My old friend Jon Kincaid passed away last week. Jon was known to everyone in town as the host of the WREK radio show Personality Crisis, a fantastic and wide-ranging weekly show that ranged all over rock music, from LA’s Paisley Underground to early Athens to British Invasion, from Cool For Cats to Squeezing Out Sparks. Blank Generation XTC-Ray Specials. I have been a diligent listener to it for literally 30 years.
I first met Jon as a WREK DJ, of course, where I typically worked a regular afternoon RRR shift (“rock rhythm and roll”) when Jon would be hanging out at the station. My earliest memory of Jon was the day I came in with one of my favorite LP’s, Ace Frehley’s solo album, and played “2000 Man” off it. Jon immediately came into the studio to check it out, and that is when I learned that, duh, that was a Rolling Stones cover. That is how much of an idiot I was, not noticing the “Jagger/Richards” credit on the label, or knowing a damn thing about rock history in general. Like many truly smart people, Jon was super low key about this information, but you quickly learned that he was at a whole ‘nother level.
In those early days I would also bring in a music zine from New Jersey, where I’d grown up and would go back to on school breaks. This monthly newsprint thing happened to have a really comprehensive roundup of band developments, sort of like the “support your troops” column in Atlanta’s Stomp and Stammer. Jon would come in and devour that information, seeking out tidbits that he didn’t already know about.
Behind the scenes, Jon really was an incredible force for productivity and correctness in WREK’s daily operations. For many years it was Jon literally opening the mail and being the first to encounter the new recordings that bands and labels were sending us, processing them over to the music directors who would review and decide. It was Jon doing the drudgery of “voicing automation”, recording the 5-10 second audio bits that you hear from WREK’s automated playout system that runs when there’s no live DJ. When we built the new digital system and opened up voicing to everyone (instead of limiting to four designated “voices”), Jon stepped up and cleared the backlog. I am sure that his must be the #1 voice in that system, and you know that all of those voice recordings are probably done perfectly, certainly without any of the cringey “eeyow” stuff you get from new kids on staff who have never sat in front of a mic before. His show promos were the best, and he even made a hilarious “How Not To Make A Promo” instruction sheet for our production studio that itemized all the stupid mistakes that newbies would make. (Remember dbx?) His neat handwriting was all over the places, and many staff experienced his gentle, low key guidance.
I had a few silly inside jokes that I would reference with Jon, and all of them involved imitating memorable people we knew. Every time I saw him (in person) I’d say “Dayyyyyyy Jon” in a really meathead voice just like Jack Rabid used to do in the syndicated Music View segments that followed PCrisis every week. Or I’d yell “hey hey!” with a really bright face and hopping up and down, mimicking fellow WREK staffer Derek Riley who was very high energy (also this was invoked anytime the Cramps came up in conversation). Or I’d try to get him to imitate one of his friends, or countless figures in rock and roll. Jon had a perfect little snippet for them all. I’m sure everyone had these little touchstones with Jon.
Jon’s knowledge of music was truly encyclopedic — he was literally on another level, going into the truly trivial. He would remember the day of the week of shows he’d been to 30 years ago, and the weather that day. For that reason I’ve always assumed that he was actually had savant memory, which seems like a cool skill but if you look into it can actually be a burden. I never asked him specifically about this (or if I did he just brushed it off) and now I never will. But his memory was truly astonishing, and back in the day I recall that he easily won some national trivia contest held by Tower Records.
Last week, his sister Tammy recounted how incredibly smart he was on an objective basis, having scored so highly on the SAT that he got admitted into truly elite universities (you name it). But he elected to stay close to home and attend Georgia Tech, and I’ve often heard him say that wanting to work at WREK was part of that. He’d been listening since high school (or maybe since junior high?) and I’m sure walked into the studio to join up as soon as he could. I eventually learned that he and I both shared the dubious achievement of those really freaking high SAT scores. And here we were farting around in a college radio station, slouching through engineering school. He and I (and Dave Slusher) actually graduated from Georgia Tech on the same day, having both taken a little too long to get it done.
Much of my memories of Jon are bound up with shows that we went to. I was standing next to Jon at so many shows, usually to one side of the stage or the other, a bit back, away from the densest crowd but still with good sightlines to the stage — and certainly a safe distance from any knuckleheads in the mosh pit, especially if the frat boys had shown up. Venues like the White Dot, the old Masquerade (all three venues), the original Cotton Club in midtown, The Point, the Roxy, the EARL, Echo Lounge. Bands like Joe Strummer’s Havana 3am, Mudhoney, Alex Chilton, Dick Manitoba, NRBQ, Die Kreuzen. It was from Jon that I learned to go get the week’s new Creative Loafing as soon as it came off the presses, Tuesday nights at their Willoughby Way offices, to read the club ads and be among the first to know of some band coming to town.
Jon had a bad health spell in early 2004, a no-kidding brush with death. The music community rallied and even put on a benefit show for him at the Variety Playhouse featuring Drivin’ N Cryin (of course) and a reformed Nightporters. Thank to modern medicine, Jon recovered, and got nearly another 20 years.
Not long thereafter, Dave and I set up the www.PersonalityCrisis.org website for Jon as an outlet through which he could publish. From Sept 2006 to Feb 2008, Jon posted a longer-form piece there every couple weeks. I guess once he joined Facebook (in 2008-2009) he stopped posting on the blog, and at some point the website itself went completely defunct. But we still had the domain registration and the site files, and upon the news of Jon’s passing last week, Dave and I quick restored the site. It’s a great snapshot of his writing — scroll down the posts on the right side and just click around!
For years I had wished the Jon would post his radio show playlists online somehow, but it was too tedious of an ask. But in early 2014 he mentioned getting a new smartphone, and I immediately asked / begged / cajoled him into simply taking a picture of the playlist at the end of the show and posting it to Facebook. He then continued to do that for nine years — that photo album is public and available here, and is a fantastic resource for the best of rock and roll.
In recent years, notwithstanding the occasional encounter at the EARL or wherever, most of my interaction with him, if you’d call it that, was diligently listening to his radio show every Sunday night. Well not actually on Sunday night, as I don’t listen to any WREK shows live — I use their mp3 archive to timeshift to when I have time to listen, and refer to the playlists mentioned above to know what I was hearing. During voice breaks, Jon would go on at length about the material he was playing, or maybe the recently departed artist it was in tribute to, but he’d also talk about what was happening in his own life. Sometimes it would be as personal as health problems, or maybe a short rant about an Atlanta sports team (I have said for years that Jon always seemed happiest when they were losing.) I mean, his voice breaks could go on for 10 minutes while he talked about whatever, and it was like he knew all his friends were listening (and I guess some of us were probably even calling in).
Besides the PC website and the playlists, I’m trying to do one more thing. We have a number of Jon’s radio shows recorded, and I’m trying to get with current WREK staff to re-air them in his old Sunday night timeslot, which is still open on WREK’s schedule. Just to hear Jon on the air in his usual Sunday night slot, one more time. If and when they do air, I will post them to the PC website so that we have at least a few of his shows for posterity.
No matter what though, thanks to WREK’s mighty automation system and the incredible music library that Jon helped build, you’ll still be able to hear Jon’s voice pretty much every day at 91.1 FM or at www.WREK.org .
Bye, Jon.