '97, that's also about the time that the El Paso Airport was undergoing some major renovations. Pre-9/11 obviously. You could still go upstairs. But at the time, for the renovations, you couldn't go upstairs. They were doing all kinds of work up on top, and there was two restaurants in the airport at the time you can go sit down- Mm-hmm...

21:36 and eat at. I had a friend who worked at the airport with one of the airlines, and after the morning show, he actually called me 10:00, 10:15, and called me in my production room that I was working at, and all he said was, "He's here." And I said, "What?" I knew it was my friend. He said, "He's here. He's having breakfast at the restaurant." Left. I mean, goodbye work. Jumped in my little Suzuki Jeep I had at the time, made it go top speed on the highway, 75, 80, I guess as fast as it could go. Yeah.

22:05 And I happened to... And, and you can appreciate this, Bob. I happened to have a, was it the Gold album, or was it the Love album? I think it was the Love Symbol album. Okay. And I had the CD with me, and I had a Sharpie, and I said, "I'm getting an autograph." I'm, and I know he wasn't signing anymore at the time, but I- Mm-mm... getting an autograph. So I parked, and then again, it was construction, so you really couldn't park here. You had to go park over there, and then you can't go in through this door, and you can't go upstairs.

22:32 And I'm already Negative Nelly. I'm like, "He's probably upstairs. Why would he be downstairs? I'm not gonna meet him," whatever. So I literally run in with CD and Sharpie in hand, and I run by this bus with a security guard. And I try going in, and I'm looking and looking in the restaurant. And I would imagine, you know, at that time, he's surrounded by people, so if I can see a group of people, I know it's him. I'm gonna take- Yeah... my chance. Okay. Long story short, I didn't see him, and you couldn't go upstairs because of the construction.

23:01 So I thought, "He's upstairs. Oh, well. I tried. I tried." And as I walked out, I walked past that same security guard, and the bus is gone. And I swear to you, the security guard looked at me, and he just said, "You missed him." I was like, "What? How did you know who I'm coming for?" And he goes, "See the bus?" And the bus was already pulling around to the back to the private plane that Prince had. Mm. He's like, "As soon- Mm... as you ran in, he walked out." I missed him from whatever door I was going in.

23:27 I was- Wow... so pissed, but that's- Yeah... that's where it kind of dovetails away, so yeah. This close, this close to seeing him. It's cool. That's our Prince talk for the evening. Thanks everybody for tuning in. You guys have a great night. Make sure you subscribe to Bob's... Oh, we still got more? We got more. We'll talk more. Oh, wow. Well, let's dovetail a bit. So let's talk about, like, I, I wanna talk about the before the algorithm, right? So you talk about radio, analog, right? As you, as you, your career spanned, how long were you in radio?

23:55 How many years? Gosh. It pains me to say it almost Close to 30, almost 35 years In radio 35 years. What a career, long career. I mean, you worked for all the big stations Radio was something that I, that I wanted to do. You know when people ask you, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" I wanted to be on the radio. Growing up in El Paso, you had such radio legends like Jim Zippo, um, obviously Steve Krosnow, but, but I would listen to Jim Zippo getting ready for school, and I'm talking again five, six, seven-year-old, not understanding what radio was.

24:26 I, just like everybody else, I thought the artists and the groups went into this room and played their song live, and then- Yeah... the next group came in, and the DJ got to talk, and I heard people like, like Jim Zippo talking and, uh, Raymond Mesa and all these great legends and voices, and I said, "That, that's what I wanna do. If, if they can do it, why can't I? Why, why can't- Yeah... I host? Let's, let's do that. That's fun." Mm, mm-hmm. So yeah. And then- I, I started there... you ha- and then you just have the voice.

24:55 That you can't- I don't, I don't know if I had the voice or if the voice got tempered into radio, from, from radio. But yeah, and, and being witty, that was always a plus. And again, it's, it's the old school, it's the old school radio DJ mentality, right? Yeah. So, so I've always based my, my on-air persona akin to a David Letterman. I always thought David Letterman was funny. Mm. And to me, David Letterman was the worst host ever- Mm-hmm... when you saw his earlier years, uh, on Late Night. But he got better, and he got better, and, and to me he was- Well, he was awkward, right?

25:31 He was awkward. Yeah. If you think about it, the host, he was awkward, which made it funny. Yeah, absolutely. And, and you can tell those first early three, four years of, of doing Late Night and The Late Show with David Letterman, he, he didn't know what he was doing. A- again, it was that awkward nervousness and almost self-deprecation. Is that the word? Just making fun- Yeah... of yourself. Mm-hmm. That's, that's where my, a lot of my persona came from, just if, if, again, if, if this goofball from Indiana can do it on TV, I can definitely do it on radio.

26:00 And, and a lot of that- He was a weather-... came from that too... a weatherman, right? He was a weatherman. Right. Right. Yeah. Right, yeah. So, you know, and he knew he had to break away from that. I knew I had to. So very, very long story short, knew I wanted to be into radio. Community college, they had a college radio. I started doing work there. I spent more time at the radio station than I did in classes. I never finished community college, to be perfectly honest with you- Mm-hmm... because I ended up getting a job in radio, and I worked everything.

26:28 I, I, I did everything. I was the van driver. Mm-hmm. I would set up the remote. I worked baseball games on the AM dial on 600. I don't mind mentioning stations. I was on- Yeah... on 600 KROD working ra- uh, baseball games, running the commercials in between these national games, and quite literally worked my way up into having some major positions, doing morning shows on KLEQ, doing morning shows on KISS, ending up on The Fox, Hero Radio. A lot of, I think, of, of, of how I ended up in radio, you know, people are like, "Oh, you went to broadcast school, and you had this behind you, and you did..."

27:05 Yeah, I, I did take broadcasting at community college, but, but the fact of the matter is, and I'm not gonna lie, I think I was just lucky. I got lucky on a- Yeah... lot of aspects, being in the right places at the right times, knowing the right people, impressing the right people. You know, who can say, very, again, very few people can say, "I grew up listening," or, "I grew up watching so-and-so in my field, now I get to work with them." I, I got to work with names I would listen to, Courtney, Big Al, uh, Magic Mike, uh, you know, Glenn Garza.

27:37 These are guys that, that I was listening to and, and thought, "Wow, how did they do it?" You know? And, and here I am- Yeah... walking the hallways with them, you know, cracking jokes and, and cursing at each other and, and buddy this and, and let's have a lunch, you know? That's... Who can say that in their field? You know, as a doctor, you wanna work with your top peers, and you get that chance. Did I just, did I just liken being in radio to being a doctor? Wow. What's that connection? So I mean, you have a, you have a, you have a lot of fond memories, right, when you look back.

28:06 So when you, you're, you've been out of the business now for a few years, right? So when you look, and then you're getting ready to do some other stuff we'll talk about later, another, new endeavors, but as you sit and you look and you pull yourself out, and you look at radio, 'cause I have thoughts on it. 'Cause to me, I mean, quote, you know, air quotes, "radio's dead." It's, or it's not what we remember it, right? So for you, I think your perspective's real unique on that. Like, when you see it now, what are your thoughts about it?

28:32 It's corporate. Well, a- and again, my first, my, if, if we did a word association, if you said radio, I would say corporate. Mm-hmm. And for as many years as I was in it, in any industry, I say the same thing. It's always great to have the backing of corporate. The best thing you can do is have corporate's backing. The worst thing you can have is corporate's backing. And, and radio, even in the time that I was there, you know, and again, I can say this, um, no, no, no punches pulled, no holds barred.

29:00 When I was in radio, when I was doing my time in radio, and literally my time, it was already at the end. It, it was at the... It wasn't as fun as it was before I got in. Radio used to be a lot of fun. Local radio used to be a lot of fun. There was a lot of fun things you could do. There was a lot of leeway. Even in my time, there was silly little goofy things that, that it wouldn't mean to anything to anybody else, but man, behind the scenes we were just having a blast. It was fun. It was things that we would do to entertain us.

29:29 Now corporate has, unfortunately, I'm not gonna lie, unfortunately taken control. You can't do anything. And, and not to talk, not to talk smack about radio, but, but you notice when you listen to radio now, and especially terrestrial radio, I'm talking about the AM/FM dials, never mind Sirius, never mind any of these other satellite radios- Mm-hmm... or streaming. When you listen to radio, all they're doing is pushing you to the next thing. They're pushing you- Yeah... to the next event. "Hey, something great happened in Hollywood over the weekend, and I'll tell you more about it if you tune into our app.

