Massillon rocks

It took me three weeks to figure out how to say "Massillon."

I'm not (totally) ashamed of this, because how the hell is a person who grew up in Chicagoland supposed to know something like that?

The constant presence of the internet in our lives has made us feel like all information is available to us at all times, but when you move across the country to a place that you don't know very much about, you learn that there are some things you have to experience personally to figure out.

I've been trying to absorb as much about Akron, Canton, Massillon, Cuyahoga Falls, Cleveland, Barberton, Kent, etc... as I possibly can, but as you might imagine, it takes some time to figure it all out.

A lot of you reading grew up in this area, and there are things you just know. Like what "AK Rowdy" means. That "Rex's Erection" isn't as dirty as it sounds. And of course, how to say "Massillon."

I've learned to take advantage of some very knowledgeable people who work with me at the Summit. Yesterday, our morning host Bill Hall pointed me in the direction of a documentary airing on PBS about the golden age of FM radio in Cleveland ("Radio Daze"). At this point, a lot of the stories in the documentary were familiar to me, but that wasn't the case a few months ago.

The first week I started working at the Summit, Bill invited me to an event he was involved in at Borders, where radio people past and present were getting together. When he handed me the flier for the event, I asked, "what's that bird with the mullet?"

The mullet bird, as it turns out, was the old logo for the Buzzard in Cleveland, and I quickly learned that I should keep my opinions about its hairstyle to myself. It probably sounds bizarre to anyone that grew up in this area that I had never heard of the Buzzard, a radio station that made a huge impact here.

I decided to read up, not just on the Buzzard and Cleveland's radio history, but on Akron's musical past, and luckily, there are people here who took enough pride in their hometown that they've written books or made documentaries on the subject.

There's still a lot to learn, but so far I've been impressed with the vibrant musical history of this new place I'm in, and it's exciting to be a part of a radio station that is invested in its future.

So hopefully you'll go easy on me the next time I screw up the name of your favorite local town/musician/street name. I'm trying. And the internet can't tell you everything.