Shannon In The Morning Big Show Daily Podcast

Scott Shannon and Patty Steele talk with their friend, saxophonist Marc Rivera, about how he has been handling the pandemic. After Marc explained that he and his wife Sandra had the virus, Marc pushed the Coronavirus talk aside to mention how eager he, Billy Joel, and the rest of the band are to get back to performing.

Marc says, "I would be a fool to give a specific concert date," but he feels that when they have their return show -- it will be one of the best ones yet.  

Dr. Oz has been checking in with us frequently to talk about the constant evolution of the coronavirus, and we had to ask him flat out if he's sick of covering it.

"I feel badly that the country's suffered so much from it" he says, "a lot of Americans have a huge amount of fear about the virus."

When it comes to how we re-open the country safely, he's looking overseas to see how to do it. "We need to replicate what's been done in other parts of the world successfully" Dr. Oz says, "and i have a great amount of confidence we can do it."

Dr. Oz also talks about asthma and coronavirus, testing positive more than once, reopening NYC beaches, negative feedback on contact tracing and much more.

You can watch all-new episodes of "The Dr. Oz Show" weekdays at 1pm on FOX-5.

John Mara, President, CEO and co-owner of the New York football Giants checked in on the big show star phone to talk about a HUGE opportunity to have ultimate bragging rights among your friends and to help fellow New Yorker's in need.

John gave us all the details on the Giants and Robin Hood coming together to present the New York Giants Ultimate Backyard football experience!

For a donation of $10 or more you will be entered for a chance to have New York Giants Super Bowl Champions Eli Manning, Michael Strahan, Phil Simms and Justin Tuck come to your home to play a game of flag football with you and three of your friends!

Mr. Mara and Steve Tisch will be the coaches, while sportscasting legends Bob Costas and Mike Tirico will be your referees.  

John says after the game, the group will take a photo with all four Giants Super Bowl trophies and then have dinner together in your home, where the team will present you with your OWN Giants Super Bowl ring.

Sound too good to be true? It's not! To enter, go to www.Omaze.com/Giants 

PLEASE NOTE: If the winning donor doesn’t have a home of their own, or does not live in the Tri-state area, the Giants will invite the winner and guests to the Giants practice facility for the experience. This experience will be scheduled when it’s safe to travel and convenient for everyone involved.

Mr. Mara also spoke briefly to the big show about the 2020 season, saying "none of us know what the world is going to look like a month from now, two months from now, three months from now...but right now we are planning on playing a full season."

Julia Gargano is just happy to be here.

She's made it to the season 18 finale of American Idol, with the top 7 quickly becoming the top 5 before they battle it out to win it all on the same night.

Just a few short months ago she was an unknown contestant who told the world "I’m annoyingly proud to be from Staten Island.”

From that point she wowed the judges with her audition and now she's got Katy Perry's full support and drive-by parades of fans and friends passing by her Staten Island home to wish her luck!

Despite her newfound recognition, she's humble when it comes to the possibility of winning it all on American Idol.

"Not to sound corny but it's the absolute truth" she tells us, "every round i make it past, it's just absolutely unbelievable in my brain, i cannot comprehend it." 

And she's not afraid of NOT winning if it comes down to it.

"As much as i would love to win the show" she tells the big show, "i can't believe where i am right now, i can't believe it's the finale this Sunday, i just can't..."

"Whatever happens, I'm just the happiest girl in the world."

You can vote for Julia by texting the number that appears after her performance or on the American Idol app, you can vote up to 10 times on each platform!

The two hour season finale of American Idol airs Sunday, May 17th at 8pm on ABC-7.

The Bacon Brothers consist of two brothers, actor Kevin Bacon of “Footloose” fame and accomplished TV and Movie composer Michael Bacon.

Together they have been making music for over two and a half decades, including 9 albums, and while quarantined on opposite coasts they’ve found a way to create new music, enough to actually put out a new album!

We chatted with the bros via Zoom to get the latest on their work, including A brand-new Bacon Brothers single “She-Zee-Zee (Easy on my Eyes)” that's out now everywhere featuring Kevin’s wife Kyra Sedgwick in the music video!

Kevin wrote the song and when asked about the inspiration behind it he shares a story with us.

