The Decibelters

Hey! Baby! This is me! Rockin' Robbie D! I'm so bad I make flowers die I make babies cry I take candy from babies and give dogs rabies and if that ain't bad the rain don't fall and that ain't all--biscuits ain't bread!

Bad, sad and just plain mad, the slang harangue of Rockin' Robbie D is delivered in a keening, rapid-fire wail that is recognizable only to dogs, seismographs--and teenagers. Not that the kids understand it all; sometimes, when Mr. Hip Lip, as he is also called, starts "makin' with the shakin' " on Detroit's WCHB, the station runs a write-in contest called "What Did Robbie Say?" Nobody really knows, least of all Robbie. The important thing is that Rockin' Robbie and dozens more like him have given radio an advanced case of the screaming meemies.

Molting Broom. While rock jockeys have never been noted for their dulcet tones, they have lately revved up their banshee banter in an effort to match the increasing amplification of the big beat. The Evinrude delivery stems partly from the fact that "total shout" radio sells so well these days that the decibelters have to talk faster to squeeze in all the commercials. Sponsors know that, as the jocks put it, to get the green from the teens' jeans you have to be beamed to the scream. Since not even Madison Avenue can conjure up their sales pitch, many rock jockeys operate consulting firms for advertisers on the side. Recently, for instance, Boston's Juicy Brucey gave a classic lesson in the teen pitch over WBZ's "50,000 watts of flower power." "I want to talk, friends," he cried, "about those blemishes, which are pimples! Yes, pimples. If you can't get rid of them, at least have them spell 'love' on your forehead." Says Cousin Brucie (no kin to Juicy), top screamer on WABC in Manhattan: "If they ever find the perfect pimple cream, I'll be out of a job."

Though Robbie D, a skinny, goateed chap who looks vaguely like a molting broom, is only 20, most of the rock jockeys are pushing 30. Their natural habitat is the "jock booth," where, surrounded by stacks of 45-r.p.m. records, they suck on lemons, spray their throats, turn the treble up and the bass down, and wail. During an average three-hour program, they cram in six five-minute newscasts, twelve station breaks, 35 records and 54 commercials.

Pow-pa-dow, Umph! And there is no escaping them; they rock around the ticktock. At 6 a.m. each weekday, several thousand Baltimoreans begin their day with a chorus of earsplitting chimes and 300-lb. Fat Daddy shouting: "Hear me now! Let me sock it to ya, Momma! From the depths of a fat man's soul, a golden oldie from outa the past with a star-studded cast! A WWIN radio blast! Shep and the Heartbeats! Eeetiddlydee! Come on!"

In Los Angeles, the afternoon commuter hours are dominated by KHJ's "drive-time man," the Real Don Steele. "My voice," he boasts, "can cut through the traffic noise." Sample: "A world premiere right here on the Real Don Steele show--boss hit-bound the Lovin' Spoonful's She Is Still a Mystery at 3:43 KHJ, break-the-bank time on the Real Don Steele show pow-pow-pow-pa-dow, umph!" Though incoherent to untutored ears, the spiel mentions all the essentials: name of the show, title of song, performer, time, station identification and promotion--all in ten seconds. Marvels one executive: "He really makes cliches come alive!"

Stripped Emperor. Typical of the breed, Steele worked at ten stations before landing at KHJ for $50,000 a year. If, as often happens, the kids stop digging the din, the rock jockeys simply move on to another town. Ed Phillips, for example, wowed them in Birmingham under the alias of Mel Kent, then moved to San Diego and on to Los Angeles as Johnny Mitchell, then to San Francisco as Brother Sebastian Stone. Last week he packed up and headed for Manhattan, where he will remain Sebastian Stone on WOR-FM for $80,000 a year.

No place, in fact, is safe from the rock jockeys any more. Now that the BBC has gone mod with a new pop station called Radio One, Britain is jumping to U.S.-style disk jockeys. The most popular is lion-maned Emperor Rosko, 24, who is better known in Hollywood as Producer Joe Pasternak's son Michael. Rosko sports a marmalade-colored fur coat and travels in a Rolls-Royce with his bodyguard, tapes his show and sends it to Radio One from Paris, where, speaking passably good French, he is also the country's No. 1 disk jockey. The Emperor, who likes to strip to the waist before he assaults the microphone, is teaching the scream scene to other disk jockeys in France. As for the rest of Europe, well, all the Emperor says is that he isn't mastering Spanish, Italian, German and Russian for nothing.

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