Links!
All of Marty's current work, including podcasts: https://weeklyhumorist.com/
Marty's archive of Z Morning Zoo bits, including the full Rick Wright tour of the Ostrom House: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ascjv18c57ajw/Z_Morning_Zoo_audio
Marty D was best known at WJPZ for hosting the Z Morning Zoo, alongside Peterman and Emily Zizza (now Almas). But you'll learn much more about him in today's episode. You'll hear how he was a radio nerd like most of us, growing up listening to Baltimore and DC morning shows.
An illustrator and artist by trade, Marty looked at art schools but decided on going to a more general school with an art program. That brought him to Syracuse, and it was a sign on a dorm-mate's door that said "listen to me on the radio" that led him to Z89. Staring on the 4-6 stuff, he found himself sticking around to hang out with Spike and Nick B - these were college students doing morning radio!
Marty's creative chops were best suited for morning radio -as he found out in other dayparts, and eventually he was offered the show. Having learned from Baltimore radio, and having two cohosts who had interned in Boston radio, they quickly assembled the archetypal morning show - with the requisite "dick, dear, and dork."
We've spoken of the Ostrom house before on this podcast - Marty loved doing the show there his senior year. It was a house, and he quickly set up a coffee maker and made himself at home. And the myriad of equipment issues taught him how to overcome almost any obstacle - a skill set he's used in the time since graduation. Imagine figuring out how to get a show on the air, but you walk into the studio and there's no microphone. They figured it out.
One of the strengths of the show was their community interaction - doing live broadcasts everywhere they could, doing benchmark contest and games, and more. We asked Marty if he ever thought about doing it professionally. His answer may surprise you.
As for what he did do professionally, Marty takes us through his 20+ year career in New York, working for Mad Magazine, David Letterman and National Lampoon. Then, he leveraged his skills, experience, and network to start his own company - Humorist Media - doing everything from live events, to podcasts, and now even book publishing.
Marty is currently serving on the WJPZ Alumni Association Board, in addition to being the official illustrator of the Alumni Association and this podcast.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Sign up for email alerts whenever we release a new episode here: jagindetroit.com/WJPZat50
Want to be a guest on the pod or know someone else who would? Email Jag: jag@jagindetroit.com.
Want to stay in the loop with WJPZ Alumni events? Subscribe to our newsletter on the right hand side of the page at http://wjpzalumni.org/
Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50, I am Jon JAG Gay. For most of us at a time at Z 89. We probably felt like the people that were doing the morning show at that moment could have gone on to do it professionally. I absolutely feel that way because there was a trio of Marty D, Peterman, and Emily Zizza, now Emily Almas, who were just dynamite every single morning.
So I am thrilled to have the man at the center of that show, Marty D from the Class of 2001 today. Welcome!
Marty: Hello,
Jack. Thank you so much for having me on the spectacular podcast you have here.
Jag: I appreciate it. I'm going to ask about your podcast later as well. Start at the beginning, Marty. I grew up in Baltimore.
How'd you find out about Syracuse and the radio station?
Marty: Right? Yeah, I grew up in a small town called Severna Park. It was between Annapolis and Baltimore and I was a radio nerd growing up. I always listened to the radio. Baltimore has great. Radio stations. Good time oldies 105. 7 WQSR at the time B104 was, one of the top stations and 99.
1 HFS was this legendary alt rock station that was out of DC, but we would get their signal in Baltimore. I was a huge radio listener, even when I was a small child, I would call the radio station, I would ask them to play a song, I would play radio games, I would win prizes on the morning show, I have a t shirt.
Jag: Were you a prize pig, Marty D?
Marty: I would try, I would be so thrilled, you call the radio station on that old, the kitchen telephone that's hanging on the wall with the long cord, and I would call B 104's morning show, Brian and O'Brien in the morning. In the morning, on B 104, and that was the jingle.
And I would call in, and I won a t shirt, and I was a child, so they gave me an extra large, like a long sleeve t shirt like this. And I wore it to bed, as like a nightgown. And I still have this, it's almost threadbare, it's so thin, but it has this drawn photo, this drawn illustration of the morning show guys at that time.
Brian and O'Brien, it was Brian something and Don O'Brien, who later on became Big Don O'Brien, who worked again at another oldie station in Baltimore. And I had this t shirt forever, I still have it at home, I'll wear it when I'm, visiting my parents, I see it in the drawer, and I'm like, God, this t shirt is still around.
And that's just the kind of radio nerd I was. I never did radio in high school, I've heard some of the Z89 guys would get into community radio growing up, I never did that. I had a toy growing up called the DJ Machine, which was this, basically a podcast tool, but for a child made from like a Fisher Price type company.
It was this plastic thing, it had a tape deck, it had a microphone, it had faders, and sound effects, and I played with this thing and I pretended that I had a morning show when I was like 11 or 7, and I would do that with a buddy in my neighborhood, Jimmy O'Connor. And we were pretending to be on, doing Brian and O'Brien.
We were pretending to have a morning show. And I had tapes, and I would play tapes. And then, that goes away, that breaks, whatever years go by. And I was actually an art student. I was an art major. I went to Syracuse for, VPA, Visual and Performing Arts. And I get to Syracuse, and I know nothing about Z89.
I know nothing about the radio stations on campus. I'm in day hall. I'm in day two. And it's probably been a couple of weeks into the semester. And there's a guy on my floor who had a sign on his door that said, Listen to Crash, 2pm to 4pm on Z89. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he goes, oh, I'm on the radio.
I'm like, you're on the radio as a DJ. As a freshman. At what station? He's there's this radio station down in Watson. It plays hit music. It's like a real radio station. And I was like, you gotta tell me all about this radio station. I found out just by walking by this guy's, dorm room door, and I went down, and it was, he was friends with, Puff Andy.
Remember, Andy Lever? I know the name, but I don't, yeah. Puff Andy. So Puff Andy, there was this whole crowd of kids that, I guess they got there a little bit earlier, that you could get there a little bit earlier in the semester, maybe in the summer, like in the August, and they got early recruited, probably by Harry.
And they were all kind of these freshmen who had already populated the station. And I went to the station. I went to a recruitment thing. I went in and I talked to Harry at the station. he was just rebuilding the station and it was like a really large, lift for him and Dena and they were trying to populate it with new, DJs and radio people and staff people.
