By John Hoctor

December 9, 2008

No it’s not the name of an indie rock ‘n’ roll band but the Mike Malloy Show interacting with his faithful fans at Broadway Studios in North Beach made for edgy entertainment together last Friday in North Beach. Local Green 960 AM and Broadway Studios paired to bring the 20-year on-air radio talk veteran and “night screamer” Malloy to a standing room only crowd in the Bay Area studio.

The former popular Air America talk host, who was fired in 2006 from that progressive network for his polemics including being anti-Israel, looked like a demure, graying, wiry, Lenny Bruce or George Carlin morphed with ’60s standup comedian Professor Erwin Corey—or a revivalist eager to deliver to his choir two hours of unrepentant, uninterrupted irreverence.

When Malloy hit the stage, he immediately told his so-called “Truthseekers” in trademark fashion about the most important event in the news: “The 25,000-year-old reefer stash found in China last week!”

Then he thanked the venue owner “Francesca” for the well-produced event and with the timing of jazz musician, quipped, “I remember her well from the Bridges of Madison County.”

For the next two hours, Malloy, now with the Nova M Network, fired back answers to his audience in a staccato question-and-answer shock-jock format:

· He has respect for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich but “have I mentioned yet how my favorite words for the torturers of the Republican Party are ultimately ‘F— YOU?’”

· Reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine for radio and TV would be a first step to undo years of disaster brought on by President Bush, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the “right-wing Rat Bastards” and “Pigs.”

· O.J. Simpson’s sentencing was “about time.”

· He became sympathetic to the Palestinian cause after working with Jews at Air America Radio.

· In his “professional opinion,” Air America former coworker Al Franken, who is still vying for the undecided Senate seat in Minnesota, has “got a lot of guts, but he’s a real prick to work with – we just didn’t gel.”

· Ribbed about now living in the rural North Georgia mountains, he shot back that his wife is from there and he and his family have “settled in quite nicely.”

Ironically, fellow progressive talk show host Randi Rhodes was fired from Air America the very night she presented her show at Broadway Studios in April. Malloy said Rhodes warned him that there is something “really insane about San Francisco.”

“Randi said ‘don’t go there,’” he added jokingly. “Randi thought there was something strange going on for her in San Francisco that night,” he confided. “She was fired right after her explosive performance here. The people who run Air America are now punk-ass Democrats. You just want to tell them to ‘F’ themselves.” Still coworkers, Rhodes also hosts her show on Nova M Network.

Toledo native Malloy waxed nostalgic about his love for the Bay Area going back years. He said his favorite writers are the Beats. In his youth he used to “disappear behind the stacks and stacks” of original Beat literature in City Lights Books ‘till the wee hours, he said. The 64-year-old Beat devotee was “overjoyed” to be hosting his show within just a few blocks from the bookstore.

He recounted how he met several Beat writers at the 25th-anniversary conference of the publishing of On the Road at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “I went to Naropa Institute in 1982 and hung out with Ginsberg, [Gregory] Corso, and others,” he recalled.

“I’ve spent hours in the book stacks at City Lights poring over Beat literature decades ago. But to actually meet them was a whole different trip. They were wonderful people working at City Lights. They just called Ferlinghetti, ‘Larry.’ I loved that irreverence of the North Beach community. It’s like no where else in the country.”

Mallow lamented that so many of the Beats and icons of his generation are gone. “How cool it would have been to have seen a 70-something John Lennon, Abbie Hoffman, or Tim Leary. But they have all died and there’s no one to grow old with.”

While in the Bay Area for his show, Malloy was escorted around town by program director and radio impresario 960 AM’s program manager John Scott. They managed to attend the 75th anniversary parade recognizing the official end of Prohibition and finishing the day toasting a few at North Beach bars.

Malloy closed his show by saying that “community” has been lost to generations of Americans these days. And in quintessential Malloy fashion, he connected that change to the loss of the “reefer” culture. “People don’t join up anymore like they did in the good old days of sitting around smoking ‘reefer’ to solve the world’s problems. I don’t know why it takes reefer to open up those doors. To keep seeking the idea of truth and seeking something and pass it around, you know, keep it lit!” For a video clip of Malloy’s show, go to YouTube.

Malloy was one of the original on-air personalities on Air America when it launched in 2004, along with the Bay Area’s Rachel Maddow. Malloy worked for Air America Radio from 2004 to 2006. He previously hosted radio talk shows on I.E. American Radio, WLS in Chicago, and WSB in Atlanta. While at WSB in Atlanta, Malloy’s show competed at the same time—unsuccessfully—with Rush Limbaugh’s talk show. Malloy also edited the Atlanta weekly Creative Loafing and is a former CNN news writer.