Let me tell you about my most recent experience in radio deejaying. I agreed to do a fill in show for the volunteer coordinator at our local NPR station on the condition that this was the last one I was going to agree to until I had my own show in a regular rotation. As is my wont I spent some hours putting together a play list in the ubiquitous mp3 management software which we all use, careful to make sure that every song said just exactly what I wanted it to say and every transition was either perfectly smooth or perfectly jarring depending on what I wanted to express at just that point in the program. I call this a play list, but really it's a document, a document of my soul. After these hours spent slaving away in search of musical perfection I loaded up the play list onto my name brand mp3 player and peddled on over to the station.
I was doing a 9 o'clock evening show which means there is only six minutes in which the studio is empty between the end of the previous deejay's program and the start of the next. These are six crucial minutes of set up time, as you can probably imagine. Just before going into the studio I pulled a few CDs off of the wall-o-music (a very small wall, mind you), you know, just in case my name brand mp3 player decided not to go. The CDs I selected were Oh, Perilous World by Rasputina, The Else by They Might Be Giants, and some awful album by some awful screamo-ish band called The Used. This pulling of backups is a habit I started while doing my first show because the universe likes to mess around with me from time to time and after all these years I've finally begun to recognize it.
As I sat down in front of the microphone, feeling cool, collected, and ridiculously attractive (not that this is of huge importance in the world of radio, but I'm trying to set the scene for you) I plugged in the mp3 player, set the board, put it in cue so only I could hear it and hit play. Nothing. Profound silence blared out of the head phones and into my ears. "Hmm, that's interesting," I thought and checked the connections. Still nothing. I played with the knobs, buttons, and sliders on the board. Nothing. I checked the little clock counting down to when I was supposed to come on the air. Two minutes and some odd seconds.
At just that point I panicked. I scrambled to load two discs into the CD players, dashed back to the wall-o-music to grab two LPs (Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, which I'd noticed just lying there earlier and a Billy Bragg album, the one with Power In the Union on it) and a couple more CDs (some new Joni Mitchell tribute album and the newest album by Of Montreal). With these in hand I dashed back to the studio just in time to hit play on the Rasputina album.
For the next couple of minutes (it was a long song) I sat in the chair, headphones only covering one ear, mouth to the microphone, just kind of thinking. I was thinking that this sucked and was probably only going to get worse, thinking how I was more than likely going to inadvertently play something the FCC would frown upon, and thinking how there was really no way out of the situation except to press on. I then steeled my resolve to see the damn thing through to the end and started scrambling to grab more music. I figured if I always stayed about three albums ahead of myself, then I'd be okay.
Highlights:
-Rather early on, with in the first half hour I believe, I was playing a song from the Of Montreal album called "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" when, there it was, like a clarion call that rang throughout the station, two 'farks' and a 'farking' all in the space of five seconds. I'd always assumed that immediately following that sort of thing the FCC would repel from the rooftop through the station windows, kick down the doors, and start lobbing tear gas at me before pulling a black bag over my head. This didn't happen, but that doesn't mean that it won't. Maybe they have a slower reaction time than I originally gave them credit for.
-I announced a song from the Joni Mitchell album, but instead played something by Chumbawumba. I then tried to play the Joni Mitchell song again, but played Bruce Springsteen, and the wrong Bruce Springsteen at that (I'd been trying for "Atlantic City" but ended up with "Rosalita").
-I played the wrong Dylan tune and then accidentally ejected it twice while trying to cue up the next album.
-I failed to read the weather during one break, read the same weather item twice during the next one, and said it was the wrong day of the week.
-I played an unholy musical trifecta which I announced as three of the greatest songs by three of the greatest bands of all time. I then played "All Out Of Love" from Airsupply's greatest hits, "Highway To The Danger Zone" from a Kenny Loggins retrospective, and "Eye Of The Tiger" from the Rocky soundtrack.
In the end I got through it. I was forced to play some awful, awful music, but what's the point of having a radio show if not to inflict objectionable music on others? The night wasn't done yet, however.
After I turned off all the lights and locked all the doors, I called a cab from the phone at the front desk and went outside to wait, locking the last door behind me. The cab driver had said it would take 15 minutes for him to get there (at this point I should point out that I live in a small town in sort-of-nowhere Alaska with only a few thousand other people and three cab companies so there isn't usually much of a hold time especially on a Tuesday in the middle of the night). I waited 30 minutes before sidling over to the bar next door to try again.
Now sidling over to a bar would normally be a very positive thing in my book, especially after a stressful couple of hours of "winging it," but I'd made the mistake of deciding to take some time off of the sauce and so I wasn't looking forward hanging out at a booze hole like this one. I asked the bar tender to call me another cab (this is all a result of me having lost my cell phone to a biking tragedy because I was feeling spacey and vaguely in love a few weeks ago). I waited 45 minutes. I asked the bartender if he'd be ever so kind as to call again. Meanwhile I was sitting at the bar with two really sorry drunks, nursing my H2o on the rocks, watching a Leonardo DiCaprio film, smoking too many cigarettes and feeling rather sorry for myself. Finally the cab came, but only after two hours and seventeen minutes (you'd better believe I was counting). The cab driver then had the chutzpah to ask me if I minded him dropping someone else off at a bar ten miles out of town before he took me home. "You're damn right I mind," I replied and then he still wanted to charge me full fare!