30:04 I'll tell you more about it if you log on, and if you want more information-" It's so bland and so vanilla. Mm-hmm. Not that I have anything against vanilla. I love vanilla. Um, but- Right... that, that local... And let's, again, Bob, call it what it is. The, the personalities, your radio DJs, your radio personalities are gone. Yeah. So 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, we were talking about it's gonna be scary when they start voice tracking. Let me explain what voice tracking is for those who don't know.

30:32 Voice tracking is I can record my voice all day long, not stepping into the studio, for different radio stations, different radio markets. My voice is in El Paso on the morning show here, but then in the afternoon it's in Amarillo, then in the evening time I'm in Midland. So I'm not really talking about anything local. It's very general. I can give you a brief- Mm-hmm... description of what the weather is. It looks like, hey, it's gonna rain later on this evening. But I'm, I can't sit there and tell you, "Did you see the flooding on I-10?

31:03 Did you hear about the people who were..." There's nothing local. That was voice tracking 20, 30 years ago. It was, it was happening. Clear Channel, well, they're Clear Channel now, or iHeart. They're iHeart now. But Clear Channel was the biggest proponent of voice tracking. You'd, you'd tune into a different city, and all of a sudden you'd hear Brandy doing, you know, the traffic there, the weather here. But wait a minute, she's in El Paso. How did she... That was voice tracking, and that was evident 20 years ago.

31:29 Now, with AI- Mm-hmm... you don't even have that anymore. You don't need a person. You can literally type in, "Make me a female DJ, a jock who's 36 years old. We're gonna call her Maria. She's gonna be stationed out of El Paso, and she never misses a day. She's doesn't get sick. She doesn't have to go home and take care of her kids," because it's AI. Okay? Again, a, a harsh reality, but that's where the future of radio isn't heading. It's already here. Yeah. Well- So guys like me... Yeah. Guys like me- Well, let me, sorry, sorry to interrupt you, Quebec- Yeah...

32:04 but let me tell you s- ho- hold your thought there, but you're talking about radio. I have seen where po- full-blown podcasts are being produced with fake hosts, fake guests, and it's all AI, and they're having conversation just like we are with thoughts, emotions. It's, it's really weird. Like, I'm to a point now where my phone goes off and I see something, when I saw Charlie, Charlie Kirk video, when he got assassinated, and I got that first video, I thought it was fake. I don't believe anything I see anymore.

32:34 You know, with, with- You have to check four sources now. Yeah. And, and, and even at that, your sources are, are AI. It's, it's so difficult. Yeah. And, and not getting too political into it, but me, my son, my 26-year-old son and I were just having this conversation last night, as a matter of fact. I'm, I'm all for advancement. I'm all for technology. I think technology advancing is, is gonna make our lives easier, but... And I, at, at the risk of getting political, because I'm not, I really am not.

33:02 I have my beliefs, I have my thoughts, right? But they're mine. I still think we need to have some sort of regulation on technology and AI. Now, what? I don't know. That's not my job to decide. But there needs to be some sort of... And again, let's spin it back to Prince. Did you know that on the new album, Timeless, a lot of fans were against it because there was rumors that one of the songs was produced with AI? Yep, I heard that. And so the es- the estate actually had to come out and say, "No, no, no, no.

33:34 It wasn't AI. We just punched it up because it wasn't finished." Okay. So there's a little bit... And whether or not you believe it, again, that's a different discussion. But- Yeah... there needs to be the regulation of, because advancement in technology is so quick, so fast. I'm all for it, but there needs to be some sort of, of, again, regulation, for lack of a better term. There needs to be somebody saying, "Hey, we, we need to slow down," or, "We need to really provide an option for people to say, 'This isn't real.

34:03 Here it is AI.'" And that's the way it is in radio right now, unfortunately. I, I guarantee not only is it voice, voice streaming, you're not gonna be able to hear the difference, like you said. Spotify, Spotify has its own DJ, right? Who can recommend music for you, and it sounds great. Mm-hmm. I can kinda pick up on it and know that it's not real. There's a couple of key things that happens and says, but I mean, man, how far away are we from there? It's already happening. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good.

34:28 Yeah. And back in the day, I mean, you didn't have to deal with Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, streaming data, likes, comments, shares, algorithms, telling people what they wanted. You actually had to have an ear because, correct me if I'm wrong, but you used to host a show on Saturday night, I think it was on KIIS, where you actually picked the music. I mean, you were- Yeah... picking the music, right? These guys now, they, [chuckles] they don't pick any songs. They're not... It's all fed to them.

34:54 And let's, let's go back, you know, to the 1940s, 1950s and '60s. '50s and '60s, to me, is the, is the peak, peak radio. That's when radio was really, when you had the DJ who was picking the music- That's right... creating the flow. You know, the unwritten rules of radio. You can't have two female artists back to back. There needs to be separation. That was true even when I was working. You know- Mm-hmm... you can't have Pat Benatar and Joan Jett on a rock station back to back. You gotta put some AC/DC in there.

35:25 You couldn't have female voices back to back. Old school mentality for whatever reason, right? But old school mentality, but that's the way it was. Remember, '50s and '60s, these, even early '70s, these DJs are playing a song and they're saying, "Well, that song kinda sucks. What's on the flip side?" And the B side became the hits because somebody- Yeah... said, "I'm gonna try this instead." You didn't have, again, corporate telling you, you need to play this, this, this. We need to get as many s- rotations per week, per day, so that this artist becomes big.

35:58 It's, it's too conglomerate. It's too, there's too much... I don't know if I lost you there, Bob. It got a little, little- No... there we go. Yeah. Okay. [laughs] Again, live, right? We gotta be live. There's too much going on Yeah, there is. So when you look back in the days that you got to pick music, was there a, was there ever a song that you championed before e- everybody else caught on that you were really pushing? I- Is that ever- I wasn't in that, I wasn't in that, that, that era, unfortunately.

36:26 We had already had playlists. We had already had songs that needed to be played. Again, you, you had a specific playlist. You know, a, a song came up... Oh gosh, and, and this isn't even fair to say because I didn't work at that time. When I first started working, it wasn't a hit radio station. I worked on The Q. The Q has always been the classic rock, and then the new rock, right? So there was always that distinction of if you're gonna play the new AC/DC, there's gotta be some timeframe. Here, let our computer pick it for you, and you know you're gonna play it.

36:54 The only time that I really had, like, leeway in anything is if I wanted to drop, I don't know, a Scorpion song 'cause I really didn't care for it. I'd rather listen to this Scorpion song. Well, we kinda had that leeway. You had some leeway. We could do that. Yeah. Yeah. There could be. Or, you know, I was working overnights, I was working nighttime, so, "Hey, you wanna play the live version? Go ahead. You can play the concert version of Ain't Talkin' About Love," or whatever. So I couldn't break a song necessarily, but there was, there was always...

37:21 And again, that was the fun stuff. There was always a little bit of, of, of, of leeway to get away with or... I know at the time I was working, Jenny Says from Cowboy Mouth. Wow, I'm digging way back. There was a great live version that I used to like. I'd play that one instead of the radio cut. Yeah. Because the radio cut got played during the day, how about we give them the live version instead? So again, I use that example to say we, it was fun in that we kinda had some choice, or shuffling songs around.

37:46 Yeah. All right. So let's, uh, let's get ourselves in a little bit of trouble here. Okay. What's the greatest- You want me to name names? I'll, I'll name names. Who you want me to name? I'll name names right now. In your opinion, what's the greatest decade in music? I'm kind of just free thinking. Honestly, I'd, I'd almost have to say the '80s. Not because of the retro- You-... what we call retro now, but just because within that decade, m- music changed and evolved and splintered off and did so much.

38:16 You saw- Love it... the ending of disco. There was still disco, but, but it evolved into, to the dance house music, the club music- Um-huh... which in itself turned into, like, house music and techno. And then you saw punk come out, and then it turned into that whole synth-pop, '80s, what we call retro now. Then you saw rap come out from, from the disco, and then really just take off on its own genre. You know, when rap music came out, and we talked about, you know, we were fans of Prince and we were fans of other musics and stuff.

