<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Who is Bob Reitman?\u00a0 Until May of 2026, the answer for me was, \u201cI do not have a clue.\u201d\u00a0 Then I got an email from our old friend Gary Tanin at Daystorm Music in Milwaukee asking if I would have time to listen to an extended interview he had done with his dear friend Bob.\u00a0 Gary has funnelled so much interesting music our way over the past decade or so that, even though I didn\u2019t know anything about the man, I knew that it would be worth taking the time to have a listen.\u00a0 The set piece they are promoting here is a spoken word \/ music album Gary and Bob have been working on called <\/span>The 12th House<\/span><\/i> which is a followup to a previous collaboration they did called <\/span>The Eleventh House.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The interview provided the historical context I needed to understand why Gary was so passionate about what amounts to Bob\u2019s final recording.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bob Reitman became a foundational member of the Milwaukee music scene in the days when FM was expanding the boundaries of broadcast music.\u00a0 Interestingly, his association with music began with poetry.\u00a0 He explained to Tanin that it was his elementary school science teacher who opened the door to the poetry lounge in an unexpected way.\u00a0 Bob was summoned to see the teacher after hours for committing the young man\u2019s sin of flirting with a girl in class when he should have been paying attention to the subject matter.\u00a0 Reitman expected to end up with a month of detention but instead was assigned the task of copying a poem on the blackboard.\u00a0 The poem in question was <\/span>The Cremation of Sam McGee<\/span><\/i> by Robert Service.\u00a0 That one stone tossed into the pond sent out ripples that never stopped expanding Bob\u2019s world.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Reitman\u2019s father was an FBI agent who was given orders to head to Hawaii in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 When his mother went into labor, his father\u2019s orders were changed and he returned to Milwaukee where Bob was born ten days after the attack.\u00a0 Post war, the family moved pretty much around the country as a result of his father\u2019s FBI assignments, but eventually they ended up back in their hometown of Milwaukee.\u00a0 It was during this fertile time period when popular culture was evolving into the rock and roll era that Reitman\u2019s future began to take shape.\u00a0 He was in the right place at the right time and the spark that started his motor running was poetry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That first exposure spurred him to write his own poetry.\u00a0 When Bob heard there were poetry readings taking place at the Avant-Garde Coffee House, he gathered his works together to join the party.\u00a0 He got there only to find out the person running the readings was a no-show that night.\u00a0 When the same thing happened the next week, Bob volunteered (uncharacteristically, according to him) to run the readings.\u00a0 The owner readily agreed.\u00a0 Reitman remembers the moment as one of the first times someone said \u2018yes\u2019 to him and it offered him a chance to learn something new.\u00a0 The second \u2018yes\u2019 came when he was asked to do a poetry radio show on the University of Wisconsin –\u00a0 Milwaukee student radio station WUWM.\u00a0 After a while, the station\u2019s manager asked if he would be interested in playing music on Sunday nights.\u00a0 At first, Bob hesitated but he again accepted the challenge to do something different.\u00a0 Years later, Reitman found out it was the manager’s kids who were responsible.\u00a0 They complained the educational station never played music so the GM opened the door, Bob walked in, and another creative front appeared with seemingly no strings attached.\u00a0 \u201cIt was just fun,\u201d Bob said, \u201cI got to play whatever I wanted to play.\u201d\u00a0 Reitman returned to the \u2018people saying yes\u2019 theme many times in the interview.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0WUWM was an educational station, yet people tuned in to hear what they were playing in sufficient numbers to have the station register on the ratings chart.\u00a0 Reitman told Tanin, \u201cEnough people wanted to hear The Grateful Dead, Airplane, Dylan and stuff like that.\u00a0 There was so much stuff and we showed up in the ratings.\u201d\u00a0 One thing always leads to another.\u00a0 The owners of a floundering FM station (WZMF) approached Bob about doing a radio show as a way to up their revenue.\u00a0 They offered him $150 a week.\u00a0 Reitman was employed at the time at a cemetery.\u00a0 His initial reaction was, \u201cThese guys are going to pay me to play the music I want to play on the radio?\u00a0 Have I died and gone to heaven?\u201d He took the job, the station made money (as would every station he would work for in the years that followed) and radio became the next great adventure for Reitman.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bob\u2019s insights into how music is imprinted upon each generation are interesting.\u00a0 From the time he reached puberty up to his high school graduation in 1959, he was there as music transitioned from post World War II big bands into the precursors of Rock and Roll.\u00a0 Reitman hits the nail squarely on the head when he points out that the music one discovers in their formative years makes an indelible mark on teens.