LehighValley.FM adds a third show on Tuesday night. Ron Serafin, known on the air as Ron the Paisan, brings Radio Daze to the station every Tuesday from 7 to 10 p.m., starting Tuesday, Sept. 29: three hours of doo-wop, classic rock, soul, deep album cuts and Led Zeppelin bootlegs, hosted live from his home in Lower Saucon Township. Listen free at LehighValley.com/radio.
“DJing on the air is my therapy, I just love it,” Serafin said. “A long time dream come true.” He has been on internet radio since 2004, he has run a mobile DJ business since 2016, and he has been collecting records since he was about 10 years old. The count now runs to roughly 1,800 albums, well over 1,000 CDs, hundreds of 45s and more than 1,000 78s, a good share of it inherited from his father. The equipment is vintage too: a 1959 Kaiser hi-fi console, a German radio and turntable cabinet that he had reworked in 2018, and his father’s Benjamin Miracord turntable from 1964. “I’m crazy but it’s fun,” he said. “I’ve become a home for wayward vinyl and stereo equipment.”
The Show
Radio Daze is not built around one decade or one genre. “My shows will be a mix of many different styles of music,” Serafin said, and the list of things he wants to do is already long: tunes from the 60s, 70s and 80s, classic soul, great female artists, shows built on live recordings, and shows built on American rock bands through the years. One idea is a night of songs and groups led by keyboard players. Another is a Billy Joel and Elton John show. Another is a Zeppelin, Stones, Beatles and Who show, and he has Zeppelin bootleg material he has been waiting to share.
The one he explains most carefully is the deep cuts show. “I would play one of the well known songs from the album, the hit,” he said. “Follow it by a deep cut that we don’t hear on the radio.”
A Woodstock show is a certainty, because of how many great performances came out of those sets. A disco dance show is a maybe. A Christmas show is a given when December comes. He wants to work in music from local artists here and there. And he is planning a weekly visit to his father’s collection, one classic 45 or 78 every show. “There is just so much I would love to share,” he said.
Where “Ron the Paisan” Came From
The name was not his idea. In 2004, newly signed to his first internet station, he was talking it over with his co-workers. “I said, I need a cool radio name,” Serafin said. “One of the guys piped up, Ron the Paisan. I decided that was cool. So I went with it and have kept it going all of these years.”
A Newspaper Left in a Bathroom Stall
His radio career started with litter. In November 2004 he went to the bathroom at work and somebody had left a section of the Newark Star-Ledger in the stall. In it was an article about a new internet radio station, HomeGrownRadioNJ, that was looking for DJs.
Being on the air had always been the dream, so he emailed the owner, Todd, and assumed that was the end of it. “Much to my surprise, on Monday morning there was an email from Todd saying, let’s get together and see where we can fit you in,” Serafin said. They settled on Sunday mornings, 8 to 11, at the station in Blairstown, New Jersey. Todd showed him how to get into the system, since he would be the first one on every Sunday, and then turned up in person for his first show on Dec. 5, 2004 to make sure he did everything right.
The first song he ever played on the air was “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley.
He spent four years at HomeGrownRadioNJ, put in a couple of years at a station called Oldies Plus, and has been with the Doo Wop Cafe since 2008. Twenty-two years in, the appeal has not worn off. “Getting to spin tunes on the air, announcing songs and talking a bit about the music,” he said. “I get to bring something out of myself that’s hidden inside and can come out to play.”
Radio Daze is a deliberate change of pace from the doo-wop shows he is known for. He expects to talk more about the records themselves, where he found them and why they stuck. “Sometimes I’ll even tell stories about what these songs mean to me,” he said. “Getting to open up a bit about my musical tastes.”
Every Family Party Turned Into a Doo-Wop Festival
Serafin was born in Brooklyn to a family that treated records as part of the furniture. His parents, aunts and uncles all loved the same music. “Every family party turned into a doo-wop festival,” he said. His father had a deep and unusually varied collection, and it was always playing. By about age 10 the music had taken.