38:49 Sure, I was- Yeah... listening to rock. I was watching whatever was on MTV. But, but I, I gravitated more toward rap as it was coming out. You know, '82, '83, '84, those were to me the, not prime, but, but the early beginnings of, of what we know as rap now, and we're talking Run-DMC, Fat Boys [laughs], Whodini, all these great New York rap... And New York only, okay? New York, where it started from, the Bronx. The Beastie Boys. Boogie Down Productions, Beastie Boys. You're seeing all these rap artists come out, and then kinda sorta start splintering off again.

39:23 And oh, wait a minute, now LA has something to say about rap. Yeah. Oh, Houston has its own style. So yeah, rap music came out. Country music was hot. Yeah. Urban cowboy. What are we talking, '82, '83? Hairbands. Hairbands came out- All that. Yeah... right before grunge, right? So yeah, I gotta say '80s. The '80s decade- Yeah, I agree... brought out so much music. Very good argument for the '80s. So greatest album ever? You know, I'm biased. I'm biased. I, I, I gotta go with Prince. And I know- What album though?

39:54 Uh, Purple Rain. Purple Rain without a doubt. Okay. And, and here's why I say, Bob, and I know the Michael Jackson fans are, are gonna scream and yell at me 'cause Thriller was the most top-selling whatever. That's fine, and, and, and I'll, I'll take nothing away from Michael Jackson. I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan. I don't hate him. I don't despise him. I don't have that rivalry that people automatically think you do when you like Prince. But for me, musically, number one, musically Prince is superior over Michael Jackson in that he could play the instruments.

40:22 He could produce his music. He could do everything on his own. That, again, any artist that does that is a true artist, not just a musician, okay? So yes, Michael Jackson wins the popularity contest. I'll agree to that any day of the week. But music-wise, for me it will always be Prince. Why Purple Rain? Purple Rain is an album that you can listen to in its entirety, never seen the mus- uh, never seen the movie, and know exactly what the movie is about. The music- Yeah... in that soundtrack tells you the story of the movie.

40:52 And again, I know there's dozens others, thousands other [laughs] albums that do that, but for me... Now here's, here's the caveat. Here's, here's the screwball. Is it my favorite Prince album? No. Favorite Prince album- But you think it's, you think it's the greatest- It's-... album of all time. I think so. This album. Yes. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, I mean, and just look at it. Look at that story it tells right on the cover. What's going on? Mm-hmm. Who's that chick? Why is she enamored? You can tell she's enamored with that guy on the bike.

41:17 Who's the guy on the bike? What's... You already wanna know the story. And when you hear- Yeah... the, when you hear the album from beginning to end... And again, not taking anything away from, from Frank Zappa's, from, from Pink Floyd's. Those are all great. And it, not taking anything away from the Beatles, 'cause I do have my absolute favorite Beatles albums. I think the White Album is by far one of the best albums ever too. But as far as best, yeah, I'm biased. [laughs] It's gotta be Purple Rain.

41:43 My favorite Prince album though, and you should know this, is Sign o' the Times. I think creatively, there it is. So- You already knew... thi- thi- thi- this is my favorite overall. So Purple Rain and this, this guy, but I think overall this is just incredible Yeah. When you look at the release of Sign o' the Times from, what was it, '86, '87, in that, in that era of Prince- Yeah. He didn't... And again, I don't wanna get too fact- I don't wanna have to be fact-checked on everything. You can do the research yourselves.

42:13 But there was so much creativity. Okay, from Purple Rain, Parade, even Christopher Tracy's Parade, uh, Christopher Tracy, yeah, Christopher Tracy's Parade, Under the Cherry Moon soundtrack, Around the World in a Day, all of those, there was some great creative music coming out. But I think Sign of the Times is the album that culminated the best of the best, and he put it out. Then when they did the big release back in 2020, the deluxe box, I think maybe that's the one that you held up. Again, so much great music came out.

42:43 Every other- Yeah... song was different from itself, and- Mm-hmm... there was more stories being told, and it broke the mold of what we knew as Prince. You know, the fans knew this guy is creative beyond and, and, and above. That just sort of solidified the creativity. I will also, [clears throat] excuse me, as we get into the best Prince albums kind of, I'll also add in Gold Experience. To me, the Gold Experience- Yeah... latter Prince, every song is different from itself. Every song is just unique.

43:13 You sit and listen to it and go, "Wow. Wow. He wrote, he did that" What are your, what are your thoughts on the Versace Experience? Versace's cool. He was having fun. He was, you know- Did he do that, did he do that before or after the Gold Experience? Before. Before. Yeah, I was gonna say- Remember, the Gold- Before... the Gold Experience- Yeah... was never gonna come out. He, he recorded it, and then he pulled it back. In fact, if you go back on YouTube and, and look at the performances he did on David Letterman, Letterman even made the, um, that's when he already made the symbol, the change to the symbol.

43:41 Letterman even said, "I'm told this song is from an album that we'll never see released," so it makes perfect sense why he's promoting it tonight. [laughs] So yeah- Yeah... Versace was just fun. Versace was just him having fun and kinda sneak, sneak previewing some of the music. Yeah. That's what it was. Just a- It's great... sneak peek. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's still great stuff. What are your favorites? So- What, you, you, you said Sign of the Times. Where does Gold fall for you? That's...

44:05 I mean, I mean, I, I burned out, right? I don't even know. I have the cassette version, the multiple vinyl albums. Purple Rain was burnt out, but you know, coming of age in high school when I was y- my senior year was Sign of the Times, and that album was just, you know, you talk about a soundtrack of your life. Man. Absolutely. Every- Let me-... song on there... w- b- before we move on to everything else that we were talking about, let me ask you this as, as a Prince geek, as a Prince fan. How do I phrase this?

44:31 What is the album that you were wrong about? The album that you said, "I don't like that," and then you came back around and said, "Whoa, what was I thinking?" That would be, there's two of them that pop into my head. And why is it fleeting my head right now? The, the, where he became very religious. What's that album called? The one with One Plus One plus One. Family name. Yeah. What, what's the name of that album? Wedding Feast. Yeah, I know. It's... [laughs] You too. You put me on the spot. Yeah.

45:00 Go- That album, we can find it real quick. But that album, when you go back, you wanna talk about a funky album. I mean, if you take the lyrics, some of those lyrics were real deep. Yeah. He went real deep on some kind of Jehovah's Witness scripture. You know, you talk- I gotta be honest. I gotta be honest. The reason why I can't think of the album off the top of my head is 'cause it's still, to this day, isn't one of my favorites. It's hard for me to get into. But let me explain. Let me explain.

45:25 Yeah. For the longest time, if, if I were to pick a Prince album that I was wrong about, the first one that comes to mind is Graffiti Bridge. Okay. When, when I heard Graffiti Bridge and, you know, all these other artists are doing songs, I didn't care for it. But two or three years later, it hits me from when it was released. Yeah. What was Graffiti Bridge? '87, '88? '87, whatever the timeframe is. Yeah. To me, and, and you can maybe agree with, to me, that's just a sign of a true genius. Again, here we go, Prince geek talk.

45:57 Mm-hmm. He was so far ahead that what he put out took me three, four years to catch up and say, "Okay, this is good. This is"... And by the time I caught up to Graffiti Bridge, he's four or five albums out. He's already on- Yeah... you know, '95, '96 music. And I had to catch up to Graffiti Bridge. Joy in Repetition, I think is one of his absolute sexiest, saddest, intriguing songs ever. Yeah. It's a very good song. He tells stories. Yeah. You know, and that's one of the things, you know, I've had conversation with my son and, you know, he's 28 now, and, and he's, you know, he's a freak when it comes to being a big Prince fan because his friends his age don't even know who Prince is, which is really sad.

46:38 It hurts. But that's the thing, that's one of the things we talk about is that he actually tells stories. Yeah. The Rainbow Children. The Rainbow Children. Thank you. Thank you. I could, I can name all the songs on the album, but I just couldn't think of the album. If you listen to him live at the Aladdin, have you heard the live at the Alla- Latin? Those were mostly those songs, and when you hear it- Yeah... live, it's awesome. Again- It's just-... the lyrics... there's, there's maybe two or three albums that I, I'm not gonna lie, you know, I'm not gonna sit here...