That's how I got roped in, very early freshman year, by happenstance, and then I couldn't believe that something like this was on campus that we could just do. It was just like playing a grown up professional job that I'd always loved to do, and I had no idea that I would just fall into it like that.
Jag: It's so funny because
we've talked in many episodes about what Harry and Dena did to save the station around the turn of the century, and how they recruited my class in 02 as freshmen to Really take over the station when they were gone. But prior to that, they recorded you guys as freshmen in the class of 01, so fall of 97, to really come in there, and that was their first foray into repopulating the station after they'd switched
back from the Pulse, right?
Marty: yeah, and it was definitely a rebuilding. It was, there were remnants of the Pulse, all still, there was no Z 89 stuff. There was no stuff printed. There were no banners. There were banner on a roll, but it was the Pulse banner on the roll. And we didn't have any swag, we didn't have any radio stuff. It was like, we walked in there Something happened here.
But we don't know what it is. No one's really telling us what happened here. But something happened that created a hush amongst this station. And, and it was just different. because the people who were on the air still were all from The Pulse, right? the guys running the morning show that I met pretty quick was Spike and Nick B, the boy wonder.
And, DJ Pass da mic, and Spike's an alt rock guy, right? Spike's not a hit music, Barbie girl, Britney Spears kind of guy. He was more of this spiky hair, renegade, bad boy persona, and he's on this hit music station that I don't think he signed on for. I think he had signed on for the Pulse and he just stayed cause he wanted to do it.
But I got in real quick, and I got onto my, board ops as fast as I could, and then I got an overnight shift. The only things that were available, was a 4 to 6, which sounds so insane that we did that, Jag Yeah. but we did. And I would get up, and I would do my four to six, and that's how I met the morning show people.
I would be there for maybe the last bit of my show, and then it would be Spike and Nick B, and I would meet them, and get to overlap with them, and they were really nice, and I wanted to make a good impression with them, because I, love morning shows, and I, love comedy, and I would try, to be a wise ass, or a smart guy, and Spike was really nice to me.
And I was this clean cut nerd, right? Like I didn't fit in. Like So many of us, I was this clean cut nerd and I went to art school, right? So I would look at art schools before Syracuse and I was looking at Pratt and I was looking at Parsons and I was looking at Cooper U and I was looking at all these places that were like art only, right?
Art only schools. And the people that go to art only schools, a lot of times were very artsy, they were very alternative, they were very punky, they were very, shaved heads, piercings, all this stuff, wear all black. And I wasn't any of those things, right? I was this boring, clean cut, a square from, the suburbs, and I liked comedy, but I was good at art.
I went to Syracuse, because it was more of a general college, but then, I still didn't really fit in with the art kids there so much, but then I found Z 89. And that's where I found the place that I fit in, right? So I fit in with these ragtag, misfit, funny, weird, different people that all had different, maybe majors and interests, but then we all went to this radio station, and I just found the crew that I would end up being, close with for the rest of my life.
Jag: Such a story that has been repeated in a hundred some odd episodes
of this podcast.
Marty: I'm so glad I sound original, Jag Thank you for that.
Jag: No, but it's the beauty of 51 years of WJPZ, of the Island of Misfit Toys, and we all fit in. So you get through your overnight shifts, and you're, tagging on to the morning show.
What else did you do at the station over
there, for those who don't know Marty?
Marty: because I was tagging on to the morning show a little bit, I would make little jokes. And it was very much in the vein of, the Norm MacDonald... weekend update. dry humor, right? like real, just like a news, and then a turn, and then a little quip.
And Spike would just laugh, and he would always say, Marty D., you're such a funny fuck. And I That was shocking. That was shocking to me. And I'd be like, thank And I'm like a little nerdy guy. I'm like, thanks, Spike. Oh, that's such a funny. And he would be like, alright.
How about this? You record some of your stuff on the cart machines, right? So produce some stuff for me, and I'll play it on the morning show. And I was like, that would be so great, oh my god, thank you so much. So I'm this freshman, I've never done anything like this before, I'm writing comedy, and little jokes, and it was like me reading the paper.
I would write news, topical news jokes, totally ripping off, Norm MacDonald's Weekend Update. And then I would do a sound effect, it would be literally me holding the daily orange, and I'd be like fluttering the paper, and I'd be j Turning the page, and I'd be like, Oh, what's that? What's in the news?
And I called it something stupid. And I would just do these jokes that I would record the day before, and then I would leave the cart for Spike and his morning show, and he would play them. That's cool. I would tune in the morning, and I listened to myself on the morning show, and it was so exciting.
And it was just like this lightbulb went off, and I was like, this is, I wanna keep doing creative stuff like this on the air. that, continued. I got to do that, I did the overnights, I, met tons of people doing it, it was so hard to do the overnights. Yeah, the 4 to 6 especially. A slot didn't open up for a while, and I would do the 4 to 6, and then I would do some homework that I wasn't doing for my art classes, and then I'd roll in the class exhausted.
That's how it all started for me. And then, the station was so wonderful and Harry was so supportive of getting people in and getting them involved and making sure that they felt included and enjoyed themselves and wanted to stay and gave great feedback. I remember I finally got on the air.
I guess it was overnight, still. But I would do the weather, right? you try to find spots during your shift that you can be creative. Because otherwise you're just talking up songs, doing the well, community events, doing the promos. And I wanted to find ways to be funny, obviously, because this is the kind of attention seeking hog that I am.
I remember one time I was doing the weather, and I wanted the weather to sound fun and more official.
Jag: In
Syracuse, New York.
Marty: In Syracuse, New York. So I pretended that I had an official meteorologist. And I remember being like, From Z89's official meteorologist, Michael Saperstein. And I created this whole pretend person, and Harry was doing my air check.
He goes, what are you doing? I'm like, I wanted it to sound official. He's you can't just make up fake meteorologists, Marty. That's lying to the people on the air. But I wanted to make it sound like we were bigger than we are. He's don't do that. I was like, all right. You try.
Jag: This is the morning show showman in you because you have the separate voice for 18 year old Marty that you've been toggling in between for the first.