Growing up in the 1970s he listened to New York rock radio, WPLJ and WNEW, but the car was for oldies, and that meant WCBS-FM. His wife Sandy, he notes, has put up with the obsession since they started dating.
Asked for the doo-wop records everyone should hear, he named six: “Sincerely” by the Moonglows, “In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins, “The Glory of Love” by the Five Keys, “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance” by the Solitaires, “A Thousand Miles Away” by the Heartbeats, and classic 1950s Elvis.
His father died in 2012, and his records and CDs came to Serafin. Dad was a Sinatra man above all, and there were loads of Sinatra records to work through. But the album that means the most is the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing the songs it recorded for the movies. “As a kid I would bug my dad to play it so I could hear Chattanooga Choo Choo,” he said. “Love that song.”
The 78s came from everywhere, including a few boxes handed over by a former co-worker that turned out to hold, in his words, some crazy ancient records. The oldest dates to 1908. He no longer remembers the artist. The ones that matter most to him are easier to name: “The Glory of Love” by the Five Keys, “Earth Angel” by the Penguins, “The House I Live In” by Frank Sinatra, “In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins, and Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” backed with “Don’t Be Cruel.”
Two Rolls of Film, Zero Pictures
He was 14 when the family went to see Elvis Presley at Nassau Coliseum in 1975. What he remembers first is the noise. “The women went crazy, the yelling and screaming,” he said. His mother and his aunts ran the aisle to get close to the stage.
The family had a designated photographer that night. His former aunt JoAnn had bought an impressive 35mm camera and told everyone else to leave theirs at home. She spent the concert shooting away at the stage, two rolls of film, certain she was getting the shots of a lifetime. She could see fine through the viewfinder. The lens cap never came off. Two rolls of film, zero pictures.
Two years later he was at Madison Square Garden for the last night of Led Zeppelin’s June 1977 run, June 14, with a couple of friends. He had been looking forward to it for weeks. Before the band came on, the house music played, and every time a song ended the whole Garden cheered, then sagged as another one started. Zeppelin came on late, which surprised nobody. Then the lights went out, the place went up, and Jimmy Page went into “The Song Remains the Same.”
What stayed with him was the acoustic set in the middle. The band pulled up four stools and played the quieter material: “The Battle of Evermore,” “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp,” “Black Country Woman,” “Going to California.” John Paul Jones took an organ solo inside “No Quarter.” John Bonham played “Over the Top,” which Serafin notes was “Moby Dick” under a different name, and when he switched from sticks to bare hands the crowd came apart. Page worked his bow inside a green pyramid of lights. “Kashmir” and “Stairway to Heaven” closed the set.
The encore nearly did not happen well. “Some idiot threw fireworks on stage and hit Jimmy Page in the hand, he was not happy,” Serafin said. The band finished anyway with a short “Whole Lotta Love” and “Rock and Roll.” “An amazing night.”
Just A DJ Away
The mobile DJ business started with a reunion and a sentence from his wife. They were back in their old New Jersey town, and his former classmate Bobby G was working the party as the DJ. Sandy watched for a while and told Ron he should be doing what Bobby was doing. “I said, who are you and what have you done with my wife,” Serafin said. He teamed up with a friend, started buying equipment, and Just A DJ Away opened in 2016.
Ten years of parties and bars later, the moment he picks out happened at a barn wedding near Quakertown. He had handled the ceremony music through a big open doorway, and once everyone came inside there was no room to turn his setup around, so he worked the reception with his back to the room. Head down, cueing the next song, he turned around and found the dance floor packed. “Made me happy,” he said.
The request he is proudest of came from a man at a bar who had been asking DJs for the same song for years and had never once heard it played. Serafin found it on YouTube and played it. The man came back with a $20 tip for making his night.