47:05 And, and I think as much as I call myself a snobby Prince fan, I'm not one of those that runs out and gets every, "I gotta have this. I gotta have that poster. I've gotta have that magazine." No. Yeah. I, I have what I have. And, and if you come into the house, and you see the, the posters and the things that I do have up, it's very select. Um- Mm-hmm... you know, the Tamboroca. The tam- I'm looking over at them right now, is the, the tambourine that's got the symbol. I think, and maybe that's marketing genius on Prince's ha- behalf, I think I'm more in tune with the symbol and what it symbolizes than the man himself, if, if that makes any sense, right?

47:40 I would be in tune with the Nike Swoosh instead of, or the Air Jordan Jumpman. I would rather have that around than pictures of Jordan, if that makes any sense, to make a comparison. Yeah. So I get, I get very, not defensive. I a- a- almost mockingly make fun of people who are everything about Prince, and you have to love every song, and you have to love- Yeah... everything that he's done. Yeah. Now, there's, there's, there's really a handful of albums that I, I don't know very well 'cause I don't like them.

48:10 I don't listen to them. Maybe I will in the future. And again, going back to the newest release, I, I was against Timeless I, I thought Timeless was gonna be a joke. Everything that we heard and read about it as, as the geeky, snobby Prince fans, I had half those songs on bootlegs already, so how much different are they gonna be? How much more are you gonna clean them up? And really you're gonna release this instead of another deluxe box set? And I was wrong. I was wrong- Yeah... about Timeless.

48:36 Yeah, it was great. You and I were texting back and forth. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. We were, we were texting back and forth saying, "Wow. I really- Mm-hmm... 'cause, 'cause the estate has really screwed us over as Prince fans. Well- Yeah... let's be honest, Prince screwed us over as Prince fans. Mm-hmm. We never got a lot of the things that he said he was going to do, whether he changed his mind- That guy, the guy didn't even leave a will Right, right. So how are we gonna get the music? So that's old school.

49:00 Yeah, and I heard him in an interview, I think it was with Arsenio Hall, 'cause he said, you know, every- everybody talked about the vault and how many songs he had, and there was always a debate, 2,000, 3,000. Countless. And I, I think Arsenio asked him straight out, "Well, when are those gonna be released?" He goes, "I'm not gonna be around." Like, he could, he couldn't care less about it. Like, he recorded everything he did. He would just throw it in that room, throw it in that- Yeah... that vault, throw it in that vault, so.

49:23 And- Yeah... if he didn't like it, he'd erase it. It's gone. Yeah. You've, you've seen stories where, where I think, was it... Oh man, I'm gonna get fact checked on it. I think it was Bad, that they did their own version of it with Sheila E., and then they ended up, Prince recorded it, they mixed it, they had it ready. He played it for everybody and said, "Nah, I don't want it," and just erased the tape. It's not even around anymore. That's crazy. So he, he, he would screw us over as fans. Now the estate, I think, is screwing us over even more so.

49:51 But again, I will say, Timeless, very surprised. Very surprised. Yeah, very little- The worst-... are a Prince fan even a little bit, it's worth checking out. Yeah, yeah. Even the worst of the songs, and you put them all together and you go, "Well, that song wasn't good," it's still amazing. Yeah. Another album that he completely scrapped that was completely done by him and mixed and everything was Welcome to America. He didn't release that either. He pulled it last minute, and he went on tour, and he was still using the mer- Supporting it...

50:19 the shirts- Yeah... and the, you know, all the swag, but he didn't perform any of the songs from it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the- I think he did Welcome to America and that was it To say, to say Prince was unique is, is just the most understated statement you can say. He, he was- Yeah... unique in his, his recording, in his performance, his performances, and in his releases of what music was. But again, egotistical, megalomaniac, sure, but he was in control. Yeah. Undeniably in control. So let's talk about, like, you've gone to a lot of concerts, as I have, but you being a music connoisseur, who, what, who, who have you seen live where you were like, "Yeah, this is the best"?

50:59 That's, that's the biggest, that's the biggest misconception, Bob. I, I haven't been to [laughs] I haven't been to a lot of concerts. Really? And again, if, if there was, if I was ever to write a book about my life and career in radio, the title would be I Would've But I Had To Work. Hmm. That makes sense. I would've, I would've gone, but I had to work. All these great concerts that came into town, these great, uh, classic rock shows that we would promote, I didn't go 'cause I had to work. Prince, you know, I just happened, honestly, I happened to have been off.

51:29 I think that's one of my biggest regrets is that I've never been to Paisley Park. You know, you hear all these, these, these, um, people talk about the Prince fans, "I saw him here, I saw him there." I didn't. Mm-hmm. I saw him one time. I saw him one time. That being said- Well, if he's that with Sam, a lot of people, like my son's really upset he never got to see him live. Again, he's very young. He grew up with him, listening to him around my house, but- Yeah... he never got to see him live. And the thing is, I would have taken him, but he never was on tour.

51:55 He was doing those hit-and-run shows where you give, like, 24-hour notice, you know? 'Cause he- And he wasn't touring. And how, and, and quite frankly, you know, and this can be said about a lot of artists, right? And this is a whole topic for a different discussion, but how many times did he come to El Paso? How many times did he come to Las Cruces? This, this isn't a destination location for a lot of artists. You're seeing it now, and I think that's awesome. I think that's great. You know, as, as we're kind of sort of recording this, today's the day that they made the announcement that Metallica is coming to concert in the Sun Bowl.

52:23 Yeah. I think that's phenomenal. You know, not a big fan, but again- Yeah... love the fact that we're starting to see these musicians come around again. But, but for us, for me, it just didn't happen, and it wasn't... Those, those are a couple of concerts, you know, you mentioned the Alive at the Aladdin for Prince. There was the 1999 Rave into the Joy Fan- or Rave into the Year 2000. Rave into the Year 2000 concert. It was a pay-per-view. I should have gone. I was contacted by NDG- Yeah... 'cause I was ordering back in the day, right, off of the 1-800-NEW-FUNK website.

52:54 Right. I was ordering so much that one person I spoke with said, "You know, you put in so many orders, we're gonna do a concert that's filmed, like, in September, October. Can you come? And it's gonna be released for 1999, 2000." And title of the book, I Woulda Gone But I Had To Work, so I missed out on a lot of that stuff. Yeah. To spin it back onto your question, you know, I gotta say, most recently, and again, it's gonna, it's gonna tie into Prince, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails puts on a hell of a concert.

53:25 I am a fan of Nine Inch Nails via osmosis of my wife. My wife now loves Nine Inch Nails and, and, and, and she's one of those kind of like Nine Inch Nails snobs like us. She loves Nine Inch Nails, but don't say your favorite song is Closer. She'll freak out. She's like, "No, there's so many better songs than..." Closer is her Purple Rain, okay? So, but we've seen Trent Reznor now two, three times maybe. We saw him here twice in Vegas, and even not liking... I, I know the songs now, obviously because of her.

53:52 I do have my favorite songs, right? But again, Trent Reznor to me is very parallel to Prince because, again, he's in control. That is his show. That is-- And as, as basic as it is, no flashy, no pyro, no lasers, whatever, you are watching a true artist perform. So again, at, at the risk of- And he's made his name in soundtracks too, right? He's made his name in a lot of- Yeah, he's like- It's not just Nine Inch Nails. Yeah. Yeah. No, if you ever... And, and, and, and again, y- yeah, it's loud, it's aggressive, it's whatever you want, new rock, d- industrial, whatever you wanna label.

54:29 I don't even like labeling him because it's Nine Inch Nails. As far as I'm concerned, that's your label. He puts on a show, and the energy... And really, Bob, that, that's, that's what it boils down to, isn't it? The energy of a show. You know, what's the worst concert you went to? Why was it the worst? Because there was no energy. The Prince show at, at Jam of the Year, what a great show, 'cause you saw Larry Graham. You saw all these great artists associated with Prince. Half of, well, maybe not half, but a few members of Sly and the Family Stone were performing with him.