10 minutes of this podcast, and he's also doing, the, aw shucks shoulder shake you can't see right now as well, so it's classic.
Marty: Let's take a call. 443 HITS.
Jag: Hey, Marty, Jag in Syracuse, Jag in Detroit, rather. How did you get onto the morning show full
time?
Marty: good question, Jag and Detroit. Thank you for calling.
So
Jag: Scavotto had the morning show for a while, and then eventually he passed it on to you, right?
Marty: Yeah, Jamie Scavotto was a great morning show guy, and he was also on at nights. Either my freshman or sophomore year. Jamie Scavotto was a wonderful DJ, but I'll always remember the day we got the liners in.
Yeah. Do you remember the day we got the liners in?
Jag: I do, but you tell it.
Marty: we got this guy. Who was the guy that did the liners for Z89?
Jag: Sean Caldwell.
Marty: Sean Caldwell. you get this booming voice. And it was so exciting because you would say what you wanted the special liner to say, and it would be like, Marty D, or the, whatever.
And we got them back, and they were playing them, and Jamie was in the production room, and it was, he played all the ones for him, and it was the big fancy voice guy saying, Jamie SCA-vuh-to Jamie SCA-vuh-to Jamie SCA-vuh-to And Jamie, goes, FUUUUCK! And it was like the whole station, and it was like, ah, damn it.
Jag: That was the worst possible situation right there. Okay, back to how you came to take over the morning show.
Marty: After my sophomore year, so I was living... In Kimmel Food Court, the Kimmel Dorms.
Jag: we all lived in the
food court to an
extent when we were at that station,
yeah.
Marty: When you live in the Kimmel Dorm, you pretty much live at the Kimmel Food Court.
And you gain about 50 pounds that year or so from here. And, I was doing a shift that was my 11 to 2 shift, which was actually a sweet gig. Oh, yeah. 11 p. m. to 2 a. m. is like having your own little late night talk show. And that's why I relished it. And Harry kept on trying to give me...
better shifts, and I'm like, I love my 11pm to 2am, I don't have to worry about going to class, it's night time, people are listening to you, I can pretend like I'm doing a late night talk show, in my mind, I would call it late tonight with Marty D, But not too much so that people would notice, so I wouldn't get in trouble, and then, towards the end of that year, That's when I met all of you guys who came in, my sophomore year, and Peterman, And, Bernie Kim, and everybody, And they gave me the morning show.
They were like, we want you to do the morning show. you should take it. And that was so exciting. I was so excited. It was a lot of responsibility to take on, a morning show and try to figure out how to do a good morning show without destroying my major and failing. So I had figured out a plan where I would do three days a week and then people would pick up two days a week.
But it was really important that we create a morning show that were like the shows I listened to growing up. I wanted it to be a professional morning show, like Good Time Oldies, 105. 7 WQSR's, Rouse and Company, and Brian and O'Brien. And the thing about those kind of morning shows were benchmarks, right?
Yeah. Everything has to be at the same time, every day. People had to have their roles. People had to do their things. we had to have contests. We had to do giveaways. We had to do live callers. So these are things that I really wanted, and I pushed for, and I got to do, even though we didn't have a 7 second delay or anything, we would have to be really careful, and Matt, DelSignore was very patient with me, and he was very patient with me.
they were so nice to me, and Josh Wolff was so nice to me, and they would let me try to do, a Real Morning Show, and I would try to pull it I would try to keep it tight, and we wouldn't talk too much. but having Peterman and Emily Zizza, who both had done Matty in the Morning at, KISS 108, I believe is the station that's really big in Boston, so they had this background of Real Morning Show experience, too, having Emily Zizza and having Peterman, we were this morning team that just gelled immediately.
And they knew how to tell me how to host a morning show well. And I actually got this morning show book. Oh, I have it in the other room. It's called Morning Radio. Ha! And it was this book from like 1994. And this book cost, 70. I couldn't find it anywhere. I couldn't find it at the library. I couldn't find it anywhere cheap.
I couldn't find it used. So I had to buy this book. Because I was like, I want this morning show to be great. And it's basically... Everything that people still talk about, it's about having your morning show archetypes, who your character is, lean into your character, having all of your different improv y moments, how to make the listener engaged, how to make the listener like the fourth person in the friend group, in every little thing.
So it was all those kind of things and Peterman was so good at being, so it was What were your roles as the three of you? So it was the dick, the deer, and the dork. is what I think Peterman and Zizza had told me about. And so I had to be the dick. I had to be, more of a jerk. I had to be this, I was more of a smart ass, but I wasn't, really like a badass.
so I tried to turn that up a little bit and Emily would always be like, oh, Marty, oh, that's terrible, . Oh, and she did that so well. And Peterman is a real nerd. So he really, was great at that role. Ah, but it was just so much fun, and it was the most fun that I could have possibly. I could not believe that I got up to do a show from 6 to 10 AM m. for two years, three days a week. there's people that do this for a full time job, and I just, it really affects, every part of your waking life. I was really good at sliding in there right at 6 a. m., though. I really had it timed. so I did not do very much show prep the night before, and we had the show down, so we didn't have to really do too much to prep.
Everything was set in motion. we had the benchmarks we would do. to back up, I interned at a, morning show. I interned at, Rouse and Company, at WQSR, Good Time Oldies, for a summer, I got to work as a morning show part time person, and a promotions part time person, and that was through Ryan Sampson, who was a Z89 guy, so he was working at this cluster in Baltimore, and he got me a job, a summer job there, and it was amazing, and I got to drive a prize van, and I got to do all these promotions, and I was going to car dealerships, and I was doing all this stuff with the morning show.
And I stole all their sound effects, and I asked them, and I go, Steve Rouse, I'm gonna steal all of your stuff, is that okay? He was like, absolutely! So I went into the little booth at the CBS, radio center thing, and I just took all of his sound effects that I could, and they were great. We did the impossible question, at 7 12.
Jag: Is that where that came from?
