A texter identifying themselves as veteran radio personality Bob Rivers‘s longtime agent sent that link – a new video featuring one of his popular holiday spoof songs, taking on Christmas lights and starring West Seattle’s best-known well-lit house. So if you’ve wearied of singing along with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and/or “Joy to the World” after the 20th time, check this out. (And explore Rivers’s “Twisted Christmas” discography.)
As a kid, my dad (also a radio broadcaster named Bob) had a cassette tape labeled “Bob’s Crazy Christmas Carols,” a recording my mom had made of my dad’s yuletide radio broadcast the first year they were together. It had a number of Christmas novelty songs, including “Christmas at Ground Zero” by Weird Al, and a rendition of Jingle Bells by barking dogs, and every year we’d listen to it on car rides as kids and learned the words to sing along. I went home for Thanksgiving this year, found the old cassette and digitized it. Come to find out, one whole side of the tape was Bob Rivers’ Twisted Christmas album. We lived in Texas, so I never heard of Bob Rivers, but I looked him up and realized I’d moved into his old radio market! I’ve yet to meet a native in Seattle who’s heard of him when I ask, but this post in West Seattle Blog showing he’s still alive and kicking out the jams made me very happy. My own dad, God rest his soul, would have turned 70 this week, and also loved the Beach Boys, so he would have loved this parody too.
Seattle 80s radio was the best KISW, KZOK, KYYX, KXRX. Bob Rivers Leave it To Beaver show was awesome! Look it up. Absolutely hilarious! Anyone remember Roy Otis?
As a native Seattlite, when the rest of the world hears Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, I hear chipmunks roasting on an open fire, hot sauce dripping for their toes…
“I’ve yet to meet a native in Seattle who’s heard of him when I ask” the people you asked are probably under 40 years of age. They likely never attended a Sonics game either. Bob River’s is an icon here, but the listeners are a generation of people who are now the old people. I knew Captain Puget, but knew him personally and not as the Seattle icon people who were kids in the late 50s-60s knew. It’s all relative to the age of people from here.
Don’t forget Harbor Islands own-KOL. Anyone else remember listening to them?
Lucky 13 hundred KOL am and fm..still have a old Roy Ottis, Roy Knows T shirt somewhere.
How about the Robin and Maynard show on KZOK? Went to one of their Seafair parties at Salty’s, still have the autographed T-Shirt from “Russel the wonder muscle” Maynard.
My gosh this made my day! Seattle radio back in the 80’s and 90’s had some great talent, and Bob Rivers was one of them. There are things they could say and do that you could never do now in this oh so politically correct, I’m offended and you hurt my feelings world that we live in. Bob was mostly nice but we also had Robin and Maynard who pushed the crazy button every time they could, us as fans knew they did well if after a spectacular radio April Fools joke they were gone a couple of days afterward. Indicating of course that they had been suspended. One of those times being after reporting that Queen Anne was “erupting” and people actually believing it. Hope they all enjoying their retirement, we still have Spike on KIRO!
We have Bob on the CD player right now….Walking Round in Women’s Underwear always a fav…
I grew up listening to Bob Rivers on WCCC in Hartford, CT, and I was thrilled to find him in Seattle when I moved here in early adulthood. We decorate our tree to Bob’s Twisted Christmas every year. Our kids consider him an integral part of the holiday! “If one goes out, they all go out!” 🤣
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