About Slick
Like many others in broadcasting, Slick’s love for radio comes from nights as a young listening to far away radio stations for different stations and different sounds. Growing up in Washington D.C. as a child Slick spent much of that youth in his great-grandfathers workshop in the basement of thier home. While Slick spent that valuable time with his great-grandfather he also found another hobby, listening to radio stations, a whole bunch of radio stations.
Taking Slick from the strong signals of the DC Radio Market and to the terrain of New Mexico, specifically Albuquerque, was a move that not only left Slick looking for more stations to listen to but also gave him little to do at his age. In fact, Slick lived so far out of town all he had to look forward to was the bookmobile…With his reading of anything he could get his hands onto, he gained valuable skills in research and now wanting to figure out how things worked.
Another move came during high school where for three years he lived in (West) Germany as an Air Force dependent. With the relocation he was exposed to high fidelity audio electronics, participated in the bands and choruses, performed in talent shows and competitions, and was allowed to use a photo lab. After experiencing being on-air as a “correspondent” for AFN (American Forces Network)/Bremerhaven, and graduating in 1979, Slick decided to try radio as his stage (because he will RARELY wear a tie).
Like the books he absorbed off that rural bookmobile, Slick tried to know as much as possible about the production rooms, equipment, and transmitters that he was using at the stations he worked at. It wasn’t long before Slick was showing production directors, and chief engineers that they had found their “dream gopher” in him. One of the task most of the personel always seem to ask Slick about was a Computer in a common area where all staff members had access to. Slick picked up quickly that VERY few people attempted to use it. Slick hit the books and purchased a “DOS For Dummies” book (MS-DOS 5) book, and fired it up…
And purchased many more books…he hasn’t stopped since.
When America Online hired him for training in their support department, Slick thought it was by luck; when told he had passed the pre-interview test for Microsoft’s support department with “one of the highest scores”, Slick began to wonder why and how. We know the answer to that and it’s also the reason we asked Slick to be part of the TechtalkRadio team.