Marty: Yep. Okay. We did the impossible question, and we did, the 6 30 clubhouse. That was like the real early people that would get up. we would have lots of listeners for 630 Clubhouse, which was the joke of the day. People that were driving for the Byrne Dairy would call us.
yeah! all these overnight people would call us and stuff like that. It was wild the amount of community reaction that the morning show would get. As long as we were being consistent on the air, and playing games, and being interactive with them, we had regular callers, kids on this one school bus would always call to request songs, and the bus driver would do it for them, and we would have to dedicate a song.
It would be like Mambo No. 5 to bus like 312 or whatever. But I found, I have a box of stuff I found from college, and it was like all of these letters that people would send the morning show. And it was just, it's wild to think about how this college radio station could perform at the level of a professional radio station and, capture the attention of this whole community.
And we were just doing it for fun.
Jag: You know who might have been on one of those buses? Is Lauren Levine. She told me in her episode of the podcast that she was listening to our group as a middle schooler on the bus. And then I, reached for the cane and the walker and the tennis balls and
moved on with the conversation.
Marty: That is crazy. We had this guy, Dave from Camillus, who would always call.
Jag: Oh my god, yes!
Marty: He would always call the radio station, and we had this other girl, Debbie, that would always call. And we would do events, because I really wanted to do, a legit morning show, right? So that meant remote broadcasting.
I wanted to do as many remote broadcasts as we could with the equipment that we had, which was this old Comrex. And Tracey and Sarah, Dumont, I would say send me anywhere, I will go, and they would find ways to get me places, and we would do the morning show from IHOP, we would do the morning show from McDonald's, we did the morning show from all these places, where the listeners had to come find us, and they would win concert tickets.
Jag: Didn't you go up in a plane once?
Marty: biplane, which is like the Red Baron Snoopy plane. yeah. This, pizza company, Red Baron Pizza, they were like, we're doing this thing at this airfield, Wanna come out and promote the And I, was like, shh, absolutely. So we took the It was me and Peterman and Brett Bosse and maybe Bernie Kim piled into this tiny Honda Prelude that I had and we crammed ourselves into this tiny car and we drove out to this airfield and I went up in this plane with this guy!
And I was like, I wasn't thinking about how dangerous this was at all. I was like, come on, we got, and I was like, is there a way that we can wire me so we can get me live on the air and do all this stuff? And then there wasn't. And then I went up and we were doing these loop to loops and he was having me fly.
And I was just like screaming the entire, if we had done a live broadcast, it just would have been me. Crying on the air, but it was amazing what we were able to do just with this radio station. we could go places, we could give away stuff, we could, have fun club nights at, country club or whatever.
It was fun. I really enjoyed the amount of activities that the station, got us to perform at and to, we would go to malls. Oh yeah. I remember doing all kinds of these mall openings and things. It was a trip. And then also, I don't know how many sports guys you've had on this podcast, but there were so few people who knew how to do remote broadcasting.
So I would have to beg the sports department, because they're the only ones who know how to use the Comrex right? And they had to be in the station to do it. So I would get these morning show remotes. And then I would have to beg Andy Lynch or Tommy G. And I would be like, please wake up and do the board op and do the Comrex for me, I have to do this thing, we're doing the show from IHOP, we're doing the show from McDonald's, and they'd be like, alright, Marty we'll get up and do it, and they were Nice. Like the sports department was so nice to the morning show because I think because they, the sports would come on to do their broadcasts a couple times a show. We would have guys come on like Howie Chen or Dave Friedman would come on and it was just a fun. The morning show, it was like the living, breathing, personality of the radio station, because it was like this cocktail party, right?
So it was like all these different personalities are in the radio station, and that's the brand of the radio station, is the morning show. And that's how I felt the morning show was. It was like all of these great people coming together to put on a great show and get interacting with the audience at the highest level, going and doing the remote stuff and doing the contest and stuff like that.
And also, Zappy Hour was a good example of how the station was, we would all be at the station for Zappy Hour, and we would be getting pizzas, or we would be doing whatever, and there would be one guy in the air, and it would just be like this little party happening, it was like the whole station coming together to just hang out on a Friday, while someone's on the air, whether it's Bill Massa, or there was a guy that was before Bill, who was like a high school kid at the station, and he ended up being at, like Y 94 for 20 years.
He might still be there.
Jag: You're not thinking of Rick Roberts in 93Q, are you?
Marty: Yeah, Rick Roberts!
Jag: He's the PD of 93Q now.
Marty: He was so good at Zappy Hour. He would come in with his own carts, and he would just like... You put on a great show.
Jag: Okay, I don't remember this whole story, so I need you to help me out with this one. What was the boy band thing you did with The Morning Show? Because this was huge at the time.
Marty: We had a boy band, because the morning show that I listened to growing up, the Rouse and Company Morning Show, which was an oldie station, they would do parody songs, and they had this whole band, right? So the host played all the instruments, and he had his morning show as his band, and they would do events, and people would come and see them, and they were like local celebrities.
when I was trying to make the morning show like a real professional morning show and doing all the events and stuff, I was like, we need to do parody songs! And people like Bernie Kim were amazing musicians. So Bernie Kim would write and play music and do parody songs. And we had a boy band group called Machismo.
And it was Peterman and Bernie Kim and Big Mac, Mike McDonough, and we would do songs and we have all of these ridiculous songs. We have a DMX parody. We have a, I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Finch, but it was, I like girls, really that's it, being singles, the pits, but we are, and it's a bummer, it's a bummer.
And there's a whole song about us being just absolute losers. And it's really funny. we made like a little CD of the best of the zoo, from back in the day, during the zoo, we made a best of the zoo to play like on weekends or something. Like I was like, maybe we can do a best of the zoo on the, and then no one ever did that.
But I had all these CDs that I gave out to the zoo folks and we had all of our bits and stuff on there. And there's all these parody songs, and they're really
funny.
Jag: Bernie Kim did talk about that in his episode as well.
Marty: He talked about that?
Jag: Yeah, so go back and listen to, you go back and listen to Bernie's episode if you haven't listened to it yet, yeah.
Marty: He did a great DMX parody that is really dirty.
Jag: Potty up, right?
Marty: Yeah, it's all about, having to take a poop. And it is very funny. And, we would get these CDs from the promo companies, right? And that we'd play for the radio station. And a lot of times they had instrumental, versions on them.
remember, we don't have the technology. This is, 99. This is 98. This is 2000. So we don't have all of these things that just, automatically use AI to take out lyrics and stuff. And we don't have karaoke versions of everything right now that's available online. we would do what we had, and they would have instrumentals of a lot of these songs.