“There’s a line in the song which says ‘like the perfect pink moment at the moment when the sunset dies’” he explains, “and in Ojai California they have this thing ‘the pink moment’ and people go up there and sit on the mountain and wait for the sun go down and just as it’s about to disappear the sky goes pink.”

He says that was the start of the concept of his writing, “that was really the start of the song, I was trying to write a song about the perfect pink moment.”

When asked what Kevin’s perfect pink moment is, he says it’s being with his wife Kyra, “It’s always like the perfect pink moment for me when she walks out.”

Michael shared the news that another Bacon Brothers album is almost ready and it’s a bit of a surprise.

“We now have 10 new sides which are gonna be a cd which is gonna be released in mid-July” Michael says. “We really didn’t expect to put out another cd but all of a sudden the songs were there…it’s great timing and I think we’ve used our time of being at home well”

We asked Kevin about some of his most popular movies, “It’s cool man…I have a lot of gratitude for the films I’ve been able to be in…..i got a lot of fondness.” And he told us a great story about the first movie he was ever in, Animal House.

“Animal house was my very first movie so it holds a special place in my heart” he says, “because I’ve never been on a movie set before…walking in and seeing all that chaos and realizing that it took that many people and that much time and that many different jobs and all this crap that I just had no idea went into making a move, my jaw was just on the floor.”

Kevin puts a bow on the fond memory, “within probably my 2nd day of shooting I realized this was my home, this is where I needed to be, it was very special.”

Find all Bacon brothers music and news at www.baconbros.com

Just because Rick Springfield is a GRAMMY award winner with 17 top-40 hits and 30 million records sold doesn’t mean he took an easy road to stardom.

He tried getting his music career going way back in 1972 but issues arose including a lawsuit that would stretch out 9 years before his breakout with Jessie’s Girl.

Regardless, Rick was never going to give up. “I am stubborn and I am persistent, a big part of anyone who is successful is being able to stay in there when it’s not happening” he tells the big show, “you just gotta stay until it’s done.”

The one thing that kept him going during that 9-year drought was acting lessons, “yea it doesn’t show, but yes it did” (take acting lessons),“it saved my life, I was all by myself, the community acting class saved my life.”

Rick is quarantined at home like most of us, but he’s got the creative juices flowing. “Actually I’ve never been busier before just being at home” he says, as he talks about the release of the song and video for “The Wall Will Fall,” which is out now on iTunes and Amazon Music.

All proceeds from the sale of the song will benefit Feeding America and Rick assures “all the musicians played for free because of the cause.”

The song was inspired during Rick Springfield and his close friend Vance DeGeneres’s quarantine show “The 60-Second Guide to Songwriting with a Partner.”

Vance’s sister Ellen DeGeneres is in the video, along with Paul Stanley, Andy Cohen, Fred Schneider of The B-52s, Sammy Hagar & Richard Marx singing the bridge of the song.

Others appearing in the music video include Shelia E, Kate Pierson of The B-52s, Mike Reno of Loverboy, Terri Nunn of Berlin, Tommy Tutone, Linda Blair of The Exorcist films and Matthew Wilder.

Rick says it took a true group effort to put this track together, including breaking quarantine for a day. “Matty my engineer had to come by the studio” Rick says, “I had to get a blood test first to make sure I wasn’t exposed…the little bastard wouldn’t come over without that!”

“The Wall Will Fall” is out now on all digital platforms.

Mike Love is a Grammy Award winner & Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who sold over 100 million records as co-founder of the Beach Boys, but his life in recent months is rather tame.

Quarantined in Lake Tahoe, Mike laid down his daily routine for us. “My routine is my honeydew list and going from the studio to the bedroom to the kitchen” he gleefully says when checking in on the star phone, “I used to be a touring musician but not anymore.”

Mike checked in to talk about the release of a new song called “This Too Shall Pass” to help spread some positive vibes during the coronavirus pandemic. The video features John Stamos on drums and all royalties from the song will go to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund.

“Our intention has always been to accentuate the positive which is why we wrote this new song” Love says, and “eventually we’ll be going back to having ‘fun fun fun’ in the sun.”

“This Too Shall Pass” is available now to purchase on all digital music platforms.

(Photo By Louis Pulice / Entercom)

-Brad Blanks/101.1 CBS-FM

The first words Jerry Stiller ever said to me was, “My eyes are dripping anyway, for other reasons… medical.” I’d asked his sharp-as-a-tack wife, Anne Meara, if she and Jerry would crying tears of pride watching their son Ben on the big screen. His line was so perfect that it was as if the unfiltered Frank Costanza from Seinfeld had snuck up on me and blurted into my conversation.  