That is roughly his whole philosophy of the job. “I don’t rip people off, I like to give a good show,” he said. “People let me know what they want to hear and I put together a playlist based on their likes and requests.” In June he worked the wedding of his friend Joe’s daughter, who handed him a playlist that included “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” He has a bit with that one, a duet he has performed with a regular at the Wanderers in Bethlehem, him on the guy’s part and her on the girl’s. At the wedding he recruited the groom’s sister to sing it with him instead. She loved it. “The party needs to be fun,” he said, “and special events like a wedding, birthday or anniversary need to be about the people, their wants and special songs.”
Just A DJ Away has a page on Facebook, and he can be reached through Facebook Messenger under Ron Serafin or by email at rollo555@yahoo.com.
Brooklyn to Lower Saucon
Serafin is 65. He grew up in Brooklyn, loved it, and had a large circle of friends and an extended family to match, 31 first cousins in all. He went to Christ the King High School in Middle Village, Queens, and was most of the way through when his parents decided to move to New Jersey. Leaving was hard.
What he found in Lyndhurst, in September 1977, was a new school for his junior year, a new set of friends, and a girl named Sandy in his algebra class. They got engaged at Christmas 1983 and married on May 10, 1986. He worked days and took night classes for years, finishing at Kean College in 1990.
That same year the couple bought a townhouse in Hellertown, and in March 1991 they moved to Pennsylvania for good. A house in Lower Saucon Township followed in December 2001. Their son Anthony was born in 1998, went through Saucon Valley schools, graduated from Temple University in 2021, and got engaged to Claudia Engels, a Jersey girl, in June 2026. Anthony found Ohio State football in 2008, which his father takes some credit for, and since 2011 the two have made an annual trip to Columbus for a game.
Serafin worked at Lucent Technologies starting in 1998 and spent 15 years at BASF from 2007. When KaMin, the performance minerals company based in Macon, Georgia, acquired his group from BASF in 2022, he stayed with it, and he is there still.
Asked what the Lehigh Valley means to him after 35 years, he kept it plain: a nice place to live and a good place to raise his son. What he is looking forward to is playing for the people in it. “They’ll get to hear the crazy Brooklyn boy having fun and spinning awesome tunes,” he said.
The Third Show on This Station
When we launched LehighValley.FM in August, the argument was that this region deserves a station programmed by people who actually live here. Al Gilotti brought 50 Odd Years to Monday nights a few weeks later, and Tim Neiman brought his interview show Straight Lines to the station in September.
Radio Daze is the third, and it fills Tuesday night with the widest brief yet: a record collector with 22 years on the air playing across doo-wop, soul, classic rock and whatever his father’s 78s turn up, from a house in Lower Saucon.
The stream is free, with no app and no account. Open LehighValley.com/radio in any browser, or go to LehighValley.FM, and press play. The player keeps running as you move around the rest of the site, and there is a request form on the radio page if you want to hear something specific while he is on the air.
At a Glance
The show: Radio Daze with Ron the Paisan
When: Tuesdays, 7 to 10 p.m., live
Starts: Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026
The host: Ron Serafin of Lower Saucon Township, on internet radio since 2004
Sounds like: doo-wop, classic soul, classic rock, the 60s through the 80s, deep album cuts, live recordings, Zeppelin bootlegs, local artists
Planned theme shows: deep cuts, Woodstock, Billy Joel and Elton John, Zeppelin and the Stones and the Beatles and the Who, keyboard players, great female artists, a weekly 45 or 78 from his father’s collection, Christmas in December
Radio history: HomeGrownRadioNJ from December 2004, Oldies Plus, and the Doo Wop Cafe since 2008
First song he ever played on air: “Jailhouse Rock,” Elvis Presley, Dec. 5, 2004
The collection: about 1,800 albums, more than 1,000 CDs, hundreds of 45s, more than 1,000 78s, the oldest from 1908
Shows he was at: Elvis Presley at Nassau Coliseum in 1975, Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden on June 14, 1977
Day job: KaMin, formerly BASF, where he has worked since 2007
Book him: Just A DJ Away on Facebook, Messenger under Ron Serafin, or rollo555@yahoo.com
Where: LehighValley.FM, streaming free at LehighValley.com/radio
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