The Great Reverb Debate of 2009

RUSH: Stephanie in Charlotte, North Carolina, glad you waited. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I had a quick comment for you about the reverb that you’ve added to your show.

RUSH: Yes, ma’am.

CALLER: I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time, but I have to say it annoys me a little bit, and I was thinking about that today, and I decided to set my annoyance aside. Because if I, a fan of this show, am a little bit annoyed by the reverb, I can only imagine how absolutely infuriating it has to be to the liberals that I’m sure are listening to your show right now.

RUSH: That is a brilliantly mature way to look at this. What is it about the reverb that irritates you?

CALLER: It makes it a little difficult to understand you. It’s one of those things, it’s like white noise. It’s like, ‘This is annoying.’ It only annoys me a little bit. When you slowed Obama down, that didn’t annoy me at all, it made me laugh every time. This is a little annoying. I have some liberal friends that tune into your show fairly regularly and they called me about that and said how obnoxious that was.

RUSH: (godlike reverb) Well, you know…

CALLER: I look forward to hearing about what I’m going to hear from them on this.

RUSH: (godlike reverb) We have options with the reverb unit. I can have various settings. I tell you what I’m going to do. After the break here coming up in mere seconds we’ll do an on-air tweaking of the amount of reverb and then we’ll settle on a compromise point where it’s not distracting but it is still there.

CALLER: I have an additional question for you.

RUSH: (godlike reverb) Quickly. What is it?

CALLER: Would it be awful to add additional reverb when there isn’t reverb to Obama? Since you have it, can you add it to Obama all the time?

RUSH: (godlike reverb) I’ll think about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, it has been mentioned to me twice now — once that I saw in an e-mail and just now on a phone call — that the reverb that we have added here is a little bit too much. We have the ability to tweak our reverb unit so I thought we would do it together. I do want to point out that the e-mail reaction to this is unilaterally, almost unanimously in favor of and over the top. There are always some naysayers. You always have people that complain. You always have people that whine, even in this audience. But even the whiners in this audience, like our previous caller, understand that it could be some good in it if it really irritates the libs. Now, remember also, folks, that there is a performance aspect of this. Any time you imitate or mock someone, you always exaggerate their characteristics. It’s just part and parcel of it.

So we added more reverb than is necessary to put an exclamation point on it. So what is the name of the first setting, Brian? Okay. Cathedral. This is the setting we have been using. (Cathedral reverb test) This is the voice of God-d in the cathedral. This is the setting we chose ultimately. (end Cathedral reverb test) What’s the next setting? What is it? The next setting is Plate. I have no idea what it means but here’s what it sounds like. (Plate reverb test) This is the plate reverb. Now, this is much less reverb to me, but it is still obviously reverb, and it should be less distracting reverb, correct? Go ahead and move to the next one. (end Plate reverb test) Put a checkmark by that one. That one’s in the finals. The next reverb setting is called Hall (Hall reverb test) and this is the Hall setting. And there’s hardly any reverb in it. So scrub that. (end Hall reverb test)

That’s worthless. That sounds like I’m in a basement or someplace where a pancake breakfast is going on in Flint, Michigan. This one is Room. (Room reverb test) Okay, Room reverb. Room reverb, testing one, two, three, four. You like Room reverb? Okay, so we like the Hall or we like the Room. Is there one more setting we could try? (end Room reverb test) We have multiple settings on our Obama machine here. What is it? This is called concert (Concert reverb test) and this is the Concert reverb. Now, this sounds pretty close to the Cathedral, although it does not reverb as much. It doesn’t have as lengthy an echo. We’ll do one more. What’s the next setting entitled? (end Concert reverb test) Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Studio reverb. (Studio reverb test) This is Studio reverb, and that’s hardly any reverb. Okay, so we’ve got Cathedral, which was my first choice (end Studio reverb test) and then, what was the other one we put a checkmark by? Plate. Okay let’s go with Plate for now. Put it on Plate and we’ll go back to the phones.

In fact, we’ll test it before we go to the phones. (Plate reverb) I just want to make a point about global warming. By the way, I had somebody send me a note, when the last caller asked me to think about adding even more reverb to Obama’s sound bites. I said, ‘I’ll think about it.’ The e-mail said, ‘That’s what I think God sounds like when I pray.’ (laughing) Okay. Just a little side observation about all of this climate change stuff. I think it’s the most damning thing about the Climate Research Unit e-mails and admissions. These scientists thought they had data that conclusive proved man-made global warming, evidence that proved that if we didn’t drastically change the way we lived in a few short years we would be destroyed, and yet is they destroyed that data! They destroyed the original data, the baseline data. They destroyed it. They said, ‘Oh, we lost it when we moved to a bigger building.’

That’s like saying, ‘I’m going to throw out my family pictures when we move because I’m not going to have to room for them in the new house. They threw it out. Who would do such a thing? Who would throw out the original data, the baseline data that allows all their current projections to be truthful or believed in a scientific way? Shouldn’t these scientists be brought up on charges for being so irresponsible when the fate of the world is hanging in the balance? Where is the outrage here? They have destroyed the automobile business with all of this. It is amazing the changes that governments — federal, state, and local — have implemented because of phony, false, made-up scientific data, which by definition is not scientific data. I mean, there ought to be criminal charges for what has been done here and yet they’re doubling down over in Copenhagen.

Tony Blair, he’s saying even if the science isn’t right, we still need to move ahead on climate change! Even if the science isn’t right, which tells you first examine foremost that this is nothing about science. All right, may I have a review on this setting of the reverb? (end Plate reverb) What do you think, Mr. Snerdley? All right, Snerdley likes this but he likes Cathedral better. What about you Dawn? She says that you can’t understand Cathedral as well, can’t understand what I am saying. Well, you know, Dawn, you may have a point. If you can’t easily understand… Good grief! I don’t believe what I just saw. Well, I can’t… There it is! Look! I can’t believe what I am looking at. On MSNBC, I cannot believe what I am seeing. Anyway, Dawn said — I’m sorry to tease you, folks. I’m looking at Oprah. I just could not believe it. Anyway, Dawn says that with the Cathedral reverb setting, that it’s much more difficult to understand what I’m saying, which might come in handy on occasion. We’ll go back and forth. I kind of like the Cathedral better because just from a performance standpoint, when you imitating or mocking you have to exaggerate it a bit in order to make the point.