Once upon a time there was the radio station WLUP, and what a wild place it was

The radio, one of the niftiest inventions of the 20th century, has been informing, entertaining, outraging and boring millions of people for more than 100 years.

It was called “magic in a box” by Col. Robert R. McCormick, the owner of the Chicago Tribune who gave the world the venerable WGN-AM 720. I have to wonder what McCormick might have called radio had he lived long enough to hear the inspired antics, creative flights and outrageous pranks of such radio performers as Steve Dahl, Garry Meier, Jonathon Brandmeier, Kevin Matthews and the dozens of others on air and behind the scenes who helped define and make a ratings success of the Chicago radio station WLUP-97.9 FM “The Loop.”

Remember when Danny Bonaduce boxed Donny Osmond at the China Club? Were you there when Brandmeier and his band the Leisure Suits sold out Poplar Creek? Is there an old, tattered Loop T-shirt, so alluringly worn in ads (and in person) by Lorelei Shark, in your closet? What about hearing adult film star Seka, or mind-reading Joe Who?

It’s all there, and so much more, in a new book, “The Loop Files: An Oral History of the Most Outrageous Radio Station Ever.” It is the creation of Rick Kaempfer, who worked as a producer at WLUP as a young man. He met his wife at the station, was a show host for a bit and has written about the media for decades. He is the author of fiction and nonfiction books and, in collaboration with David Stern, publishes them too, through their Eckhartz Press, giving us books by such locals as John Landecker, Bobby Skafish, Chet Coppock, Joel Daly, Rich King and Roger Badesch. He has made a movie, “More Please,” about Matthews’ band Ed Zeppelin.

Kaempfer writes, “When I heard in 2018 that the Loop was signing off … I walked down memory lane for a good week or two with former colleagues. … I could tell that everyone was getting as emotional as I was.”

So, over five years he went about the business of interviewing dozens of people for this book, most of the important players and a number of people who you might never have encountered. Some of these interviews took place years ago, as part of Kaempfer’s writing for the Illinois Entertainer, where he currently writes a monthly media column.

He highlights the years 1977 to 1998 because after the station was sold to Bonneville International Corporation, it became “more conventional. … The craziness, the madness and the historic nature of events never quite reached the same level.”

As one who worked for a bit for WLUP (hosting a Sunday morning show and the daily “Media Creatures” program with Richard Roeper and Kathy Voltmer), as well having been a WGN host for a couple of decades, I know many of those in this book, admire a few. Though the era covered here was certainly one peppered with, as the saying goes, “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” only the final member of that trio is covered in detail, the sex and drug elements of this era might not have even existed.

That is more than understandable since most of those in the book have reached a certain age and surely not interested in sharing stories of the first two. Nothing wrong with that. This is a respectful book.

I do wish it contained some new information about what was the most prominent explosion in the station’s history: the 1993 fracture for keeps of the Dahl-Meier team in the wake of Meier’s marriage and honeymoon

This is a bit of what we get.

Dahl from 1993: “Maybe we said some stuff we shouldn’t have said while he was gone but certainly none of it should be enough to induce him to quit.”

Meier from 1996: “I could not understand the venom and hostility. But that was merely the final straw.”

Dahl now has a podcast (www.dahl.com), as does Meier (garrymeier.com) and Brandmeier (brandmeiershow.com). Kevin Matthews is busy in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

One of the most welcome voices in the book is that of Paul Natkin, the photographer who has been following Dahl and Meier from the early days of their partnership, when he observed, “People loved the music, but it was the personalities that really clicked the most.” He tells a great anecdote about why Jerry Seinfeld refused to go on air, and many of his photographs embellish the book’s lavishly illustrated pages.

Also enlightening are former WLUP execs Jim de Castro and Larry Wert, who gave their talent the room to experiment. But, says de Castro, “It was difficult to preserve through all the ups and downs.” Says Wert, “It was fun and funny. And it was authentically Chicago. And everyone’s fed off each other, warts and all and the audience became part of it. I don’t think we’ve celebrated the Loop fans … as much as we should have … (they) helped make the Loop what it was.”

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The White Sox scoreboard message "Please return to your seats" goes unheeded as thousands of spectators engulf the field during an anti-disco demonstration at Comiskey Park. (Hank DeGeorge, UPI)

There is a surprising lack of bitterness peppering the book and that allows it to evoke generally pleasant memories, if not so much for Disco Demolition in 1979 at Comiskey Park than of your own freewheeling youth.

And if this fine book doesn’t satisfy you, know that a film-production company created by veteran producer Bob Teitel and Wert is in the early stages of making a documentary about the station, which operated from the 37th floor of what was called the Hancock Center.

That was where, as Seka put it, “We would have spank fests on our show. If people wanted to be spanked, they’d come in and get spanked. … We let the freak flag fly, and we weren’t ashamed of what we did.”

Different times.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com