55:02 Yeah. And the energy was just pulling people up on stage and singing songs. That to me is what makes a concert a concert. So yeah, definitely off the top of my head, as few concerts as I've been to, Nine Inch Nails. Who in music today genuinely impresses you? I have one name that pops into head, but you know, I, I wanna get, I wanna hear your thoughts on that. I, I would say, and, and I'd almost say guilty pleasure. She, she's my guilty pleasure. It's Dua Lipa. Okay. Okay. I love Dua Lipa. Good.

55:31 But again, yes, because she can sing, and yes, she's attractive. I, I don't like, "Oh my God, Dua Lipa, she's so hot." No. I, I don't go in for that. But, but what I appreciate more is production. When you listen to her music, it is so well pu- I don't know who the production team is, and you know what? Jimmy Crack Corn, I don't care. It just sounds great, whether she's doing her production, and again, doesn't it fall back on Prince? We knew his production was usually him. But Dua Lipa, how, how can you have a song, a hit song, that is disco sounding, contemporary sounding, future sounding, retro?

56:06 It is everything all at once. I, I j- I... And, and it's just fun, exciting music. It's just fun to listen to. Dua Lipa does it for me right now. Yeah. I know I'm missing some other ones. You know, my, my... What I listen to right now mostly is, and I don't even know how you would call it, but, but I guess it's the current dance music, the, the Dua Lipa style stuff. Okay. So a lot of these underground, not underground, but maybe lesser-known artists. But listen, I'm 53, 54 years old. Any artist, new artist to me is lesser-known.

56:35 I have no idea who they are. [laughs] But I, I lotta, I like a lot of the dance stuff. I like a lot of the downtempo, chill music. Um, yeah, just Dua, Dua pops out right now. Who's your- The, the person I, that just really impresses me from an entertainer standpoint, I don't know how much of writing he does, but Bruno Mars. I mean, that guy- Okay... you go back to his, like, Super Bowl performance, all the hits he has. He... If you've ever seen some of his live performances, they're incredible. Talk about production, the best of the best.

57:06 Now, the- And the guy can perform. Yeah. Yeah, again, not a big fan, but, but I, I, I accept that. Yeah. That, that's a valid point. Again, he's in control. Performer. Yeah. Yeah. Performer. If you- He's in control. He's, he's making money. He's got his own, uh, Pinky Ring in Las Vegas. He's got his own club. Yeah. So yeah, I, I would get that. And, and again- If you're in the mood for a performance, you know, you wanna see somebody perform. You know, like what you were saying. Here's the other thing.

57:29 Yeah, and here's the other thing, and we kinda sorta didn't get into it, but you know, as much as I love Vegas and as much as we can talk about Las Vegas as well, Backstreet Boys, holy crap. Holy crap. They're selling out The Sphere in Las Vegas every night, night after night. I gotta give people like that credit as well, because here you are 20, 25 years later, a boy band, and you're making money. You know, you're just printing money. There's, their s- their shows are sold out at The Sphere. Is it the venue?

58:00 Is it The Sphere? I don't know. But every night that they're there, they're, they're selling out. The, the wife has seen them twice already, just at The Sphere alone, you know? Yeah. So what does that say? Anybody who can have that, that longevity, honestly, I, I'm impressed. Yeah. God, I don't know if they come up with new music, but I think a lot of it's nostalgia, right? 'Cause they were big, they were big at, a long time ago. They have a lot of hardcore fans, so- Yeah, absolutely... it's nostalgia Again, selling out.

58:25 You sell out. How do you sell out every night that you have a residency? Mm-hmm. That to me is amazing. And again, is it The Sphere? Probably. If you haven't been to The Sphere in Vegas, there's, there's the, the production value. It's not just you're in a ball. There's technological, again, technological advances that make that show, that concert even much better. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you one more Prince question, I think. [laughs] I don't, I don't wanna pull the, the listeners are go- It's, it's- Or the, the viewers are gonna be, "What?

58:53 Again?" "What? These guys, I don't know what they're talking about." But if Prince were 20 years old today and nobody knew who he was, do you think he could become Prince today? I have a thought on this. Like, that relevant. Again, he was towards the end of his career. He had all his hardcore fans. But if he was brand new, 20 years old, you think he could do it again? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I, I honestly a- agree. I honestly believe that. Yeah. But why? Why? Mm-hmm. Because he would still be Prince doing what he did then, but now with the availabilities that he had.

59:27 Technology, songwriting. You know, when you go back and look at his '76, '77, '78 stuff when he's first starting, the songwriting was there. It was already there. It was very minimal, very basic, but it was already there. I think he would be doing that today. And- Yeah, he-... he would have the, he would have the advantage of the technology to go with it. So I agree with you, but I'm gonna push back just a little bit on the algorithm stuff. You, the way things are created today and the way artists are pushed out, do you think the algorithms would appreciate his genius, or would radio even pick up on that music and play it the way things are?

1:00:02 You know what I'm saying? 'Cause back in the day it was like a perfect storm of new, MTV was new when he started coming up. There was these different... You know, radio pushed it. And so I don't know. I just don't know how things work today. I... You look at artists and you're like... You know, the MTV Awards are coming up September 29th. They're airing them on CBS. I mean, they're not even airing... Well, I don't know if they're gonna do a dual simulcast, but obviously they've lost so much audience, it's not relevant anymore.

1:00:29 So you're having to put- I get-... a network show, award show on another network. So that's why I say that. I'm just... Things are so convoluted today. But it's Prince. Yes, you're correct, but it's Prince, and Prince would have broken that mold. He would have gone beyond the algorithm and, and maybe radio, today's corporate radio... Wow, this is a great topic. Maybe- Mm-hmm... today's corporate radio wouldn't pick up on him, 'cause they didn't back in the day either. It took him- Right... five or six albums, right- Yeah...

1:00:59 really to get 1999, let's be honest. Yeah. Even, even Controversy wasn't that big of an album, not to the mainstream. So I don't... A- again, I think he would be doing what he did then, but in today's timeline. He would have broken away from that, and he still would've been a musician first. As, as much as he accepted technology, as much as he advanced technology, remember, fact, Prince was the first artist to download music into your computers. Before Napster, before anything else, he was downloading.

1:01:31 Mm-hmm. So he accepted what technology was, but he was still a musician first. He would still have the guitar. He would still have that in his hand, and I think individuals who appreciate a true musician now would appreciate Prince. He would also have the advancements and the pleasures, I guess, having different ways to get that music out because, again, he was using that. He was using Instagram. He was using, um, streaming and social media, but he would still be a musician first and not an artist.

1:02:04 Yeah. Hmm. Does that make sense? Why- It does, but, you know, I think about that kind of stuff. Now, let me ask you this question. Has Spotify made discovering music better or worse, and how do you discover new music, Vic? That's a good question. 'Cause I... 'Cause let me tell you right now, I used to pride myself on going deep and, you know... Do you remember Sound Warehouse? You'd go and you, you would look at the cover art, then you would pull it out, and you would, you would listen to it. They had a li- Oh.

1:02:33 You'd have to work at that, right? You had to work at finding this music, and today it's like you go to a playlist- You're-... Spotify. I mean, go ahead. I'll let you talk, but go ahead. Well, no, I was gonna say, you're, you're, you're- you probably can't tell with the glasses and you just... You literally made me tear up. Mom passed away a few years ago, and one of the great things that Mom would always tell people is that s- as a kid, uh, she remembers seeing me at Sound Warehouse literally flipping my little kid fingers through the records to look at the- Yeah...

1:03:00 all the albums and saying, "Nope, nope, nope. Okay, yep, nope, nope." So yeah, I agree. I agree. Oh, let me wipe these tears. My God. Has it helped? I, I, I think it's, it's, it's done hurt and help because I know that when I get into an artist that I discover, how I discover, that's a different topic, but when I get into an artist I discover, sure, I go to that album. Sure, I go to that sounds like. Sure, I go to that Dua Lipa radio and listen to more from her. We have that advantage that we can listen to other things from that artist instantaneously.

1:03:32 Buy... You bought an album, you took a risk. Mm. How many times did you buy a record and, wow, that one song was great, but, eh, I spent 13 bucks and it sucks. One song out of nine was good. [laughs] Man, that sucks. You know how many times that happened? You're hung on money, though. There was... Uh, the radio stations, I mean, they, they... The re- record companies knew what they were doing. They led with the best song they had, and the rest of it was garbage. Right. So- I always felt like I got my money's worth if there was two good songs in an album.

