Best New Band Ronda and the Arrivals 1989 Pittsburgh

This is a bizarre one. 1989 "In Pittsburgh" Music Awards. Ronda and the Arrivals wins Best New Band beating out Permanent Wink, Six Gun Jury, The Waterhammers and...wait, it's a CBS News Special Report with Dan Rather telling us he doesn't really know any details about an earthquake that just hit San Francisco...Must have rushed Rather to air to beat the competition (and tell viewers that they don't know anything). The shot is poorly framed, bad lighting and they have Danny reading it from paper instead of teleprompter. But back to the show...Ronda is seen accepting the award so we know they won. Donnie Iris and B.E. Taylor presented the category. CBS broke in again later - Dan in a nicer suit, better news set and more details. The rest of the awards show was essentially pre-empted. So KDKA pre-empted network that night for the first ever televised Pgh music award show only to be pre-empted by network.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• WDVE
• Graffiti
• The Decade
• BE Taylor
• Ronda Zegarelli
• Donnie Iris
• WXXP
• In Pittsburgh Music awards
• Dan Rather
• earthquake
• LA earthquake 1989
• CBS news

[darkrazor99]

@RadioFreeSpike Six Gun Jury morphed into Spinning Jenny and then Orange Velvet Chairs in the 90's and early 2000's, with the same principle songwriters of Ray McLaughlin and Mark Urbano in all of those bands. Then in around 2005 or so, McLaughlin spun off into his own solo project Chancellorpink, which was actually named after one of the songs that got the most WPTS airplay, and that band has done pretty well too.

[RadioFreeSpike]

I lived in the 'burgh from 87-88, when the Affordable Floors were big. Of those bands, only Six Gun Jury sound familiar; they were getting airplay on WPTS.

Did any of those bands go on for long, or did they fade into the mist of time?

[puttputtking]

Dang! That CBS News Special Report background kind of scares me and I'm 22. It's just all the red in the background that kind of scares me. Anyway, I agree with weatherexpert2, if you have the CBS News Special Report/Coverage that followed this, I too would actually like to see that.

[weatherexpert2]

Do you have the CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT/COVERAGE that followed this?

[btm85bubs]

This aired on Tuesday, October 17, 1989. The earthquake that struck San Francisco on that date was one of the most significant American quakes of the past 20 years. A few minutes after this aired, CBS probably came back on with extended coverage.