\u00a0 The music of Glenn Miller did it for one generation – the next generation was lit up by Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, and a bunch of other early R\u2019n\u2019R artists.\u00a0 I can relate to this because that is how music was ingrained in me.\u00a0 I liked the early Beatles and Beach Boys records, but was too young to understand the complexity of it all.\u00a0 The songs that gave me a big push were the ones I started to play along with as I learned my way around a drum kit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I started buying 45s to add to my practice routine, pretty much everything from The Music Explosion\u2019s <\/span>Little Bit of Soul<\/span><\/i> on rocked my world.\u00a0 Every record brought a different sound and beat into the mix and one thing led to another.\u00a0 Singles played on AM radio gave way to LPs by everybody from The Monkees to The Doors to Hendrix to Led Zeppelin.\u00a0 I distinctly remember not liking some of my older sister\u2019s records until I began playing the drums along with them.\u00a0 As I grew older, my appreciation for \u2018older\u2019 rock music increased, especially when I got to play it live with various bands.\u00a0 My \u2018Bob Reitman experience\u2019 was very much the same as his, just a decade or so later.\u00a0 \u2018Music as the soundtrack of your life\u2019 is a pretty universal theme and the cornerstone music one starts with is only the beginning.\u00a0 One tends to move both forward and backwards from the music that provides the time stamps of your adolescence.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bob Reitman\u2019s musical views were shaped by Elvis, et al, but his poetry and musical world view collided when he heard Bob Dylan.\u00a0 According to David Luhrssen (the Managing Editor of the <\/span>Shepard Express<\/span><\/i> and a longtime fan), it was Dylan, \u201cWho became the touchstone for Reitman\u2019s idea of what rock could achieve as music that delivered poetry to the widest audience.\u201d\u00a0 Bob was at the center of what Luhrssen calls, \u201cthe focal point of bohemian counterculture on Milwaukee\u2019s East Side in the \u201860s.\u00a0 By the \u201870s he was already known all over town for spinning records on radio, soon enough with a prime-time program, <\/span>The Eleventh House<\/span><\/i>, on WQFM.\u00a0 Bob Reitman was the articulate voice of FM rock in 1970s Milwaukee as he carried the creative programming of \u201860s free form FM into the new decade.\u00a0 He introduced Milwaukee to Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, and the Velvet Underground, and was Bob Dylan\u2019s most fervent apostle in the city.\u201d\u00a0 The next natural step was to collaborate with a dozen or more Milwaukee musicians to record a batch of his poetry for an LP called <\/span>The Eleventh House<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the interview, Bob touched on a wide range of topics.\u00a0 His story of asking Chuck Berry why he wouldn\u2019t play a show until he got paid up front is great.\u00a0 Bob confesses he didn\u2019t understand it at the time, but as he learned more about how artists like Chuck Berry were ripped off and abused by promoters and record labels, he finally understood.\u00a0 When they got on to the subject of music making the transition from carrying around \u2018bins of records\u2019 to the million songs he can now tote around on his cell phone, Reitman had two thoughts.\u00a0 One was the loss of the \u2018tactile\u2019 experience of buying and playing records.\u00a0 The other was the ease of finding literally anything on his phone – no matter how obscure the song, services like Spotify finds them.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bob said, \u201cI hope music is still an important part of people\u2019s lives,\u201d but he also acknowledges how the landscape is changing.\u00a0 He had his turntable repaired by a man who had been doing the work for years.\u00a0 As the repairman is contemplating retirement, Bob wondered who would still have the skill to do such work.\u00a0 Music stores are disappearing and yes, one can buy turntables at Amazon, but the culture of music is so much different in the digital age.\u00a0 \u201cHow do young people put value on music that their generation is basically getting for free?\u201d became an off-shoot of their discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When he learned that Spotify plays only 1\/1000th of a cent per play, Reitman shook his head.\u00a0 When the discussion turned to AI creating an artificial Bob Dylan or Taylor Swift song, he again shook his head as they pondered things like:\u00a0 Who would own it?\u00a0 How would it be licensed?\u00a0 These are questions that have no immediate answer, but perhaps the resurgence of interest in vinyl records gives a glimpse that not everyone will settle for \u2018knock off songs\u2019 even if they are free for the taking.\u00a0 That and the fact that the human factor in writing and experiencing music can not be replicated by AI.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So how is it Bob Reitman finds himself doing a sequel to an album he did in 1972?\u00a0 There were a number of factors.\u00a0 He mentioned when he began looking over the volume of poetry he had written then and since then, it was kind of fun even though he was naive back then (and still is, he claims:\u00a0 \u201cI am consistently naive.