1:03:59 Right? Oh, man, and then if you hit a banger, oh, my God, what, what a win. So I, I think Spotify and streaming and, and maybe even to a degree YouTube, I mean, I'm a big fan of Spotify. Um, YouTube Music not so much, but I know that I can find the music on YouTube if I liked it, but I, I think it's, it's both helped and hurt. And, and, and m- in my eyes... And I'll tell you why I think it's hurt, not just because of trying to discover the new music, but because sometimes for streaming rights, and again, that's a whole 'nother topic we, we can get into later with other people, but, but the streaming rights for the artist screw you, the listener, out of some...

1:04:34 Uh, LL Cool J. LL Cool J, I cannot find any of his older albums because they've been pulled because of copyright issues, but his later albums have. Why? How is that? How many Prince albums are we missing? We don't have anything from, from, uh, you know, the Black Album, which officially had an official release, uh, release. New... The 1-800-New-Funk stuff. A lot of the stuff from these artists are missing because of streaming rights. So in that aspect, it's, it's hurt us because you don't get the full discography.

1:05:03 You still have to go to the record store and find every album or so, or look it up on YouTube to find it. I, I, I come across that with Prince constantly. Where, where's The War? The War was great. Nobody's released The War. I gotta download it off of YouTube to transfer it to have it on my phone. Mm-hmm. So I think in a lot of ways, again, technology has helped in discovering. So have, um, social medias. You know, it kills me to hear somebody chopping up a Prince song on TikTok, but if that's what it takes for the newer generation to figure out who he is...

1:05:34 Look at Michael Jackson again. Um, the movie comes out. Huge. Huge. Now he's streaming all over again. He's top-notch. So it helps, but are you getting everything that you want? And are they cutting things out? You're missing songs. You're missing segues. You're missing all those great things that you got with the cassette and the album. You don't have that anymore with streaming. You can't get- One of the things... There's a thing, so talking about, like, the reason I asked you that question is did you know that they release 150,000 new songs are uploaded to streaming services every day?

1:06:07 Okay. 150,000, okay? So I think having unlimited access to music has made individual songs and albums less valuable because there's just too much. You... And you can't find it Like you don't even know what's good, you don't know what's bad, you don't even know what's new. By the end of the week, I mean, do the math, there's gonna be, what, almost a million songs released in one week. H- how do you even sift through that? But isn't, isn't that the monkey's paw wish, careful for what you wish for?

1:06:37 'Cause as kids growing up, didn't we say, "Man, I wish I had access to all that music," you know? We're the generation, Bob, and even generations before us, our parents, maybe even our grandparents, we were recording songs off the radio- Yeah... because we didn't have access to it. Yeah. And like, oh, no, I can go buy an album. Okay. Oh, I can go through the... But how many albums does that artist have? I really don't know. Hey, do you know him, uh, Frank Zappa? No, you didn't know, you had to ask.

1:07:02 Now- Mm-hmm... everything is on the internet. But again, the monkey's paw wish, be careful for what you wish for. Everything's on the internet, so we can't find what it is we want. As a collector of music, and I'm not talking about rarity and my albums are worth this, I'm just talking about I want music. I hear something, I want it. And by the way, that becomes mine. That is my music. I discovered it. I'm even to the point now as a music snob, as a, a Prince snob, I'll drive around with my windows rolled up 'cause I don't want anybody else hearing the music that I had to find, that I had to download, that I had to...

1:07:38 And I tried- Yeah... explaining that to my son, you know. He likes to throw his mu... I said, "Dude, the mu- the gift of music is that, it's a gift. Don't give it away to everybody. Hold onto it. That's what means more to you, right? That's your gift the artist is giving you." And I love the fact- Now let me give you some credit, is you have always been- Yeah... very generous, though, sharing music. Yeah. Like, you, you, you ha- you have. But- 'Cause you've had stuff that were, like, gems, like I don't even know how you got ahold of this, but I don't care.

1:08:07 I've got it now. But the question is, but the question is, who am I giving it to? That's the question. That's what means the most, right? I don't give it out to everybody, um, especially the rare Prince stuff. But, but again, having the accessibility to have music, I think that, that's amazing. But you're right, we're, we're still missing out on a lot of stuff. The newer stuff, I, I, I don't lis- I, I don't know. I have Spotify. I have SiriusXM. Something catches my eye, okay, I'm the old man, I have to screen cap what that song is real quick so that I can go back and find it and do my research.

1:08:38 So a lot of the blame I think falls again, and I say blame, I think a lot of the blame falls on corporate radio. Um, sometimes they're pushing too much of what you need or this is what we want you to hear. We want you to hear this, and we want you to hear it ad nauseam. And we own four to five different stations in your city. So we want you to hear it on every station. Then the music itself becomes mixed up. There's a term for it. I can't think of it. I've, I'm already on my f- uh, mango cart. I had to have a Fresca.

1:09:08 Um, but there's a term, right? Homogenized. Music starts getting homogenized, and now it all sounds the same. Mm-hmm. So what's, what's separating anything from being different? I don't, I don't know. That's why, again, I love Dua Lipa. To me, her production is so different from everybody else. I, I know I'm gonna mispronounce, Teni Impala, Tems Impala sings a song Dracula right now that's really hot. Again- I've heard it... forgive me. Okay. That's amazing. It's an amazing song to me. I wanna know more about the guy that, uh, yeah, man, people are gonna hate me now.

1:09:39 The guy that just died in a plane crash, Oliver... Anyway. Yeah. Yeah, I know who you're talking about. What's... I want to say Oliver Tw- Oliver Tree. Oliver. Oliver Tree. Who's Oliver, is it Tree? Oliver Tree? Yeah. Yeah. Oliver Tree. Okay. It doesn't matter. His music, his music is fantastic. It's amazing. But where am I hearing it? I'm not hearing that on the radio. There's no station here in town that's playing that. No. Well, when he died, my son told me about, like, who is he? Like, I didn't even know who he was.

1:10:04 He goes, "You've heard his songs. You've heard his songs, believe me." Yeah. Yeah, in the background, but, you know, but you don't really know who that is. That's why I'm telling you, it's like they're not feeding it to you, so you don't know. So is that good or bad? Do you wanna be fed? Well, I wanna know about it. It's on the internet. You can look it, [laughs] you can look it up. That's what I do. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's a double-edged sword. It's a double-edged sword. I guess I'm getting lazy.

1:10:27 I guess I'm getting old. Yeah. No, I, I agree with you. You know, and again, I, I think honestly, Bob, it, it's a generational thing. The only thing you had was the radio, and you had to figure out. And then maybe, well, you like Prince, but have you ever heard of his side project called Madhouse? What? Mm-hmm. What's Madhouse? And then you d- you did the research. Mm-hmm. I love the fact that the research is ready for us, but unlike you, I'm a little bit lazy. I don't wanna go do the research if it's there.

1:10:56 Just make it accessible, but don't feed me. I don't know. I don't know. It's a catch-22, isn't it? Yeah. So let's talk about Victor Cruz's next chapter. So the interesting thing is that you're not just sitting around talking about how to use your time. [laughs] You're always doing something, right? And you're getting ready to do something new, right? So we're on the street. There's a leak going out on the internet, but I think the, the biggest culprit of the leak is here on the podcast, so. [laughs] You called me like, "How'd you know that?"

1:11:26 I'm like, "I watched this guy's video. His name is Victor Cruz, and he kinda said some..." It's, it's, it's the biggest- What? It's the biggest worst-kept secret, right? And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on because I'm like, you know what? If you're gonna do something like this, let's get the word out a little bit, right? Let's- There's not- That's how it works I under- no, and I, and, and I absolutely appreciate it. I, I love you for the fact. I know you're, you're... And again, as we kinda sorta spin things around as we get closer to the end, I, it's what I go back to at the beginning, Bob.

1:11:57 You're, you're one of the few people that throughout the years that we've known each other has always had my back on things. You, you've always had a, a, a statement. You've always had a way to try to help me. If you couldn't do it, you at least made an effort to do so. And I, I've said it before to you face to face, over the phone, through texts. I'll say it to you now on your show here. You, you are absolutely one of the, the, the closest friends that I have in that aspect, and I appreciate that you've always tried to look out for me in that aspect.

