Illinois Entertainer October 2014 | Seite 20

By Rick Kaempfer WE ARE ILLINI, WE ARE WPGU I www.fitzgeraldsnightclub.com F R I D AY, O C T O B E R 3 Celebrate Oktoberfest the FitzGerald's way with an evening of western swing, rockabilly, traditional country and good ole rock 'n' roll. Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys with Red Elvises and Kory Quinn F R I D AY, O C T O B E R 1 0 Legendary Dream Syndicate vocalist in the Sidebar Steve Wynn plus Expo '76 have a confession to make. I'm an Illini. It happened many years ago, and I don't often speak of it in public, but it's true. And I'm not alone. We're all around you. There are dozens of us working in Chicago media today. You know their names. You know their faces. But until now, you probably didn't know that without a certain radio station in Champaign-Urbana (WPGU), these fellow Illini probably wouldn't have made it in the cutthroat media world. The man in the photo is radio personality Rick O'Dell. You've heard him on the radio in Chicago for the past thirty years spinning smooth jazz, but have you ever seen him in his pre-smooth days? Working at WPGU radio was more than ju