We'd be like, what do we have instrumentals of? And then we would try to write songs based on what was available. And they're so funny, and they're dumb, and they're gonna I hope we can put some links to those if people want to listen to those, and some of the skits, and Peterman would make all of these ridiculous skits, and he would have all these recurring characters, and it was a lot of fun, and the production quality of the off air stuff that we would do to prepare for the morning show Was a lot.
We would do a lot of stuff off air that we would edit and rehearse or prerecord to play these different characters and things to make it sound really impromptu on the air, but it was, we would spend so much time, that we should have been doing schoolwork, but we were doing it all of this ridiculous jackassery.
Jag: Did you guys ever think about doing it professionally
after graduation?
Marty: In another life, I think Peterman, Emily, and I have a number one morning show in a seaside town, like Santa Barbara, and we're local celebrities. And I have thought about that wistfully throughout my entire life. I'm like, what if I had just done a morning show?
would I just be this local celebrity opening up car dealerships? Maybe, and I think that life is wonderful. Like I look at people that have the morning show life and I'm like, maybe that could have been, maybe I could have done that, but I don't know. I don't know if I would have been able to do the grind of the 6 to 10 for years.
I know that it is a lifestyle change. I had a friend recently who's not in the Z89, group. he's a comedy writer, and he lives in Cleveland, and he's very funny, he does stand up, and he did a little bit of radio as like a guest on someone else's show. And then he got the job of a morning show at a alt rock station in Cleveland, right?
He gets the morning show job. And I'm texting him, and I'm like, This is the gift! This is the best thing! This is the top! Getting the morning show at a radio station? And you've never even done, a regular radio shift before? this is amazing! Congratulations! And he was like, I don't think I want to do this, Marty.
He's this is terrible! And I'm like, no, you gotta hold on, you gotta hold on. You're gonna be a local celebrity, you're gonna go to all the things, people are gonna love you, you're gonna do stand up, it's gonna be great. And he lasted like three months and he was like, I'm quitting this job. It is ruining my life.
I cannot do this.
Jag: Fair enough.
Marty: And I was like, okay, I get it. And I, think that sort of makes me think it's not all, happy and fun and jovial. And maybe it wouldn't be the same as it was in college because what we had was so magical. And maybe we couldn't do that professionally because there's people who were like, Your ratings aren't high enough.
We have to add in someone younger, add a dog, start doing, whatever it is to make the ratings So, when all of a sudden it becomes professional, everything changes. And I remember being at the station, very happily doing my regular Z89 stuff. And I remember. Rich Davis was at HOT and he was like, Marty, you should come work at HOT.
You should get paid for this. What are you doing? Get paid for this. They'll pay you to do the same thing. And I was like, I don't, I think it'll change it if I get paid for it. I think it'll change it and I just, I'm doing it for fun. And, that was college, young, dumb Marty, who was very poor and didn't care.
now, Marty's like, Marty, what the hell is wrong with you? You could have made some money doing this! You could have had a career! But, you'll never know. You can't go back.
Jag: Hot 1079's loss was certainly Z89's gain, for sure.
Marty: Thank you. Oh, thank you, yes.
Jag: and Marty, I know you wanted to tell a story that's...not the best story in the station's history.
Marty: no, it's an interesting story, and it's actually part of my movie pitch for the Underdog, Animal House story. It's actually the All Is Lost moment, but when I was a sophomore and I was living at Kimmel. Also, if you live at Kimmel, you become the de facto person that has to go to the station when no one's on the air, and you turn on the radio, and there was dead air, and you're like, someone put the CD on, and it skipped, because we had this overnight CD that people If it's an absolute emergency, you can put on this mixed CD.
someone had skipped a CD and I would have to go and sit at the radio station for six hours because that's what happens if you live in Watson or Kimmel. But during my, I believe it was my sophomore year, someone went in on an overnight kid who was new. Someone got buzzed in or was led into the station because they thought it was someone at the radio station and they weren't.
They were actually a nefarious actor who was not a radio station person, but maybe a former radio station person. And they smashed all of the Z89 CDs. And we had nothing to put on the air. So we had no CDs to put on the air. Someone had, vandalized the station. And Matt had to go and find replacement promo only CDs to create a playlist that we could temporarily have music on at Z 89.
And... It was swept under the rug, and I think it may have been in the D. O., but that was definitely something that happened at the station. So there was definitely a bad actor, and there's always been, questions on who it was. I have a couple of names I won't say out loud. but Harry, I think Harry knows this story.
Jag: I want to say it would have been your junior year, and Matt's and my sophomore year, because Matt would have been in charge at that point.
Marty: yeah. Oh yeah, maybe it was my junior year. Okay.
Jag: If you do make a movie about the station, that is definitely the all
was lost moment.
Marty: It is the All is Lost moment.
We had no music; the music was off. It was our, American Pie of, the day the music died, yeah. Yeah, it was dead air. And, they put it back together, the station got back on the air, and we all moved forward. But there was definitely a thing that happened. questions. Mysterious. Mysterious things.
That's a whole different podcast. That could be like a, like a crime podcast.
Jag: That'll be
the JPZ true crime
podcast, exactly.
Marty: That'll be the JPZ true crime podcast, is who broke all the CDs in the station? And was it a commercial hit music station down the street? Who's to say?
Jag: So Marty, you talked about the Comrex and some of the tech issues and really duct tape and bubble gum and all that.
Your senior year You're doing the morning show out of the house, on Ostrom. What are some highlights or lowlights from that year?
Marty: everybody was so down on the house, and I love the house because it had a parking spot. Heh. You had this independence, so we had basically like our own frat house that, we controlled this whole house by ourselves.
We had a kitchen. We had a little breakfast nook. I brought in a coffee machine. we had little offices. We had a porch. I liked having the house. Everybody is so down on this house, but I love the house. There were problems with the house. Yes. We didn't have phones for, the first couple of months.
The phones didn't work, or maybe, the first month or two. Tough for a morning show. Very tough for a morning show. So that was the worst possible thing to happen. So we didn't have the And then, I liked the production studio. I thought it was fine. I did love, I loved our old station.