1:12:24 I appreciate it. You've always had my back, and, and I've always tried to make sure that I had yours as well. For whatever reason Absolutely I can't divulge too much on the show so far, simply because I don't wanna keep it a secret A lot of people are just tuning in. They don't even know what we're talking about, so- Real-... you gotta start from the beginning So, so what we did was throughout, uh... You know me, you can, you can take the boy out of radio, you can't take the radio out of the boy.

1:12:49 For the past, what, year and a half, two years, I've been, maybe even longer than that, maybe since I've been out of radio, I was doing little video posts on social media, on Facebook, and the s- the Facebook is my personal page. I, I, I don't let a lot of people in. It really is my personal page. Mm-hmm. Um, even outside of radio. I had my own radio page, and obviously that's gone away. But on my personal page, I was doing little videos just to keep myself active, really just for me, but providing little bits of information.

1:13:15 I was doing things about Las Vegas. I was doing things about what was on my mind, uh, giving... I did, I think, about a whole year's worth of Vegas information, tips, tricks, ideas, new things opening. Every time we'd go to Vegas, I'd, I'd make a video about posting our trips to Vegas, 'cause we go once or twice a year. But then I realized, you know, all over social media, all over YouTube, there's all kinds of Vegas professionals out there providing info. How am I different? I'm not even in the city.

1:13:42 I mean, I'll be your Vegas expert any day of the week if you wanna ask me about Vegas tips and tricks. I'll do that. But it wasn't until about maybe a year ago I came up with this Let's Talk About It, just ways to interact with, with my friends, with my family, the people that are on social media, and they were little videos called Let's Talk About It. And it was, again, it was about whatever was on my mind at the time. When being the music fan, right, more often than not, these Let's Talk About It videos on Facebook, you know, 10, 15 minute, not even that long, maybe 10-minute long video, had a background of music.

1:14:13 There was always something musical about these Let's Talk About It videos, and again, just little topics, little things that I was thinking about, little things I'd wanna explain. Uh, a lot of Prince influences, things that you and I have talked about here right now- Mm-hmm... were topics of Let's Talk About It. You know, copyright, um, songs in commercials, and why do they sell out these commercial songs. About, and I'm gonna say quite honestly, about a month and a half ago, uh, a friend of mine, I don't know if you know him, I'll, I'll keep, but a friend of mine who's a news director at one of the local TV radio stations said, "We're gonna make a podcast.

1:14:45 We're gonna do something with it." Now, I have worked with this individual previously on some of the other podcasts that I've done, that for whatever reasons have gone away. They're still out there. They're still on YouTube. You can see these old video blogs that I would do, but this is something new and different, and giving me the leeway of Let's Talk About It. That's the title, Let's Talk About It, because that's exactly what it's gonna be. I'll provide a topic, I'll give my opinion on it, um, and then we can talk about it, discuss it.

1:15:10 I have a mutual friend who is also, she never was in the business, um, but she's business, radio adjacent. She's- Mm-hmm... close friends with a lot of musicians, a lot of heavy metal, a lot of heavy metal bands. She's been in the business adjacent with, um... We've been friends for as long as I was in radio. She's gonna be my co-host just in this, and it's, it's funny you, you talk about this now, we, we have our little podcast here, 'cause I just had a dinner with her and we were trying to work out the finalities right before I was talking to you.

1:15:38 So everything kind of fell into place all at once. But I say all of that to say this: what we're working on is a podcast vlog style Let's Talk About It that will be featured on a newscast app, without giving too much information, only because we really haven't finalized everything yet. We're about maybe three weeks away from finalizing everything, but once it's finalized, I'll give all the detail, I'll give all the information. But what I'm currently working on, and I think that's the natural progression of what happens with people in radio, they just move on to the next medium.

1:16:13 Mm-hmm. And of course, blogging, podcasting, this has been around for a while. I think it's starting to hit a peak, maybe plateau. I don't know. Um, but it's, it's where I'll be next. So look for Let's Talk About It. That's definitely gonna be the name of the show, and it's gonna be music centered, not necessarily music focused, but if it has to deal with music, we're gonna talk about it. You know, again, Vegas, if we can tie in a Vegas way to it, absolutely. If we can tie in cooking to music, absolutely, we'll talk about it there as well.

1:16:44 So you seem a little excited about this. I am. I am. I'm ex- listen, I'm excited about this. I'm excited about being with you here today in this little, in this box. I'm excited about any way that I can get myself out there, because like I said, any, any way that you can keep the radio and the boy going, it's fine. Yeah. Rehearsing it, it's fun. And you have an in, so yeah. Yeah. This is nothing for you. This is nothing. I've, I've taken way... I know you're probably gonna edit a lot of this down because I've taken way more of the time than we needed to, but yeah.

1:17:11 [laughs] It is, it is what I love doing. It is talking. It's, you know, if you sat down and had dinner with me at any time, not just you, but anybody, you know I'm gonna talk about Prince, you know I'm gonna talk about music. Yeah. I'm gonna talk about Vegas, I'm gonna talk about food. These are the things that I enjoy. So yeah, absolutely, it's, it's what I- And you know, this show is really, you know, I, I talk a lot about leadership, AI, marketing, you know. This is Discipline Over Comfort. That's my, that's my saying, right?

1:17:36 Discipline over comfort every time, and I think that there's a lot of... When you're uncomfortable is when you know you're growing, right? For me, that's, that's the whole premise. So even though a lot of it's business savvy, I thought Vic- Victor would be great on this show because you have been in uncomfortable situations, and that's why you grew, and that's why your career was so long. And so talk about- This is un- yeah, this is uncomfortable for me. No, you're, you're absolutely right. Doing this is uncomfortable for me.

1:17:59 While we were having dinner- But you would never, you would never know that. You would never know this. No, because again, I, I rehearsed it. I practiced it. Yeah. I practiced it in my head when we were having dinner with my friend, the wife and I. I even made the, the, the... I even stated, "Guys, I'm, I'm fading right now because I'm thinking about the thing with Bob here in about half an hour." I was already planning on what we were doing and what was gonna happen. Even though I didn't know it and I was uncomfortable with it, I was planning it.

1:18:26 So now I'm rehearsing it. So when, when are we gonna start recording? Do, uh, when do we do the show? Right now, r- right now was a warm-up. I'm gonna hit record in a little, in a little about five more- Okay, that's, yeah. Let me know when you're ready. That way I can really give you the top-notch So look, all this stuff, talking about uncomfortable, discipline over comfort. [laughs] What parts of the traditional radio are you intentionally leaving behind to do your new podcast? 'Cause you've learned a lot.

1:18:49 So what is it that you're not gonna bring with you? 'Cause there's a lot that- Okay... we already know you're bringing with you. It's, it's the format of radio. It's, it's the time marks, it's the getting something in and out so that the commercials can hit their breaks on time. 'Cause if you don't hit commercials when they're supposed to play, you can actually get overcharged or not charged at all. So it's, it's the, the formula of radio. I learned a lot from radio. I learned a lot about how to conduct yourself, how to conduct an interview, how to interview and, and be with other people.

1:19:24 But the actual watchful eye of careful for what you say and who you piss off. Now, again, I mentioned this earlier, the internet can be a horrible, disgusting place. There's some toxicity. Did I make a... Um, there's some toxic people out there on the internet who just wanna be ugly to be ugly. It's a whole different beast from a radio audience. But leaving behind a lot of having to be on my tiptoes, having to walk on eggshells. I, you know, you experience it yourself in, in your own show. You know, the only person you have to answer to really is yourself.

1:19:58 Mm-hmm. You can, you can... Lessons from what your audience tells you. You can listen to critique and maybe fine-tune and modify. But at the end of the day, Bob is in charge. So this is Bob's show, so Bob knows what he's gonna do. Radio wasn't like that. You s- Yeah... and especially corporate, you can't say, "Do half of what you wanna get away with." I think you're gonna have a lot of fun with it. I think you, you're the perfect person at the perfect time for this. I think you're gonna have a, a ball with it, so.

