Review for The Loop Files

 This one on Facebook blew me away...

Paul Mcvay

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Rarely will you ever see a post from me telling you to buy a book other than the books my company publishes, But If you grew up listening to radio in Chicago between 1977 and 1998, you are undoubtedly already aware of The Loop FM 98.

It was unlike any other experience in radio. Not just the music that was played but the voices that accompanied and championed that music. As the years passed, The Loop transformed itself from a Rock music powerhouse to a Talk/Comedy and Sports powerhouse that saw more success with each format tweak across two separate AM & FM stations.

Rick Kaempfer's The Loop Files (Eckhartz Press-350 pgs.-2023) covers those groundbreaking years with an intimate style. Ditching the worn-out approach that other books covering similar subject matter have taken, Kaempfer lays out the relevant twenty-year history of the radio station, its on-air staff, and the behind-the-scenes personnel (who, more often than not, were just as responsible for the success of both versions of The Loop) in a deft and personal way that places us, the former listener, in some rarified-air where we can re-live those radio experiences again with some considerable back-story.

Layed out in first person, told by the guys and gals who were there, the book is an immediate time capsule of what happened during those years, and no punches are pulled. It is exactly what we wanted, and because Rick Kaempfer is a former Jock and producer at The Loop, his access to those that worked in front of the mic, or way behind it in a tape-filled, cramped postage-stamped sized office, is unprecedented.

The Loop Files is the elegy all die-hard Loop FM 98 fans deserve and have been waiting for since 2018, when the station was practically given away during owner Cumulus Radio's bankruptcy. The truth is, the absolute heyday of The Loop happened during the years Rick Kaempfer documents in this book, and he does a tremendous job of letting his interview subjects tell that story in full. It reads as a labor of love written by a listener who became an employee and now wants to share that knowledge with anyone who ever was entertained by listening to The Loop.

I was, as was a common moniker back then, a "Loyal Looper" from 1979 until 1996 or so. The Loop Files jogged many memories for me, not just about the on-air/off-air happenings at my favorite radio station but about things that were happening in my personal life at the time. I made crank calls to Steve & Garry in 1986 (which I recorded), delivered produce "live" on the air to Kevin Matthews in 1990, and made the arduous trek down to Navy Pier to visit The Loop store to buy hats and shirts. The Loop was a social network way before "social network" was a phrase. Rick Kaempfer's The Loop Files, brought all of those wonderful memories back and supplemented them with new insight into the radio station that rocked Chicago!

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9Paul and 8 others