One positive thing this imposed quarantine brought back is listening to the spoken word via ‘airwaves’… well kind of. I have always been a big fan of radio. Actually, it was where I gave my first baby steps in broadcasting. To date, whenever I step into a broadcasting cabin I get goosebumps and am transported into the past. The blinking lights, knobs and levers triggers something primordial in my cranium and I slip into the past.
I am transported to sunday nights, sitting on the edge of my bed, fiddling with a transistor radio my mom had given me. If I was lucky I could pick up the Doctor Demento show transmitting from New York. The good Doctor would play a medley of punk rock and comedy, spattered with twisted comments on life in the upbeat post sixties world of the USA. Slowly, Morpheus would wrap me in his arms and I would drift off to happy dreams.
At some point in the 80’s videos took over. Streaming world wide, our imaginations started to shrivel up. There was no longer cause to imagine what the person streaming over the airwaves looked like. You could see them on the boobtube!!! Sometimes to my disappointment.
Listening to the PodCasts that ChivasTV has been uploading recently has brought back tons of childhood memories. As I mentioned before, I have always been a fan of radio, especially talk radio, and the interviews Fernando Giaccardi has been conducting are solid.
Something about talk radio, we can call them podcasts now, have a certain attraction. If they are well made they create an atmosphere of intimacy. Giaccardi and Enrique Noriega have that talent. They put the interviewee at ease and slowly pull the listener in. It’s almost like you are having a ‘sobre mesa’, when the conversation becomes quiet and you have to pull your chair up closer to the table so you don’t miss a word.
In Olympic Gold, ‘profe’ Tena and Oribe Peralta describe the experience of Mexico’s Olympic Championship back in 2012. I could almost feel the excitement they felt. One of the things I most enjoyed was that we could see another facet to Luis Fernando Tena, a warm more human side, joking and playful, his description of the process the team went through on the path to Olympic Gold was magnificent. Also we get glimpse into how a head coach chooses which players to take to the tournament without hurting any of their feelings.
Another eye opener was Oribe’s narrative of the responsibility that he and the other older players had as role models for the younger players. He mentioned that they needed to teach through example. A shared anecdote was life in the Olympic Villa. The familiarity and the camaraderie they experienced was brought to life in their descriptions of the food, the interaction with people from all over the world. And the temptation of fiesta!!!
Both Tena and Oribe explained that that the mentality of the team was drove them towards the championship. Teamwork, preparation and mentality. Behind them were the times of being the ‘ratones verdes’. They wanted to let the world know they had transformed into the ‘green giants’.
Oribe and ‘El Flaco’ closed the podcast by saying that the real artifice for their triumph was that the team played for each other. They died on the field by playing as a team and making each other shine and that this was the one thing they hoped could be reflected in Mexican society, an example for old and young. If you have a chance check out the podcasts. This time radio killed the video star.