1:20:24 Appreciate it. And I, and I wanted, and I wanted people to have the flair of that, you know, that haven't been exposed to you now, like, what is it gonna be? That's why we talked a lot about music and, you know, you and I talk. We just wanted to just have a conversation. It's not very structured, and just so people can get a flair for you, your personality, and what you bring to the table. So I think they're gonna have a lot of fun. It, it should be entertaining. So I can't wait to see it. I hope so.

1:20:46 I hope so. And I, and I know I left a lot of it very, very open. I still haven't mentioned anything about where it's gonna be located at or what the new station is, but again, I'm only doing that because it hasn't been finalized just yet. If I had a little bit more information or a guarantee that we are starting on a specific date, I'd love to share that with you. Um, when I do, Bob, maybe I- you can help promote a little bit or push it out if people wanna know what the show's about- Absolutely...

1:21:08 or where it's located at. Pe- you can kind of, sort of second guess, okay. Um, once everything's finalized, I'd love to, and then maybe even have you on the show. We'll do some, some Prince topics with you, man. I'd, I'd love to pick your brain. We'll do it more structured. Well, that's the thing. That's the thing. There, there's really not gonna be too much of a structure. We're just gonna have fun with it, man. Yeah. Well, go deep on, like, one whole album or two whole albums or, you know. The thing with- Yeah...

1:21:32 YouTube, so this is on YouTube. This is, like, on 20 different, 25 different platforms. I would love to be able to play the music, but YouTube strikes you down. You know, you- they have a lot of rules, and you can get away with some of it, but, you know, you don't wanna push it too much. It's just... Yeah, and it's just not fair. And a lot of stuff that, that you and, both you and I have are, are hardcore boot- hardcore bootlegs, and we don't want people kind of finding us and d- demanding that we give up the bootleg.

1:21:57 Yeah. Well, I wanna do a rapid fire with you. You didn't know about this. All right. I try to do it with everyone in some form or fashion. It's gonna be just a w- whatever pops in your head, one question. I'm gonna leave some stuff out already, 'cause you've already answered a lot of these questions in our talk, but I'm gonna ask you these- It might give a different... Well, no, but you're giving me time to think about it. If you're not gonna give me time to think about it, the answers might be different, so let's do it.

1:22:22 Okay. Ready? Vinyl or streaming? Uh, uh, streaming. Radio or podcasting? R- radio. Concert or headphones? Headphones. Album or playlist? Playlist. Lyrics or melody? Mm, melody first. Melody first. Guitar or piano? Guita- Studio Prince or live Prince? You mean the artist? Yeah. Prince? Oh, yeah. Live or studio? Studio. Studio for... Studio. One album, one album on a desert island forever? I mean, uh, Sign o' the Times. Sign o' the Times, I mean, Sign o' the Times Deluxe. What artist you wish you'd interviewed?

1:22:55 I mean, obvious answer would be Prince. Let me see if I can come up with anything else quickly. You know what? Um, I'll, I'll even go classic. Ob- obviously first answer Prince, second answer, um, Jim Morrison. One song that you never wanna hear again? Oh my God, Hotel California. If I'm ever in a coma, play that song eight feet away from me. I swear to God, I'll get up just to turn it off. Okay. One song you can, you can hear another thousand times? Oh. I mean, again, the hardcore fan in me, Prince.

1:23:22 One song. Yeah. You know what? Can I get- Yeah. I could, I could- 17 Days. 17 Days, but actually I, I, "I Can, I Can Never Take the Place of Your-" Okay. Very cool song. So after all these years in music, radio, all the changes that you've watched happen, and now getting ready to w- to launch your own podcast, what is the most ex- what are you most excited about in the next chapter of Victor Cruz? And let that, that a- that, let me, that be your final question for the night. You know, I would let that marinade for a little bit.

1:23:52 I, I would try to, to, to, um... I'm actually kind of doing that right now. I would say I'd, I'd think about it. Quite honestly, if, if somebody-- It sounds so cliché and so hokey, but if, but if somebody learns something or discovers something new that I was able to bring to them from this podcast, that, that to me is, is what's exciting. Somebody would, would come back to me and say, "Whoa, you know what? I didn't even know that. You talked about X, Y, Z, and I thought I knew it all. I didn't even know that."

1:24:20 That's cool. Yeah. That, that's what's exciting to me. You're gonna have a lot of opportunities to do that, and I know that I said that was my w- one last question, but I do have one more. Okay. What is something I didn't ask you you wish I would've asked you? What I miss from radio. Tell me. Because it, it kinda, it kinda dovetails back into that last question. I got to meet, I got to interview, I got to become friends with, and, and again, this is gonna sound so hokey, but I got to meet and interview so many famous people.

1:24:47 I, I became friends with, with famous people. I, I don't wanna drop names obviously, but, but that wasn't the important thing. The important thing to me was always connect- With the list, uh, being out on the streets, it, it happened a few times, which again, shocking to me, right? Even this day and age, being out of it, it still amazes me. But people would actually come up to me and, "I recognize your voice. You are Victor Cruz. Wow. Did you know that?" And then they'd give me a story. Or there was families who would go to what we called remote broadcasts, and I got to see the children grow up in these families because they all would listen, and they would follow me.

1:25:25 They'd, uh, from whatever station I was at, they would follow me, not the station. That, that to me is, is so humbling, and, and that's not even the proper word, but it's so humbling. Those are the things that I miss. I miss connecting with individuals, you know? And again, Bob, I, I throw it back on you. That's how you and I, I met. We connected via radio, via friend of a friend of a friend, whatever the case. But it means the world to me when I can hold onto those, those friendships, and people turn to me for something and say, "Hey, by the way, can I...

1:25:59 Can you... Did you know?" I hear Prince, I think of you. Again, making it full circle. Those are the things that, that I miss the most. I, I miss the production, I miss the creativity. What I don't miss is actually being on the radio, if, if that kind of sort of cancels everything out, because that was the work part. Yeah. Thinking and, and doing and that. But being out with somebody and, and just hanging out and, "Dude, let's, let's do this," or, "Let's grab a bite." My favorite phrase, right? "Let's get a lunch.

1:26:27 Let's grab a bite. Let's get together for-" Uh, because that meant the most to me. And, and that's what I miss, was that connection. Connecting with people who for no other reason would know who the hell I was. That's cool. Fond memories. Oh, good stuff. I, I- There's gonna-... again, almost started tearing up. Yeah. There's gonna be a new chapter for you, Vic. I'm telling you. I hope so. It's gonna be- I hope so. Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna ride it as long as it, it lasts, and, and, and if it doesn't, onto the next.

1:26:50 Yeah. That's right. So tell everybody where they can find you. Where do you, what, what Instagram or what, uh, social media platform do you want them to follow you at? Because- You know what?... you're gonna be making announcements with the show and all that, so where do you want them to go? If people... You know what, I'll send them, I'll send you to my, um, Instagram. I don't even know what it is. VictorCruz319. I think that's a Prince reference. You know what? You send it to me, I put it in all the show notes, okay?

1:27:14 So when they- Yeah, do that. Yeah. Do that. The Facebook page, I'm gonna be quite honest with you, we'll probably create a Facebook page once this show is up and running. Mm-hmm. Maybe through the TV station's pages or whatever. My personal page, unfortunately, is still very personal. There's a lot of family stuff that I wanna keep there. But if it's the Instagram, yeah. Link it. I think it's theVictorCruz319, or just theVictorCruz. Geez, Bob, why you ask me these questions? I just go on there and, and post stuff.

1:27:39 We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes. Put it in the show notes. So anyway. Yeah, and if anybody wants to follow, and then like I said, once we do get, um, radio station page up and running, uh, radio station, the TV station page up and running, uh, we'll post that. Yeah. Cut that out in editing, would you please? Edit that out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cut that in post. I won't cut that out. I'm gonna leave, gonna leave it in. Victor, brother, thank you. This is exactly what I hoped it would be, just two friends sitting around talking about Prince and the new stuff that's going on in music, and I just wanted, again, everybody to get a taste of what you're gonna be doing.

1:28:08 So I'm real happy for you, excited. Thank you for doing this. And so- My pleasure... everybody listening, if you're watching and j- you know, and you like this conversation, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Make sure to like, share it. Put whatever button's in front of you, do that. And, uh, again, thanks Vic. I'm Bob Theriault. You guys remember, discipline over comfort every time. We'll talk to you soon, Vic. Thanks everybody. Bye.