I loved the old station. I loved the wall covered with bumper stickers of all the different radio stations in the past. I loved all the old photos and stuff. the house was a bridge to a much better station. So I got that, and that was fine. I knew it was temporary. It wasn't fancy. there were problems, technically, with things.
But ultimately, it got us there, which was fine.
Jag: Do you want to tell the Rick Wright story?
Marty: The Rick Wright story where he's taking a tour of the station?
Jag: Yeah.
Marty: So for the morning show, we actually, I wanted to have remote broadcasts, and stuff. I wanted to do all these things that the big stations could do, but we didn't have the technology to do it.
So got a set of walkie talkies that had a mile range. And I would plug one into the board, and then I would send someone out with another one. whoever was being the stunt boy of the day. Bill Massa, I would make him go out and do embarrassing things. This kid, Wild Bill, would go out and do embarrassing things.
John Boccacino who I think is a Syracuse alumni.
Jag: Works in the alumni office now. Yeah, he now does the Syracuse alumni podcast.
Marty: There you go. John Boccacino. Casino in my Pants. And he would put. Fruit down his pants, and passers-by had to guess what was gonna come out of his pant leg. Would it be an orange, a banana, a lemon, what have you.
and this is the kind of stuff that we did do all of the time. And we would do it with this walkie talkie, so instead of having a cell phone all the time... He would just hold down the walkie talkie and I'd put up the, mic and it sounded fine, So we had a mile radius of the station so that was our playground to bother people.
So we're in this house and I give, Dr. Wright the walkie talkie and he's walking around the house and he's giving a tour of this new Z89 party house. And he's just, he's being so funny and he's being so hilarious, really funny, just like radio bit comedy stuff. And Peterman and I are just dying and it's all live on the air.
And I'm just like, Oh my God, what's he going to say now? It was great. I hope we can patch it in and you can, you guys can hear some of, of Rick Wright giving us a tour of the Z89 party house.
Rick Wright: Let me walk around a little bit here.
Hey guys, I'm there in the production room. What's gonna be the production room?
Man, it looks a little dirty in here. Hey, where's the janitor to clean up this place? Looking out the window here, man. Oh my god, there's a... Oh my god, there's a
bumblebee! Look at him dance around. A lot of cables and everything. Cables, they gotta be connected here. But we gotta get that recruitment meeting going because we're gonna need this thing bad. This is what I'm talking about. Would you like to see what's in this closet here? Oh my god, looks like a used, is this a used condom?
oh, my.
Let me close that door real quick here, let me go back here. Now this is gonna be an office area back here, we got all Boards, and books, and there's a file cabinet here that's oh my god. Jeez, what's in this file cabinet here? Oh god. Let me open this up. Oh my god, here's an old SU Media Guide from 1959 when the Syracuse football team won the national championship with Ernie Davis here.
Oh, this house is beautiful. And there's a recording to the back. Hey guys, can you hear the acoustical ambience? Yeah. Can
you hear the echo? Yep. Guess what this place is! Oh! Hey, Dr. Wright! Dr. Wright, what are you doing in there, doctor? Oh, my God. This is
the bed upstairs. There's a bedroom.
Marty: Was it used?
Rick Wright: Ah, man, there's some suitcases up there. I think somebody's in the bed up there, man. I saw four... legs Really? Yeah, one, one up, one down! I'm not gonna touch that though, guys. The Beast with two backs. Hey, this is the morning show, 924, WJPZ, weather forecast outside is real great, huh?
Marty: So great.
Jag: we're gonna put that full five-minute bit as well as a whole bunch of Marty's Morning Show bits that he sent me in the show notes. There's gonna be a, link that you can click on to check out as many bits as you'd
like
Marty: I have
this one thing also I found. I went through, of course, I have, photo albums of college.
I've wait I saw all these photo albums. I have some great photos. I have Bernie Kim with on the show, and I have Greg Dixon here on the show, and I have, when we did,
Jag: He's literally thumbing through this album as he's talking.
Marty: We did the Zoo-B-Q Barbe-Zoo, which is like an outside broadcast. We decided to do like a barbecue outdoor broadcast, and we got people to come to this thing.
We had tiki torches and... And it was dumb. but I found this, it's like a dry erase board of the, staff of the station that used to be up in Watson.
Jag: Oh, read it off!
Marty: This might give you an idea of who I was at the station. this is the bottom of it, in the dry erase, and it has broadcast consultant, Dena Giacobbe, chief announcer, Mike Komarinetz, Komar.
Yep. Senior announcer, Steve Selleny. Steel. Computer operations, Mark Seltzer. Head jackass, Marty D. That's what the dry erase board on the wall of the station said. I guess that was me in a nutshell.
Jag: what do you do after graduating as head jackass? you go on to quite the career since.
Tell me about some of the stuff you've done since Syracuse.
Marty: Yeah, so I was an illustration major at Syracuse, so I'm doing all this radio stuff, and I'm doing all this fun comedy stuff, and I'm having a ball, and then my college side, I'm doing illustration, I'm doing, humor illustration for magazines and newspaper type stuff, and I go to New York, and I have a portfolio, and I'm meeting with magazines, I'm meeting with Mad I'm sitting outside of The Mad Magazine office in Manhattan on 53rd and Broadway, and I'm sitting on like a fire hydrant in front of the Ed Sullivan theater, which is where Letterman was doing his Late Show.
And I'm waiting for a meeting at Mad with Sam Biviano, the art director of Mad. And this woman asks me if I want tickets to see The Late Show. And I was like, when? And she's today at four o'clock. And I go, I have a meeting at Mad Magazine I'm waiting for, but what is this job you're doing? And she was like, oh we go out and find tickets, and have tickets for people who are fans of the show, and they blah blah blah.
And I was like, I want to get this job, like I need a job, what is this job? And it turns out she was a Syracuse grad. I got a job at Letterman just like that. I got an interview and then I got a, they had an opening and I ended up working there for three and a half years. It was like a part time job, but it was perfect because it could pay the rent and I was doing newspaper illustration for a newspaper called the New York Press. So I was doing weekly illustration and some covers for this Village Voice competitor, and I was working at Letterman. I was meeting all these people who were comedy people and writers and comics and performers and dancers and actresses.
