So this is the challenge that is before me. . . . Monday for the morning show, I’ll be talking with the choir man at UW-Parkside, James Kinchen, and the director of Racine’s Choral Arts Society, Jim Schatzman- about a good friend of theirs who recently died, composer Glenn Burleigh. (A special memorial concert is scheduled for the last weekend in April, and this interview is partly to promote the concert.) Jim Schatzman had just one request- that I please track down a tape of one of the four or five interviews which I did over the years with Glenn Burleigh himself, in order to replay at least a portion of it as part of Monday’s show. “Sure,” I said as though fully confident that laying my hands on one of those earlier interviews will not be a problem at all.
But there is a problem . . . and you can see it for yourself in the above photo. Welcome to Greg Berg’s cassette tape archive – and this isn’t even all of them. There are nearly a thousand Morning Shows and a couple hundred Metropolitan Opera broadcasts that I’ve been intermittently taping over the past 22 years, plus tapes of two past shows of mine on WGTD, “Music-A Closer Look” and “The Ring of Words.” You add all of that up and then add miscellaneous Fresh Air programs, some Holy Communion services, various concerts and recitals, and a smattering of things from earlier in my life, and the result is the mountain of tapes that threatens to swallow up the whole house. Most of the tapes have actually been squared away down in the basement, but I hauled all of them upstairs for the aforementioned search. . . and now I’m just trying to screw up the courage to plunge in and get started.
It won’t come as much of a shock to tell you that these tapes are in basically no order whatsoever – and perhaps a fourth of them are either unlabeled or have labels that have faded over time and are all but illegible. (Sort of like Memorex does the Dead Sea Scrolls.) But I”m hoping that at least one of them will say “Burleigh’ – and it sure would be nice if that tape wasn’t in the last box I search through. But either way, it will be fun to go on this little excursion because I feel like so much of my life is captured in these tapes- either interviews I’ve done or programs I heard and had to have – or opera broadcasts featuring favorite singers who perhaps are now retired – and in some cases important moments in my life like my mom’s funeral. . . or the funeral of Mitch Spencer, which is where Kathy and I first met. There is at least one tape of His Gang, the singing group comprised of the Berg and Martinson families – and listening to that is such a blast from the distant past. And someplace in this mountain, I hope I still have what would be the oldest tape of all – which I made back in the early 70s when we lived in Decorah. From time to time I would make audio tapes of Star Trek (this was years before the invention of the VCR) down in the basement with our junky old black and white TV which you would have to bang on repeatedly when the sound would start to fade. I still smile when I remember the one tape from that era which I held on to. . . because at one point in the middle of the episode, you hear my mom yelling GREG! !! from upstairs. I run to the bottom of the stairs to quietly ask her what she needs, and you can hear her ask almost as loudly “WHY ARE YOU WHISPERING?!” She then proceeds to tell me where she’s going and gives me a list of instructions on what I should do to get ready – ending with the firm admonition “AND YOU PUT UNDERWEAR ON !” Ah, pleasant memories. I haven’t seen that tape in many years but I would like to think that it’s someplace in this mountain. . . and if I find it, I’m just nutty enough to post it on my Listen page.
So anyway, the search is about to begin – wish me luck that I find one of my Glenn Burleigh interviews. . . and some other treasures along the way.