\u201d).\u00a0 Having a friend and producer who would honestly tell him if something was good or not was also critical.\u00a0 Tanin told Reitman that his role in recording a spoken word album like this was no different than any other project he had worked on in terms of how topics presented themselves to be worked up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Gary reminded Bob that another side of a bookend project like this frames his legacy:\u00a0 \u201cI said that?\u201d\u00a0 Reitman asked, \u201cLike my headstone?\u00a0 The reason we are doing the album?\u00a0 I told people, \u2018I have been a really lucky guy.\u00a0 I do know how lucky I have been.\u00a0 I never thought about going into radio\u2026things showed up in my life at the right time.\u00a0 I just wanted everybody to know that sometimes good things happen and sometimes they don\u2019t\u2026I regret mistakes I have made, that is part of my story\u2026I want everybody to know the whole story, the good, the bad, the ugly\u2026I guess everybody has a life like that, I have been lucky, and Rock and Roll.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What I find the most interesting is the vast array of topics Reitman can riff on with his poetry.\u00a0 The disclaimer here is that I have never been much of a poetry person.\u00a0 As far back as my sophomore year in high school, I found one had to have the right stuff to do poetry justice.\u00a0 When our speech class got around to doing poetry readings, many of us gave what I can only describe as flat performances.\u00a0 Then Sue took the podium.\u00a0 It is probably a good thing she came up last because she took on Edgar Allen Poe\u2019s <\/span>The Bells<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 She put so much energy into it that she was literally foaming at the mouth when she finished.\u00a0 Our instructor said nothing.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t have to.\u00a0 We were humbled because we took the easy way out as most of us mumbled our way through much less inspiring works.\u00a0 Sue took us to a higher plane.\u00a0 Ever since then I have had a lot more respect for both those who can write poetic verses and deliver them with such emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After hearing Bob\u2019s melodious voice telling stories about how he became a big Dylan fan, his interactions with music fans of many generations, and rubbed elbows with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, I could not wait to hear his poetry set to music.\u00a0 The all-star cast of musicians Gary lined up to provide the background music for <\/span>The 12th House<\/span><\/i> made Reitman\u2019s last record even more exciting.\u00a0 Tanin himself added keyboards and drums to the mix and many of the musicians he recruited are familiar to us via the music Daystorm has sent our way.\u00a0 The cast includes Sam Llanas (guitar and wordless vocals) and Jack Spann (keyboards).\u00a0 John Hoier, another Milwaukee producer and a member of the 60s band The Messengers also provided music that became backing tracks on some of the <\/span>12th House <\/span><\/i>tracks.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Luhrssen sums up Reitman\u2019s work perfectly: \u201cHe reflects on music, pop culture, and occasionally on politics, turning fleeting memories into sharp recollections.\u201d \u00a0 Of the sixteen tracks assembled for <\/span>The 12th House<\/span><\/i>, three are re-recordings from <\/span>The Eleventh House<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The collection covers several decades of Reitman\u2019s life.\u00a0 The final track reaches back to the first thing he ever wrote in 1958 and is presented on the 12th House as <\/span>The First One.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I am looking forward to hearing the final mix of <\/span>12th House<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Hearing Bob Reitman reflect on how music and poetry shaped his life and knowing what a gifted producer Gary Tanin is, I can\u2019t wait to hear what their collaboration produced.\u00a0 I will wrap up this <\/span>From the Vaults<\/span><\/i> with David Luhrssen\u2019s description of Bob\u2019s career:\u00a0 \u201cOn the radio, Bob Reitman never filled the silence between records with inanity.\u00a0 His voice, smart and good humored, was filled with curiosity and gratitude, a sensibility amplified by the words of his poetry.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We got a late note from Gary Tanin stating, \u201cPrior to official retail availability there will be a limited number of albums available via mail order by making a donation of $40 or more to WUWM.\u00a0 Call the WUWM development department at 414-270-1225 for details.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 As the man who introduced Bob Dylan to Milwaukee radio, this seems to be a fitting tribute to Bob Reitman!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Who is Bob Reitman?\u00a0 Until May of 2026, the answer for me was, \u201cI do not have a clue.\u201d\u00a0 Then I got an email from our old friend Gary Tanin at Daystorm Music in Milwaukee asking if I would have time to listen to an extended interview he had done with his dear friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3929"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3932,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions\/3932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}