And it was just a wonderful place to get all of these connections. when I was new in the city and then a girl that worked at Letterman worked at this place around the corner that was called National Lampoon. And then I was like, and they go, we need a creative design comedy person. And, you'd be perfect for it.
Please come over here. So I went over to National Lampoon. And I worked there for 13 years and I started there as like an on air, off air creative manager. And I ended up being the creative director and the last editor in chief of the magazine.
Jag: So that takes you up until what year, Marty?
Marty: 2017. And then the company gets sold, to some finance company that promptly shut it down.
And I had built up this magazine of comedy writers and cartoonists, I had some podcasts, I had done some TV film development, so I didn't know where to go, because it's a very specific set of skills. And, there's not that many comedy media companies, so I just started my own company, I partnered with a former boss of Lampoon, who was previous to the current group.
And I started a company called Humorist Media. I wanted to do all the different projects that maybe I didn't get off the ground at Lampoon. And so I really focused on TV film. I kept going with a magazine, I called it Weekly Humorist. I launched Weekly Humorist. I have a little podcast network and there's live comedy shows I was doing every month previous to COVID in New York City, and that was called Guaranteed Delivery.
I just launched that. in 2017 I started that. That's still going now. it's a weekly magazine. It's Daily Humor. People can subscribe. There's an app. There's a merch store called Humorist Shop where you can buy silly mugs and t shirts. All kinds of stuff that comes from the magazine we, we put on, whatever.
Jag: What's the website and the app? I'll link to both in the show notes.
Marty: Weekly Humorist is the website, so you can get everything at Weekly Humorist. People should just go there. But yeah, it's great. It's a lot of the people from Mad Magazine, it's a lot of people from The New Yorker. so it's a lot of comedy people.
And now what I'm doing, a lot of the people who write for the magazine wanted to write books and they were like, Marty, it's so hard to get published, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I can publish your books. So I started a book imprint called humorous books and I started putting out books. So during COVID, when the live events all stopped, I pivoted and I started doing more publishing. So I have, I put out maybe ten titles a year of, gift books, cartoon collections, humor, novels, I have a couple of history humor books. And it's a lot of fun. So I've been putting out a lot of books and then those books we then can adapt to TV or movie projects. So it's a whole, it's synergy Jag, it's synergy.
So I have a couple of things that we've developed from the magazine and from the books that I just came back from LA and I've been having some meetings for, I have three movie projects and five TV projects that I'm kicking around. so it's exciting and it's fun. And one, honestly, there's a couple of stories from the station that I've written down of things that happened when I was there.
And I would love to do an Animal House in a radio station based on stuff that happened in the eighties, stuff that happened in the nineties and meld it all together into this like real underdog story.
Where, they're gonna get kicked off campus, They don't have any money, The FCC is coming to get them, The rival radio station is trying to kick them off the air, They have to raise all this money by this deadline,
Jag: And then John Oldfield's calling!
Marty: Boom! There's this huge concert, And all these 2000’s type, pop stars come to save the radio station.
Jag: Oh my god, this is like WKRP meets Animal House meets Wayne's World. This is amazing.
Marty: Yes! I'm talking to Chris Godsick and hopefully he'll jump on board, but you heard it here first. It's gonna be amazing, and hopefully, we can have a JAG character.
Jag: No, you don't want that. You really don't want that.
Marty: Yeah, we do!
Jag: You mentioned Chris Godsick. You actually introduced me to Chris Godsick when he was at a podcast convention I was at. Incredible, guy who's so accomplished and so much in his career. Who are some of the names that you've developed relationships with over the years, Marty, from JPZ either that were in school when you were there or not?
Marty: Definitely Chris. Chris is someone that I will just talk on the phone with for an hour Yeah, just like to shoot the breeze like he'll just call me when he's driving. Because he's doing these podcasts now and he's going to get these interviews for people and he always does everything in person or tries to.
So he'll be driving to some random state to have some interview for something and he'll just call and we'll just talk about TV and movies and talk about whatever and he's so funny. And that's the thing about the WJPZ Alumni Association is just like the connections. Mary Mancini, obviously, like, all these people that I'll talk to, Steve Donovan, like, all these people who are not my year, but I talk to them like we're all went to school at the same time, because we Hal Rood, all these people.
We all go to the banquets. We all hang out so much that, it feels like we all went to school together just because of the shared experiences and we all had the same challenges at the radio station and we all saw the value and we all had the same love for putting a wonderful radio product on the air.
And that kind of bonds all of us together. So it's someone can come into town and you're like, Yeah, I'll go meet you. I'll go see you. Yeah. It's fun and it's wonderful and I'm very grateful to be a part of this group.
Jag: People you only see once a year, too. Banquet last year, Thursday night, You and Peterman and Brett and me and my wife Ellen all went to dinner And she was in hysterics the whole time and we just picked right back up where we left off. It's amazing.
Marty: I think it's also I was thinking about this, Like, why are we all Bonded together and I think it's like the people being when you're on the radio together. It's almost like you're doing improv. And when you're doing like live comedy when you're performing together You have to have this kind of like trust because you're trying to all make this thing. You're trying to make this thing on the air that sounds good. You want everyone to sound good You want everyone to look, you want to be funny you want to support each other and I feel like that exercise of that improv, online, on air support, makes you click a lot, the way that maybe comedy teams click, or you get into this groove, so then when you get back together, all this kind of yammering on we would do, on the jokey airwaves, we just fall right back into that.
Like, when I see Peterman, it's like we're just doing a morning show together, and it's just effortless,
Jag: If you've never hung out with Marty and Peterman together, by the way,
You're missing out.
Marty: It's so fun. It's delightful and just all the things like I see Brett Bosse and we joke around but Peterman and I will always be like And we do that and that's because a thing happened 22 years ago that we still remember because Brett Bosse got a nosebleed on the air.
And he was like holding his nose while he was on the air and he was making this funny sound. And it was, it killed us. And to this day, Peterman or I will go, bah bah dah dah and we'll hold our noses over the microphone and we'll just crack up and it's so funny.
