He vowed to remain on the air until the Orioles won a game. In the spring of 1988, at Baltimore radio station "98 Rock" WIYY-FM, as a lead morning show personality between 19, Bob Rivers gained national attention for an 11-day, on-the-air marathon during a Baltimore Orioles losing streak. Twisted Christmas was certified a gold record. In 1987, Rivers released Twisted Christmas, which contained the Christmas music radio hit " Twelve Pains of Christmas", a parody of the holiday standard " The Twelve Days of Christmas". It went on to be included on Volume 2 of The Rhino Brothers Present the World's Worst Records and had a music video produced by Steve Rotfeld for Bob Uecker's Wacky World of Sports. He followed it up with "Just a Big Ego," a parody of David Lee Roth's version of " Just a Gigolo". The song was sung to the tune of Neil Sedaka's #1 1962 hit " Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" and peaked at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop music chart.
telecommunications company AT&T's Bell System. One of the first parodies he produced was "Breakin' Up Is Hard On You", about the lawsuit and the resulting Bell System divestiture, the court ordered split up of U.S.
WAAF Bob and Zip īob Rivers spent almost six years at WAAF in Worcester, Massachusetts (in the Boston market), as part of their successful Bob and Zip morning show with fellow on-air personality Peter "Zip" Zipfel.ĭuring his tenure with WAAF, Rivers started producing parody and novelty songs, both for the station and for the KATZ/Newcity " American Comedy Network", a radio syndication service that provided comedy material to local U.S. Rivers got his start as disc jockey in Connecticut, where he was heard on WAVZ, WNHC, WCDQ, WELI, WFIF, WCCC-FM, WWCO, and WLIS. He got his first paying radio job when he was 16, but reputedly was fired for playing too much Led Zeppelin. He also started a high-school radio show. At the age of 15, he released a bootleg AM broadcast from the basement of his family's home (a prank which his mother put a stop to). He knew from an early age that he wanted to be on radio. He has a brother, Michael, fifteen years younger. ) He is the eldest of several children in his family next in line is Beth, and his other three sisters are Patty, a school teacher, Mary, and Catherine.
(His father was the head of a utility company. On the air, he occasionally referred to the work ethic and competitive streak he learned from his parents. Rivers was born in Branford, Connecticut on July 7, 1956, and raised as a Catholic. 12 Critical acclaim for The Bob Rivers Show.7 KJR-FM The Bob Rivers Show with Bob, Spike and Joe.