I met Anne and Jerry at the Night At the Museum premiere The American Museum of Natural History on December 17th, 2006. Our chat on the red carpet took many directions, where at one moment Jerry howled, “Night at the Museum – X Rated.” 

It was an honor to be in the middle of a Stiller & Meara comedy sketch for a few minutes, with a tinge of Frank Constanza thrown in.  

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The owner and founder of Caroline’s Comedy Club Caroline Hirsch checked in on the star phone to talk about a great documentary that's coming out for Mother's Day.

Caroline is the executive producer of the Mother's Day documentary “Call Your Mother” premiering Sunday, May 10th at 10PM on Comedy Central!

It’s about comedians special relationships with their mothers and how they have influenced and impacted their careers and material.

The documentary includes great comedians like Louie Anderson, Awkwafina, Judah Friedlander, Jim Gaffigan, Jo Koy, Bobby Lee, Norm Macdonald, Jim Norton, David Spade and many more along with their moms!

Caroline also talked about Caroline's Comedy Club and the hopes of safely re-opening once given the green light by local officials! 

-Brad Blanks/101.1 CBS-FM

Apple Founder Steve Wozniak is about to burst on to your TV. He will appear on the new Fox show, Celebrity Watch Party, 8PM Thursday nights. This is based on the UK show Goggle Box, which involves people watching the current TV shows and then commenting on what they are watching. The twist on the Fox version is that these people are celebrities, like Rob Lowe, Joe Buck, Meghan Trainor, Raven Symone, and Curtis Stone.

Steve Wozniak must like the reality TV game as he was once a guest on Dancing with The Stars. Affectionately known as "The WOZ," he is the king when he goes to tech conferences, being swarmed by Apple enthusiasts who want a photo with the man who helped create the famous company with Steve Jobs. Woz also created some headlines recently when he said that he and his wife were Patient Zero of the coronavirus.

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I zoomed into his office to ask him about Celebrity Watch Party and what it was all about.

Steve told me, “it's great, we just sit in chairs watching the shows. My wife, and I, we sit and we talk. "What do you think about that? And this, and that?" And we don't always agree 100% on it.”

The Woz looks like a sweatpants kind of guy, as I am when watching TV, especially in a lockdown. I had to pose the question to him, “Are you wearing sweatpants when you're relaxing watching TV?”

He quickly answered, “Oh, no, I'm much easier than that. I just pop on shorts and a shirt. Almost with this whole Coronavirus, it's kind of nice, pop on shorts, shirts, don't even shower a lot of days. I do for the show. We just get to stay at home, two of us, and our four dogs. We have our dogs climb in our laps. So it's just real easy. I wanted to Zoom bomb this conference with you, but my wife said I had to put a shirt on.”

Wow, a lot to unpack there. Thanks for showering Steve!

When I brought up the news story of him and his wife bringing COVID-19 from Hong Kong in early January he passionately replied, “My wife and I actually believe very strongly that we could have been one of the early patient zeros, because at one point we went back two months before any announcements.”

His attention to detail about the coronavirus actually had me thinking that maybe he could have contracted the virus that early. Steve went on to say about his wife Janet, “the morning of January 13th they tested for eight hours for every single disease they could test for. None showed up, so it was nothing known in America.”

This interview took many twists and turns into the mind of Steve Wozniak. Especially when he told me about a rare disease he definitely has! I asked him if he had anything in common with another guy on Celebrity Watch Party, Rob Lowe. Woz replied, “I have no idea. First of all, I don't know celebrities. And part of the reason is, I have a disease called prosopagnosia where I cannot recognize faces. I can be in a restaurant with Rob Lowe, or any famous celebrity, I wouldn't know who they are unless it goes back to before 1981 when I had an airplane crash. If it goes back before then, I'll spot somebody, "Oh, I know that person."

I had to ask….did he ever forget Steve Jobs? “I didn’t have it when I knew him, so I would recognize his face!”

That would have been a hard one to forget.

As you will see in this interview, The Woz is an upbeat guy. I’m looking forward to seeing what the heck he and his wife come up with on this show!

Celebrity Watch Party can be seen Thursday nig ...