Jag: You actually got a, snort out of me on that one, so well done.
And, Peterman told that story on his episode of the podcast, which was... We had to, we did an episode recalling 9/11, and we had to balance the seriousness out with some funny stories at the end.
Marty: Yeah, I would think so, Jag. I would think so, yeah.
Jag: And, Peterman told, told the Brett Bossie bleeding all over the microphone windscreen
Story.
Marty: That's great.
Jag: you're an entrepreneur. You've done all these amazing things since graduation. What lessons do you feel like... JPZ taught you that have served you well in your time since?
Marty: The thing I always remembered, even when I was younger in my career, when I first started working and stuff in New York, is I never looked at a challenge at my job and was like, I need more support, or I need this, I need that, I need this to make a result.
I didn't really need anything. I just needed me and just some ingenuity, and I think when you worked at the radio station, at the time that we were there, we didn't have any funding and we didn't have any new equipment. We just had the ability to broadcast a signal through a microphone. Sometimes we would come into the morning show, Jag, and there wouldn't be a microphone because the sports guys forgot to put it back from their trip.
So it was like, how, how am I going to do this morning show? There's no microphone. You do the morning show through the telephone, and we did the morning show through the telephone pot.
Jag: Oh my gosh.
Marty: And then we got a computer microphone that looked like a Bob Barker long Price is Right microphone, and we plugged the computer microphone into the board.
And we, did the show like that, but we still did a show, you figure it out, what's our minimum that we need to make this work, and I think thinking like that, making yourself a MacGyver in every situation where you're just like, let's not panic, I've dealt with much worse than this, the station prepared me for life in that way, things are not going to go the way you want them to go, and you're not going to always have the resources that you require.
The station taught me that I don't need all the resources to make it work. You can always make it work. You can find a way. And in today's technology world, man, stuff is so much easier. And you can do amazing things with an iPhone. You can do amazing things with just, a little laptop or an iPad.
I think that's what I learned mostly is just, you figure it out, you make the best of what you have, and it's in you, Jag. You have the tools you need to figure it out. And, this station definitely taught me that.
Jag: I want to ask you also about your involvement with the WJPZ Alumni Association. The art major, you are our official illustrator, you do the banquet artwork every year.
If you haven't heard in the credits, Marty also designed the logo for this very podcast. And, oh by the way, was the OG of the WJPZ Alumni Podcast, because you were doing a podcast interviewing alumni. Way before I was, I gotta give you credit
Marty: there. I did, but no one listened to it because you're so much better at running a podcast that people listen to.
Jag: Thank you.
Marty: I'm learning so much from your podcast, in my own podcast stuff, like how to promote things correctly and how to market a podcast. you go to conferences and you teach people how to do this and I, there is so much that I need to learn and I've totally learned. Just little things by copying some of the things that you do, which are so simple and effective and, you're great.
You're great, Jag.
Jag: I'm flattered, I appreciate that. But let me ask you, one of the best ways to promote a podcast is by promoting it on other podcasts. what podcasts do you want to promote while you're here?
Marty: I do one called Talkward. I talk to comedy people and they tell awkward or cringeworthy stories and we talk about whatever projects they have.
Usually they have books, usually they have TV shows, or they're stand up comics and they have, dates they want to promote. And it's just basically me just having an hour long conversation with a funny person, and we just shoot the breeze, and it's always interesting and silly and strange.
so I've been doing that for a little while, and then I do one that I produce that I'm also on, and that one is called The Cartoon Pad, and that focuses on the world of cartooning, so there's a whole world that I publish cartoons that are like the New Yorker cartoons, they're called single panel gag cartoons.
Jag: I've seen them on your Facebook, they're great.
Marty: There's a whole world of these people who, single panel cartoons used to be very popular in magazines and newspapers. They've been pulling back a lot with the publishing world going down. But these guys are still out there doing it, and I have two hosts that are old school New Yorker cartoonists, Bob Eckstein and Michael Shaw.
And they are just like these old curmudgeons. They're like the car talk guys, but it's for cartoons. So they're always just pissed off about something and they're always talking gossip. There's it's a, very gossipy world, the world of cartoons. So we have cartoonists on and they talk and they tell stories and then we talk about their process and stuff and it's a hoot and it's fun.
So people should listen to the cartoon pad. And then I have a couple out that are based on some books that are coming out. There's one called the Official Dream Dinner Party Handbook. That is a book called that, and it's called the Official Dream Dinner Party Podcast. And that is people, these two guys who are history, like PhD guys, and they're talking to comedy people about who their dream dinner party guest would be, and why, and then what would happen, and, how their choices are actually terrible, and how those people would not get along, and there would be a huge war because of it.
Yeah. It's funny.
Jag: Tremendous. look, you have made my job very easy today, Marty, because you've told some great stories and some great content for WJPZ. Anything you want to share that I haven't asked you about before I let you go?
Marty: And all I do is talk. It's like how, Matt would be like, Marty, did you play any music this show?
It's no, I just talked the entire time, Matt. I'm sorry. I love doing the morning show. I love my morning show crew. And we had the best time. I just saw Bernie Kim. I was out in Los Angeles last week, and Bernie Kim is out there working for Fox Sports. Fox Sports. And he is someone, like I reached out to a lot of people when I went to LA to be like, Hey, I'm in town. Bernie Kim wrote back one second later, and he's What are you doing Friday? We're gonna go to my favorite taco truck.
Jag: Nice!
Marty: He picked me up, we went to his taco truck, we sat on these two little stools on the side of the road and we ate our tacos, and he dropped me off and he went back to work.
And it's just I don't know, just like that kind of connection that you get from this radio station, you can just text somebody and they will write you back right away. And they want to support you and they want to help you and... that kind of network, it's not easy to find in this world. And this is a really special place that I think the older I get, the more I realize how special it is.
Like when you're just out of school, you're just like, Hey, it's life. Life is fun. And then you realize that life can be hard and things don't go your way. But this radio station, these people will always be there for you, and that's huge.
Jag: That is the perfect way to leave it. Marty D, Marty Dundics Class of 2001, thank you so much for a really great conversation today. Look forward to seeing you soon.
Marty: Thank you, Jag. Thank you for having me on the podcast. It was fun.