Summer 2008 is beginning to acquire a bit of a time warp quality for me. There’s a Gustafsson back in the Capitals’ organization, for instance. Then this morning I was riding up to a neighborhood gas station for my weekly wallet-letting there, and accidentally tuned to DC-101, I was startled to hear the dulcet tones of a seemingly ageless Doug Tracht, aka Nino “the Greaseman” Mannelli.
You really do have to be north of 35 and a D.C. native to appreciate what “Grease” did to and for Washington radio nearly a generation ago (mostly to). I was uniquely vulnerable to his schtict in the early ’80s: adoloscent, thoroughly puzzled (as now) by the mystery of the female, and matriculating through a single-sex high school in suburban Maryland. It was, for four years, a morning ritual among my mates to gaggle over reprisals of Greaseman bits from that morning. His on-air joie de vie can best be summarized, I think, as prurient juvenility. And at 15 and in the ’80s, it sure worked for me and thousands of mostly male Washington radio listeners.
I made my way home from my gas run this Saturday a.m. and back on line at home I wasn’t surprised to discover that there’s a web site chock full of MP3 “Grease” bits from ’80s radio in D.C. For you who grew up here as I did it could be a pleasant stroll down Memory Lane; for newcomers, it’s an effective introduction to a broadcast talent whose likes we hadn’t seen prior to nor after Tracht’s first run at 101. The station now has a Grease page at its site, so this Saturday stint is very much a weekly welcome home party.
Turns out, Grease returned to 101 this April, and he’s on every Saturday from 8:00 - noon. But I discovered his return just this morning. It’s welcome a blast from the past, particularly in our so thoroughly depressed commercial radio times.
The Greaseman arrived on 101 as Howard Stern’s replacement in 1982, Stern by then having obliterated his welcome here with his infamous on-air inanity in response to the Air Florida crash into the Potomac River. Eighties FM radio was very vibrant as media — these were the glory album rock days of the best of Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Rush, an ascendant Springsteen, the not-yet-geriatric Stones, among many others — and big-market stations sought big personalities for morning drive. When Stern left, as much of a relief as that was for most parents in the region, there was a chasm created for DC-101 in a rugged radio marketplace for its most lucrative time slot.
DC-101 recruited Grease from his highly successful radio program in Florida in 1982, and he not only replaced Stern but bettered Stern’s no. 1 numbers, and for some years ranked as the far-and-away no.1 in Washington morning radio. His run at 101 lasted from 1982-1993.
It’d be impossible for me, then or now, to identify a single favorite Grease gag. His “Habledogaga Handbook” he delivered to his listeners to help them “recognize the cheap and tawdry [amorous] moves being made by or upon them,” to acquire “methods with which to cut a quick slice.” In the Handbooks he’d relate his successes donning a priest’s collar and betraying a maiden’s trust at dinner; engage in license-revoking behavior as a medical professional; and author similarly unprofessional behavior while wearing law enforcement uniforms. This latter latitude was ironic in that Tracht had and has a deep and abiding respect and affinity for the men and women in law enforcement — he’s served as a volunteer sheriff in our region in recent years.
His “Holy Roman Empire” foray, showcasing his characteristic creativity, was decidedly unholy.
Nothing was sacred on his show, and ultimately, as with Stern, that was Grease’s undoing. In 1985 he outraged listeners of all backgrounds with an unrepeatable insult about Martin Luther King. He cracked up again in 1999, while broadcasting in small market exile. By 2002, he was relegated to broadcasting from his home in Frederick, Md.
He’s understandably misunderstood and misrepresented as boorish and even racist, but in the totality of his schticts and career he’s seemed, to me, ever to be attempting to defuse society’s prejudices, languishing — most laughably — in the bawdy and lurid all along the way. I know this, my ’80s Washington mornings were made most memorable by him.
For as long as I’ve known his program Grease has signed off his show with “AMF” — Adios . . . fill in the blank. This morning it was nice to say hello to him again.
