ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996                  TAG: 9603010100
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY BOB FISHBURN

75 YEARS OF RADIO GLORIFIED IN STATIC PICTURE BOOK

BLAST FROM THE PAST: A Pictorial History of Radio's First 75 Years. By B. Eric Rhoads. Streamline Press. $39.95.

I yield to no one in my love for radio, from the Saturday children's shows of yesteryear like "Let's Pretend" to the ubiquitous talk shows today. And so I opened "Blast from the Past" with great anticipation: some 430 pages of photos plus a short but interesting history of the medium, divided into decades. A curious disappointment followed. After the 40th shot of the inside of some radio studio and the 50th posed picture of local and national talent in front of a microphone, things got a little - pardon - static.

There's nothing really wrong with the book; indeed, it may well be the definitive radio picture book. For the committed radio nut, the book will no doubt hold many treasures. But for the general reader, it may be too much of a good thing. And the problem pops right out of the foreword by Paul Harvey which ends with: "It [the glory days of radio] was really something. Close your eyes and see." That's the way we old-timers remember those glory days: We closed our eyes and "saw" all kinds of things. Imagination ruled.

Actually seeing all the personalities on the page is a bit like meeting in person one of the guys who played the "Lone Ranger" on radio at the program's heyday: Your imagination painted a vivid picture of the masked man that a personal appearance was bound to puncture, like seeing Charles Atlas late in life, complete with flab.

All this will interest the dedicated aficionado, perhaps, but a lay person is likely to be overwhelmed. Take out the pictorial padding and add a CD with a delicious onslaught of "Top 40," and the book, a bag of semi-precious stones, would have been a diamond.

Bob Fishburn is a former editor of this newspaper's commentary page.

LENGTH: Short :   45 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  BROADCAST PIONEERS LIBRARY. 1. Charlie McCarthy, Edgar 
          Bergen and friends gather around a microphone (left). 2. Radio 
          comedian Dan Stuart (above) loses control of his script in the 
          1940s.