About

The Final Taxi has been blogging and podcasting since early 2006.

Jeff Burson was born August 23rd in the late 60’s in Birmingham, Alabama. Growing up at the end of the Civil Rights movement, Jeff saw many things change. He does remember the tension between races. The name calling and anti- black statements even rang out in church he went to. Jeff recalls the preacher telling “black” jokes before the sermon on Sunday. Even at 6 years old he knew something was not right about that.

During the first years of school Jeff stood back and watched. Then at 15 his parent moved to Death Valley California to a town called Trona. There he met the niece of game-show host Bob Eubanks and he fell in love. Several movies and TV shows were filmed there and Jeff was in several. His girlfriend took him to several auditions and he was in crowds scenes in the Six-Million Dollar Man and other police shows.

As he got older Jeff was in a few other films, and most notable, one called “Fear No Evil.” He knew people who where going back to Alabama to shoot a film and as his parents were moving back there he went too. He was in a Osmond TV movie called “Kent State” shot in Gadsden Alabama.

He also worked part-time as a DJ at a radio station playing new punk and new wave songs. His on-air name was “Ron Nastie”. It fit with music artists like Johnny Rotten, Richard Hell, or Sid Vicious becoming popular.

He continued to work in films and then was hired by a theater chain to help in their new midnight movies. Jeff had a blast pulling odd cult films and rock and roll documentaries to air beside the classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Warner Brothers Films saw this run and made it a package to sell to other theatres during this time. It was a hit. Several theaters made more money on midnight movies than the regular run film they had.

It was during this time that Jeff’s first child was born.

Video players had not started to surface yet but as they did the older films where now not as popular. Jeff saw a chance and went in with a partner to run a small chain of video rental stores in a town on the Gulf coast. It was a great idea as the vacationers needed something to do while it rained on them.

One of his friends from the early years of films was in Florida to shoot a movie as asked Jeff to star in the film The Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space. Jeff looked at the script and turned it down. He knew he did the right thing.

Jeff moved on and worked for the local UHF station as a download engineer.

Then an Alabama TV network needed help and Jeff and his wife and child moved back to Birmingham.

Jeff has worked there over 20 years and had two more children since.

With the TV network, Jeff was able to use his satellite knowledge and rent out their satellite truck. This was a source for extra income for the TV network.

Jeff has worked for CNN, ESPN, NBC, ABC, FX (Foxnews), Weather Channel and more. He was worked with Oprah, Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jesse Raphael and other talks shows. In tabloid he has worked with “Inside Edition”, “A Current Affair”, and “Hard Copy.”

The worst event he had to help cover was for ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel. It was the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Jeff started building websites in 1996 as he was interested in the internet as saw what it could become.

In June of 2006 Jeff Burson decided to create a new podcast using his name Ron.

With his love of music, movies and TV he thought a podcast of that would be fun but a review of those were being done. One of the things he has always done is it to see who has died and share that knowledge with co-workers and family.

It seemed like a good idea for a internet radio show. Jeff wanted to call it the Morgue and to pretend to be someone who works there..

Burson after the first show thought the name Final Taxi was better. The final taxi is the last ride that you pay for and there is only on destination- the graveyard.

It stuck. After a few shows it got an audience. In October of 2006 Burson got the idea to do a daily show during Halloween week. It was hard work but Jeff did the research and it paid off.

During that time, the New York Daily News highlighted the audio podcast.

After that several other newspapers picked it up. Also iTunes highlighted it on their main podcast page.

The Final Taxi continues to roll out with weekly audio show and a daily blog on WordPress.
The blog recently was noted as one of the top 25 growing blog on WordPress .

Jeff worked for a while on a radio show called Electronic Warfare, under his Ron name, on a station called Fried Green Radio. This was a 3 hour show playing Industrial and Goth music.

He also owned a Catholic Music distribution website where he did design work and wrote reviews. This also lead to designing several other non-profit websites.

Jeff works part-time with an outdoor movie company showing films in the park. It is called Flix and Backyard Movie Parties.

His blog, The Final taxi, has been picked up by a newspaper ( http://www.al.com/blogs) and he is open for other newspapers as well.

In November of 2010 the Final Taxi hit home and Burson’s youngest child passed away in her sleep. It was hard to write for a while but then a new love entered his life and he has started writing again.