Comeback Kidd

The deposed shock jock tries his hand at Internet radio.

by A.D. Amorosi

"WE ARE ALL DOPES": For better or worse, "Kidd" Chris Foley does not seem to have changed his stripes.

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Chris Foley never saw it coming.

Before he was fired on May 16, 2008, "Kidd Chris" was flying high with his WYSP-FM morning show. He appeared to be this city's successor to the king of lewd and crude, Howard Stern. Foley even did bits on Stern's show, and had the master's blessing as someone who understood the genre.

"Howard and I have had a lot of conversations that would end up with us just having a good laugh about how much radio is a dopey business," says Foley, 35. "It is. We are all dopes."

Foley's show was dopey enough that, after WYSP gave him a shot in 2005, he got syndicated in Pittsburgh (WRKZ).

Then, on March 21, 2008, Foley aired a song called "Schwoogies." Performed by song parody artist Lady Gash to the music of Blondie's "Call Me," the racist ditty went something like this:

"Coloreds steal your wallets and coloreds have pink feet/ Coloreds are loud and obnoxious when they watch movies/ Sticky fingers what they are/ Always try to jack my car/ Schwoogies."

Yeah. Offensive and not funny. Foley aired it several times.

That January, Foley's show was second only to WMMR's Preston and Steve in the cherished 18- to 35-year-old male demographic. A couple of months after the song aired, though, he and then-WYSP program director John Cook were fired.

There hadn't been much uproar. CBS Radio (YSP's parent company) offered this explanation in a statement:

"We found the song to be highly offensive and completely inappropriate for broadcast on our airwaves. ... When senior management of the station learned that it had been played, they took immediate steps to prevent it from ever appearing on the station again."

The station declined comment on whether Foley would be paid for the remainder of his three-year contract. Foley's attorney, Jonathan Walters of Markowitz & Richman, says that as far as litigation goes, "There's nothing filed with a public agency, a court or administrative agency. The only thing public was an unemployment compensation hearing where he was awarded benefits."

Foley hasn't given many interviews since getting canned, and City Paper couldn't get him to talk about "Schwoogies," specifically.

What he will say, about his show generally, is this:

"I don't think we 'push the envelope.' I mean, does the movie Pulp Fiction 'push the envelope '?or The Sopranos? ... How come little kids on the playground can figure out 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me'? If you can't figure out that The Kidd Chris Show is just a goofy radio show, then you should leave this Earth."

Pushed for his thoughts about the appropriateness of racial humor, he writes in an e-mail:

"I know a lot of standup guys that do a ton of racial humor and just like any other comedy it's really good for some and it's awful for others. Chris Rock pushes that envelope and so does Lisa Lampenelli [sic] ... sometimes callers call in and say awful things. I'm not going to censor people's thoughts just because someone's feelings may get hurt."

Foley's attorney believes his client didn't do anything extreme, by today's standards, and was made a sacrificial lamb to send a message to other FM hosts.

"Did you ever hear the line about the sheriff shooting somebody to send the rest of the bad guys a message?" Walters asks.

And so now Foley is striking out for an outpost where the rules are different: Internet radio.

Foley grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., fell in love with Andrew Dice Clay ("The Day the Laughter Died is genius," he says), Norm Macdonald ("he's a god to me") and a New York jock named Bill Keeler who made his name making crank calls on-air. "Fuck, I was doing that for free and thought, 'I wanna get paid, too,'" laughs Foley. "I guess the reason I chose radio was because of the thought of entertaining the unknown," he says. "You don't know who's listening. It's like the feeling you get when you call an escort service and the excitement of what's going to show up at the door."

After spending the early part of his radio career out West, he came to WYSP on Aug. 29, 2005. He wasn't quite sure what to expect from Philly — sports fans and other pissed-off testosterone-y types, perhaps. What he found was a little different.

"Philly is 'say it like it is' aggressive, and I fucking love it," he says. He remembers his first Eagles game and how "fucking crazy the crowd was." He wanted that insanity to be a part of his program. Every WYSP Kidd Chris event around Philly was packed with rowdies. "The passion Philly has for its own [teams] is on point with the way my show was and is."

With the advantage of being embraced by Stern, The Kidd Chris Show — first on in the afternoon, then in the cherished morning slot — was notable for how many listeners it put on the air. "I would enjoy just having a conversation about something going on, and then let the callers jump in with whatever their thoughts were. Whoever disagreed with me was usually the first to get on."

Then he got fired.

Foley had chats with Sirius, but, "When I was available to go, they said they couldn't afford me," he laughs.

He's jumping into the Web-radio world with what he calls a Philly show — though he's currently producing it in San Antonio.

"I like the Internet idea and WiFi is about to hit cars, so it's only a matter of time before that's huge," says Foley. "A ton of radio people will trash this move, saying that 'no one listens to Internet radio,' but if you listen to EVERY radio station, all they do is pimp their online streaming, iPhone apps, Facebook and Twitter. These guys all know it's coming and stations that play music will be in trouble. You'll have millions of music options, but there's only one me. Go ask the newspapers how much the Internet is affecting them."

As for content like "Schwoogies" — well, when we asked Foley whether he'd air the song again, he declined to answer. In his first few episodes, for better or worse, he doesn't seem to have changed his stripes. In one, for instance, he and his sidekicks place an ad on Craigslist for a homosexual encounter. When someone calls to respond, they turn on him viciously.

"We all had a shitty, tough year with the economy and stuff, and I'm sure people want to have a good laugh and a place to rant," Foley says. He welcomes that. "I don't know of any other place you will be able to do that on the radio in Philly."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)