At six am on a miserable November morning, it seemed as though there were only three people awake and ready to take on the day. Scott rushed through the studio door as the early morning radio waves emitted at 75 kilowatts, from downtown Vancouver’s TD Tower, blanketing the sleeping city with the sound of the Jeff O’Neil Morning Show.
Jeff O’Neil, at the helm of a control panel littered with coffee cups and newspapers, looked at Scott and said, “30 seconds till magic.”
“Thanks for showing up,” quipped Charis, barely looking up from the day’s news in the Province.
“At least I had time to make myself look good,” responded Scotty with an ambitious grin as he took his seat next to Charis.
As they settled in and prepared to start the show, the three radio hosts resembled siblings segregated at the independent kiddie table during a Thanksgiving dinner. At first, it seemed as if they were at each other’s throats but they were simply shaking off the shroud of sleep by warming up their wit.
“Children, children, that’s enough,” said Jeff as he tried to intervene. “We’re on.”
As the clock struck six, the radio personalities of Jeff O’Neil, Charis and Captain Scotty animated the dark studio 21 floors above the sleepy city below. Pictures, guitars and gold records hung from the walls and gave personality to the dimly lit studio. But the crown jewel of memorabilia was an old drum set that was pushed aside and resting against a black leather sofa in the corner of the room.
Jeff leaned in towards his microphone and greeted Vancouver to another day worth living. As a studio microphone hung only a foot in front of my face, the show was underway and Vancouver’s notorious radio trio were waking up the city, one person at a time.
Devoted listeners of 99.3 FM’s Jeff O’Neil Morning Show have been waking up to the same voices for years.
Jeff O’Neil’s on-air antics have pushed the borders of vulgarity and taste for quite some time but for unknown reasons, this trio have yet to be banished from the realm of Vancouver radio.
For the radio listeners, the FOX’s morning show is not about the music but the perverse humour that puts a smile across the many faces driving to work. In fact, the music is the least important aspect of the show.
Over the years, Jeff, Charis and Scotty have acquired an impressive fan base. Listeners from across the lower mainland flock to Captain Scotty’s various locations with the hope that they would be able to take part in one of the many notorious on-air activities, like topless SkyTrain rides or make-out marathons for free gasoline at Chevron and Shell stations from West Vancouver to Langley.
The Jeff O’Neil Morning Show is more than just a radio broadcast. It is a public forum that passes along ideas expressed by a class of citizens that generally maintain a level of anonymity. At the centre of it all are three radio DJs with faceless voices. They are ordinary unknown people, just like their fans, but they are the flag bearers of a benign subversive generation who are lost within mainstream society’s pop culture.
Looking at Jeff O’Neil, you can not tell that he is an on-air radio sensation. With a CFOX hat on backwards and a scraggly grey goatee, the middle-aged radio host takes a casual conversation and turns it into a program that lasts for hours. Jeff has many opinions on politics, society and culture and he has no problem making his beliefs public over the air.
As Jeff thumbs through The Vancouver Sun, he breaks his concentration from the newspaper and looks over at Scotty. Captain Scotty, as he prefers to be called during the radio show, is the colour man that offers comic relief with absurd comments or semi-relevant cultural references.
The final piece to the puzzle is Charis. Without any previous broadcast training, Charis dropped out of a social science program at UBC before becoming the final voice to the morning show tripod. She is like the little sister who manages to hold her own ground against her two older brothers. Charis has a number of responsibilities that include reading the weather, news and traffic in a segment known as The Charis Report. As well, she promotes local companies, venues and events like Vancouver Giants hockey games and local car dealerships.
Now add an assortment of games like Stump the Show, a rapid fire trivia quiz, as well as segments with listener input, like open phones and Jeff O’Neil Mail, and you get the basic formula for each episode. Every day becomes a routine that emphasizes the marketing techniques that have made CFOX successful. From the humour, the bantering and the music, the formula for success has been maintained over the years.
While Nirvana’s ‘90s alternative classic hit Dumb was on-air, Jeff confessed that working in the radio business has ruined his taste for certain bands.
“I fucking can’t stand Nirvana, STP [Stone Temple Pilots], or Pearl Jam,” said Jeff. “And there are only a couple of Sound Garden songs I can stand. It’s too bad that we overplay them.”
As the song ends, Jeff shares our off-air conversation with those listening at home.
“Another dumb song by Nirvana.”
As the show progressed it became clear that they were no longer children. Instead, there was an undeniable chemistry between Jeff, Scotty and Charis. The hosts interacted with one another as if they are good friends sitting at a café or at a bar indulging in casual everyday conversation.
“I just saw a picture of the three of us at the fishing trip in June,” said Scotty as he came back from the washroom during another music break. “Jeff, you were a fat bastard back then. How much weight have you lost?”
The three of them are able to push the limit of their obscene humour, yet they are usually able to keep it all within the limits of radio toleration. When the morning show crosses the line, Jeff, Charis and Scotty are usually able to work their magic when getting around censoring the program or, at the very least, smooth over any difficulties that arise with management.
During the day’s broadcast, someone in the studio began a conversation regarding the female body and the definition of a gunt.
“Well,” said Charis as Jeff and Scotty waited in anticipation, “it’s the bulging area found on large women between the waist and the genital area. That’s what Urban Dictionary says.” Everyone in the room was a little on edge with regards to how far they were willing to push this conversation.
A few minutes later, during open phones, Matt from Abbotsford called the radio show while driving on his way to work in Langley. Like most of the callers that phone up the CFOX hotline, Matt had no real purpose to his call nor did he have an opinion to contribute to the following day’s November 11th ceremonies. Instead, Matt wished to share an acronym he and his friends had created solely to replace the cacophonic word gunt.
“Well what is it?” asked Jeff after listening to Matt’s longwinded introduction.
“FUPA,” said Matt as his voice was distorted by his cellular phone somewhere along Highway 1. “Better known as the frontal-upper-pussy-area.”
The studio was hushed by disbelief. Jeff, Charis and Scotty were gob-smacked by what they had just heard. The abrupt silence was actually the sound of three minds at work, trying to diffuse the situation and hopefully spin their show back over the line they had inadvertently crossed.
The heavy silence was broken by Scotty’s uproarious laughter. Charis turned to her left, looked at Scott with wide, surprised eyes and began to laugh as well. Jeff also lets out a little chuckle behind the control consul, thanked Abbotsford Matt for expanding Vancouver’s lexicon of perversion and concluded open phones with a five minute song by AC/DC.
As AC/DC tolled on the bells of Hell, everyone left the studio to go about some business. Scotty worked on editing sound bites in the next room while Charis went to grab another cup of crummy office coffee and continued to read the headlines in the November 10th publication of The Province. But Jeff was missing for quite some time.
“Good news,” said Jeff as he returned to the studio with less than 30 seconds remaining to Hell’s Bells. “I just made the visit to Dunner’s [the boss] office and I successfully distracted him during the FUPA phone call.”
It seemed as though this was not the first time Jeff O’Neil had to make the trek down the hall to cover the tracks left behind by a risqué caller or some offensive material that slipped out sometime during the morning show.
“So is it safe to say we won’t be called in for a meeting after the show?” Scotty asked as he looked at Jeff wheeling around the command consul to take his position in front of the microphone.
“We’re safe,” answered Jeff while putting on the station headphones. “At least for today.”
