VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[Ken Jackson]

How exactly does one make an observation about a whirlwind when he’s in the middle of it? Who’ll listen anyway when it's the whirlwind itself he really wants to talk with in the first place?

On being a 43 year veteran of commercial broadcasting and at once finding myself in the maelstrom that seemingly everyone has come to refer to as the “Voice Talent Business”, I cannot help but look long upon the years gone by, the travails and the triumphs, the travesties and the tragedies, as well as the full valued fact that from that long and after all fruitful career I am now 100% retired and nestled in a very comfortable home way up in the Rocky Mountains. At nearly 8,000 feet ASL I have labored and lovingly so built a sound studio that some of the radio stations I’ve worked for over the years would die for… hopefully.

From here, at my leisure, I answer any number of “listings” for jobs from a dozen or so internet sites and pick and choose what I want to be – ignored for… THUS to my point, what exactly has happened to a once prestigious profession where persons occupying seats behind microphones got there because they had paid some serious dues along the way and by “industry standards” had proven themselves worthy to sit in that chair. Then, as the “suits” decide and contracts come up for renewal, changes are made to reflect the needs of the station if not the whims of the owners.

Songs have been written, poems have been penned, and many are the gray-haired old ones who know it to be true, that in just on short day, you wake up and the world has passed you by.

After getting comfortably nestled in my mountain retreat and spending a lot of time and a ton of money making sure that from all the years experience I had enjoyed would come forth an audio studio worthy of my dreams, I finally arrived at a point where I actually began to sign up with some sites that I had heard mentioned over the past couple of years as being worth remembering. These sites would be the answer to the coming age of modern voice commercial communications and likely leave the radio stations I grew up with in the dust. In a world,,, wait, I’ve recorded that before,,, In a day and age when instant communication to the uttermost reaches of the earth is but a mouse click away, someone, somehow, actually figured out that with a 150.00 PC or MAC and the chat mic that came with it they could all of a sudden be a PROFESSIONAL VOICE TALENT. At about that that exact moment still others realized that, “Hey, we no longer have to go to radio stations to have commercials recorded, we can just post a notice on the net, and the whole world can come to the casting call”

Well, as the winds whirl and the internet buzzes, something wicked this way comes…

You should probably brace yourselves because I’m about to go Aesop on you…

The Buffoon and the Countryman

A RICH NOBLEMAN once opened the theaters without charge to the people, and gave a public notice that he would handsomely reward any person who invented a new amusement for the occasion. Various public performers contended for the prize. Among them came a Buffoon well known among the populace for his jokes, and said that he had a kind of entertainment which had never been brought out on any stage before. This report being spread about made a great stir, and the theater was crowded in every part. The Buffoon appeared alone upon the platform, without any apparatus or confederates, and the very sense of expectation caused an intense silence. He suddenly bent his head towards his bosom and imitated the squeaking of a little pig so admirably with his voice that the audience declared he had a porker under his cloak, and demanded that it should be shaken out. When that was done and nothing was found, they cheered the actor, and loaded him with the loudest applause. A Countryman in the crowd, observing all that has passed, said, "So help me, Hercules, he shall not beat me at that trick!" and at once proclaimed that he would do the same thing on the next day, though in a much more natural way. On the morrow a still larger crowd assembled in the theater, but now partiality for their favorite actor very generally prevailed, and the audience came rather to ridicule the Countryman than to see the spectacle. Both of the performers appeared on the stage. The Buffoon grunted and squeaked away first, and obtained, as on the preceding day, the applause, and cheers of the spectators. Next the Countryman commenced, and pretending that he concealed a little pig beneath his clothes (which in truth he did, but not suspected by the audience) contrived to take hold of and to pull his ear causing the pig to squeak. The Crowd, however, cried out with one consent that the Buffoon had given a far more exact imitation, and clamored for the Countryman to be kicked out of the theater. On this the rustic produced the little pig from his cloak and showed by the most positive proof the greatness of their mistake. "Look here," he said, "this shows what sort of judges you are."

(Aesop, Aesop's Fables)

Those who do not study history are destined to "be victims" of it.

The pendulum will swing and the dust will settle and when it does, there will be many much wiser and some much poorer for it. Regardless of what technological wonders are to be unveiled that can indeed take the guy with the 150.00 PC or MAC and his 39.95 software program and make him, or her, sound like anything they want to sound like, there will always be a need for true PROFESSIONALS who can actually pronounce nuclear and have more than a passing understanding of enunciation, diction, intonation and an excellent command of the English language. All the FADS ever concocted rolled into one does not a dynasty make.

So, I’ll sit here, more comfortably retired than I realized, and continue to mix and match sounds with gizmos that “in my day” were Dick Tracey stuff, and corporate America will eventually come to my doorstep because when all else fails, they will follow the instructions they had all along.

Ken Jackson Voice Productions
Evergreen, Colorado

[SoundsGreat-Elaine Singer]

Bravo! And a great story teller to boot.
_________________
Elaine
The Youthful Mature Voice (Emeritus)
Senectitude is not for the faint of heart.