Jonathon Brandmeier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2006)

Jonathon Brandmeier (born July 15, 1956) is a Chicago radio personality and musician. He is commonly known to fans as "Johnny B."

[edit] Career

Jonathon Brandmeier on WGN-TV discussing his return to Chicago radio

Brandmeier started his radio career in 1973 at WFON in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. In 1981, he was brought on as the KZZP morning DJ in Phoenix, Arizona, where he became very popular from his prank phone calls and silly song parodies.

WLUP ("The Loop") in Chicago hired him in 1983, where his morning show was broadcast on both their 1000 AM and 97.9 FM stations. He also had a short-lived national TV show in 1991, Johnny B. on the Loose and recorded three albums, Almost Live (1984), Brandmeier (1989) and The Man Formerly Known As Brandmeier (1994) with his band Johnny and the Leisure Suits. His most memorable songs include "We're All Crazy In Chicago" [a local Top Ten hit], "Hey Der Milwaukee Polka", and "The Moo-Moo Song" [based on an actual event in the 80's when a local attempted to make love to a cow in the Lincoln Park Zoo]. A few of his songs are occasionally played on the Dr. Demento Show, which is also syndicated on Sunday nights on WLUP.

A management change at WLUP in 1997, however, led to the end of Brandmeier's initial 14-year run on The Loop. He briefly hosted middays at WCKG in Chicago, and had subsequent stints in Los Angeles at KLSX and KCBS, where he was syndicated to a number of other stations across the country.

After some time away from radio, Brandmeier returned to mornings at WLUP in October 2005. Johnny B remains in the WLUP morning spot broadcasting his daily show and a podcast of weekly highlights. He has also made several appearances with his band, The Leisure Suits, on what he called "World Tour 2007", which included many local bars and theaters in the Chicago area. Every December, he hosts a 24-hour telethon on WLUP with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to help out terminally ill children with numerous musical and celebrity appearances on the show donating to the charity.

[edit] Characters on the show

Kent Voss:[News Sponsored by Webb Chevy] He does the news on the show and is usually Johnnys main sidekick during the shows. He goes by many nicknames, including "The Amish Hump" and "Mr. Tangerine Speedo" (a reference to the 2001 song by Caviar). Many callers will swarm Johnny's voicemail to annoy Voss with musical parodies and jokes to trip him up during the news.

Bruce Wolf:by his own admission, is the best Radio-TV sportscaster/attorney in the history of Chicago. Bruce resides in a northern suburb with his wife, Mrs. Hoffa, and several of their children. Bruce is actually former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. He was placed here as part of the federal witness protection program. He is the sports TV/radio legend that does the sports for the Jonathon Brandmeier show since 1985 on and off. He formerly was on WXRT, WFLD-TV, and now is on WMAQ-Tv doing the sports. He had a short-lived show Sponsored by WLUP that was on at 4:30 Am on WMAQ-TV but it was canceled a year later.

Vince Argento: He is the audio producer on the show. Also known as the announcer for Johnny's morning show.

Guy Bauer - Executive Producer: Guy Bauer hails from historic Monmouth County, NJ - where George Washington once slept. He graduated from high school in `99 and went on to Purdue to study Aerospace Engineering under a Navy ROTC scholarship. Once there, he found it wasn’t for him and transferred to Hunter College in New York City to study The Classics (not "Stairway to Heaven" or "Freebird"). Bauer did not take to The Classics either and found other interests like Television Production. In Spring 2001, he started on a TV pilot called "The Mother of All Shows" using $20,000 from 8 credit cards (yet to be paid back). It went nowhere but inspired him to get an internship in TV so he would have a place to pitch projects. After being turned down several times for a lack of enough college credits, he beefed up his resume by adding he was a NYU graduate student and had received the Academy Award for best student short film. It worked... and the show that hired him? Comedy Central's "Crank Yankers." After a season there, Bauer moved to Los Angeles to also work on "The Man Show"." After "Crank Yankers" ended, Comedy Central co-worker and current WLUP newsman Kent Voss recommended Bauer as Producer on JohnnyB's show at KCBS-FM/Los Angeles. He has been with Johnny ever since. Bauer also makes a weekly podcast called The Guy Bauer Half Hour and is currently looking for a hot girlfriend though as of recently it has come out that Guy is a homosexual, plans are in the works for Guy and Kent to run off to the east coast and get married. His mom also does a Daily joke, which never usually makes sense but Johnny always laughs though.

Hector Soriano:Here is the discription from the site:Hector refuses to tell us where or when he was born. According to his “birth certificate” he’s a 79 year old white woman named Mable. As near as we can tell, he tunneled his way into the States sometime in the mid 90’s and now he’s busy tunneling his way into the ladies of Chicagoland. He has a passion for ice fishing and speaks a language that is different. It is called Spanish. He has no immediate plans to steal your job or overthrow the U.S. Government. He Also is the Board Operator/Assistant Producer. Hector does the traffic sometimes but usually only says who is sponsoring the traffic report and usually Kent Voss says it instead. Johnny often cuts in and laughs when Hector mis-pronounces the traffic report

Esmeralda: Brandmeier's charming former intern, now show assistant. Listeners know her as the "hooka-smoking tramp." She occasionally chimes in during the show when Johnny calls her, and has a spot every Friday on community events. Emeralda answers the phone and will not let you be on air with Johnny if: you do not know what is required of you to win the contest, you just want to say "hi" and ask an unrelated question, or you're not even listening to the show. You can listen to Esmeralda's radio spot Saturday afternoons on Radio Depaul (iTunes -> Radio -> Public).

Matt the intern Having only been mentioned once ever on the show, no one knows much of anything about this awkward "McLovin".