![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm late with this
Jun. 21st, 2014 10:19 pmI'm also feeling crappy for reasons not related to what I'm about to write, I've had another one of those 'lost weekend' days due to stupid sleep disorder issues, and for crying out loud (not quite yet, but I wouldn't rule it out) I need to out with this.
I still can't believe that Casey died. I never thought of him as old enough to die, or getting that way. The part of me who'll be an obsessive ten-year-old forever is in floods. This is all about radio and not at all about cartoons, and good gosh, speaking of, didn't that Shaggy voice hurt his own? Ow!
This next comes mostly as a copy/paste of a comment I wrote elsewhere. I can't say it any better now, just elaborate on it.
I knew him first and foremost as the voice of kindly musical authority on many, many a Sunday night, and quite a few Saturdays as well - there were three or four countdowns on the air at different times, and in my part of the Midwest, we got them all. I was absolutely addicted to the top 40 charts from ten years of age to twelve or so. I can't even begin to count how many hours I spent on the swings in the backyard, Walkman on my head and countdown in my ears, or in the blue recliner in the living room with the stereo tuned to a signal that slooooowly faded in to perfect (WIXX from Green Bay), or upstairs, sitting bolt upright on my bed in the dark, absorbed in the show. Leeza Gibbons was nice, Rick Dees was fun if a little raunchy, but Casey was something else again. I have bits of musical trivia forever in my brain thanks to him, several hundred mid '90's songs, including artist details and chart positions, not to mention the details of the sort of fantasy world only a ten-year-old could dream up, populated by musical artists and fairy folk, full of ridiculous buildings and vehicles and of course, a dozen shameless self-inserts. Casey was always the good witch figure in that world, including stylized mental image (blue eyes, pale skin, dark hair, ridiculous red wool coat) that I only found out years later was waaaaay off, to David Perry's (occasional countdown stand-in, to less than stellar effect) evil usurper who must be vanquished so the rightful ruler could reclaim his seat. ... I was a strange little kid. :) To be honest, I was an obsessive, still am, with a gigantic imagination. Again, still am. I won't go into the details of the world I mentally created, because some of them are very much cringe-worthy now. But it was the world I lived in, sometimes to the exclusion of the outside, at that age. It wasn't necessarily healthy for me to be doing, and my parents called me on it at least once, but it happened anyway.
Later on, call it fifteen or so, I jumped the other way; I recognized just how obsessed I'd been and mentally blacklisted much of what I'd been so wild about. I never said I wasn't a creature of extremes. He scared me for a while, unnerved me. That was all on me, not on him. Sometimes I still have a knee-jerk 'ack! no!' reaction to the music and the stories I experienced at eleven, but at least now I can recognize and squash it.
I owe him a thank you. The ten-year-old who's still part of me and probably still plenty visible in me owes him a thank you. For being the benevolently knowledgeable voice on the air whose worst turns of phrase might have included gasp! God, eew! sex or whoa! hell (the behind-the-mic tirades that have since gone viral squick me out, because I still can't comfortably imagine him swearing), for being someone who came across as being as invested in music and radio as I was, for being a far away friend to a weird little girl in Wisconsin whose actual friends were few and far between.
I can't thank him, now. That's going to take a while to process.
I've never been great at keeping my feet on the ground. Sorry, Casey. But I've been reaching for the stars, the actual ones, since I can remember. I can do that much.
I think I might cry now.
I still can't believe that Casey died. I never thought of him as old enough to die, or getting that way. The part of me who'll be an obsessive ten-year-old forever is in floods. This is all about radio and not at all about cartoons, and good gosh, speaking of, didn't that Shaggy voice hurt his own? Ow!
This next comes mostly as a copy/paste of a comment I wrote elsewhere. I can't say it any better now, just elaborate on it.
I knew him first and foremost as the voice of kindly musical authority on many, many a Sunday night, and quite a few Saturdays as well - there were three or four countdowns on the air at different times, and in my part of the Midwest, we got them all. I was absolutely addicted to the top 40 charts from ten years of age to twelve or so. I can't even begin to count how many hours I spent on the swings in the backyard, Walkman on my head and countdown in my ears, or in the blue recliner in the living room with the stereo tuned to a signal that slooooowly faded in to perfect (WIXX from Green Bay), or upstairs, sitting bolt upright on my bed in the dark, absorbed in the show. Leeza Gibbons was nice, Rick Dees was fun if a little raunchy, but Casey was something else again. I have bits of musical trivia forever in my brain thanks to him, several hundred mid '90's songs, including artist details and chart positions, not to mention the details of the sort of fantasy world only a ten-year-old could dream up, populated by musical artists and fairy folk, full of ridiculous buildings and vehicles and of course, a dozen shameless self-inserts. Casey was always the good witch figure in that world, including stylized mental image (blue eyes, pale skin, dark hair, ridiculous red wool coat) that I only found out years later was waaaaay off, to David Perry's (occasional countdown stand-in, to less than stellar effect) evil usurper who must be vanquished so the rightful ruler could reclaim his seat. ... I was a strange little kid. :) To be honest, I was an obsessive, still am, with a gigantic imagination. Again, still am. I won't go into the details of the world I mentally created, because some of them are very much cringe-worthy now. But it was the world I lived in, sometimes to the exclusion of the outside, at that age. It wasn't necessarily healthy for me to be doing, and my parents called me on it at least once, but it happened anyway.
Later on, call it fifteen or so, I jumped the other way; I recognized just how obsessed I'd been and mentally blacklisted much of what I'd been so wild about. I never said I wasn't a creature of extremes. He scared me for a while, unnerved me. That was all on me, not on him. Sometimes I still have a knee-jerk 'ack! no!' reaction to the music and the stories I experienced at eleven, but at least now I can recognize and squash it.
I owe him a thank you. The ten-year-old who's still part of me and probably still plenty visible in me owes him a thank you. For being the benevolently knowledgeable voice on the air whose worst turns of phrase might have included gasp! God, eew! sex or whoa! hell (the behind-the-mic tirades that have since gone viral squick me out, because I still can't comfortably imagine him swearing), for being someone who came across as being as invested in music and radio as I was, for being a far away friend to a weird little girl in Wisconsin whose actual friends were few and far between.
I can't thank him, now. That's going to take a while to process.
I've never been great at keeping my feet on the ground. Sorry, Casey. But I've been reaching for the stars, the actual ones, since I can remember. I can do that much.
I think I might cry now.