And so my night finally came to a close. It was almost two in the morning, I needed to be up for work at seven, and was convinced I was going to get banned from the radio forever (which hasn't happened yet, but if the FCC reaction time is less than lightning fast then the management of the station is more so) and I finally realized whose fault it all was. Here I had been blaming god, or whatever power it is in the universe that always likes making me look silly, but I was wrong (not that I was about to apologize!). My real tormentor was none other than David Dye. You see, the station manager wasn't sure if I'd show up so he set the board to play World Cafe Live just in case. Now it just so happens that World Cafe plays on the same channel as an mp3 player. Damn you, David Dye, damn you to hell...
I was doing a 9 o'clock evening show which means there is only six minutes in which the studio is empty between the end of the previous deejay's program and the start of the next. These are six crucial minutes of set up time, as you can probably imagine. Just before going into the studio I pulled a few CDs off of the wall-o-music (a very small wall, mind you), you know, just in case my name brand mp3 player decided not to go. The CDs I selected were Oh, Perilous World by Rasputina, The Else by They Might Be Giants, and some awful album by some awful screamo-ish band called The Used. This pulling of backups is a habit I started while doing my first show because the universe likes to mess around with me from time to time and after all these years I've finally begun to recognize it.
As I sat down in front of the microphone, feeling cool, collected, and ridiculously attractive (not that this is of huge importance in the world of radio, but I'm trying to set the scene for you) I plugged in the mp3 player, set the board, put it in cue so only I could hear it and hit play. Nothing. Profound silence blared out of the head phones and into my ears. "Hmm, that's interesting," I thought and checked the connections. Still nothing. I played with the knobs, buttons, and sliders on the board. Nothing. I checked the little clock counting down to when I was supposed to come on the air. Two minutes and some odd seconds.
At just that point I panicked. I scrambled to load two discs into the CD players, dashed back to the wall-o-music to grab two LPs (Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, which I'd noticed just lying there earlier and a Billy Bragg album, the one with Power In the Union on it) and a couple more CDs (some new Joni Mitchell tribute album and the newest album by Of Montreal). With these in hand I dashed back to the studio just in time to hit play on the Rasputina album.
For the next couple of minutes (it was a long song) I sat in the chair, headphones only covering one ear, mouth to the microphone, just kind of thinking. I was thinking that this sucked and was probably only going to get worse, thinking how I was more than likely going to inadvertently play something the FCC would frown upon, and thinking how there was really no way out of the situation except to press on. I then steeled my resolve to see the damn thing through to the end and started scrambling to grab more music. I figured if I always stayed about three albums ahead of myself, then I'd be okay.
Highlights:
-Rather early on, with in the first half hour I believe, I was playing a song from the Of Montreal album called "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" when, there it was, like a clarion call that rang throughout the station, two 'farks' and a 'farking' all in the space of five seconds. I'd always assumed that immediately following that sort of thing the FCC would repel from the rooftop through the station windows, kick down the doors, and start lobbing tear gas at me before pulling a black bag over my head. This didn't happen, but that doesn't mean that it won't. Maybe they have a slower reaction time than I originally gave them credit for.
-I announced a song from the Joni Mitchell album, but instead played something by Chumbawumba. I then tried to play the Joni Mitchell song again, but played Bruce Springsteen, and the wrong Bruce Springsteen at that (I'd been trying for "Atlantic City" but ended up with "Rosalita").
-I played the wrong Dylan tune and then accidentally ejected it twice while trying to cue up the next album.
-I failed to read the weather during one break, read the same weather item twice during the next one, and said it was the wrong day of the week.
-I played an unholy musical trifecta which I announced as three of the greatest songs by three of the greatest bands of all time. I then played "All Out Of Love" from Airsupply's greatest hits, "Highway To The Danger Zone" from a Kenny Loggins retrospective, and "Eye Of The Tiger" from the Rocky soundtrack.
In the end I got through it. I was forced to play some awful, awful music, but what's the point of having a radio show if not to inflict objectionable music on others? The night wasn't done yet, however.
After I turned off all the lights and locked all the doors, I called a cab from the phone at the front desk and went outside to wait, locking the last door behind me. The cab driver had said it would take 15 minutes for him to get there (at this point I should point out that I live in a small town in sort-of-nowhere Alaska with only a few thousand other people and three cab companies so there isn't usually much of a hold time especially on a Tuesday in the middle of the night). I waited 30 minutes before sidling over to the bar next door to try again.
Now sidling over to a bar would normally be a very positive thing in my book, especially after a stressful couple of hours of "winging it," but I'd made the mistake of deciding to take some time off of the sauce and so I wasn't looking forward hanging out at a booze hole like this one. I asked the bar tender to call me another cab (this is all a result of me having lost my cell phone to a biking tragedy because I was feeling spacey and vaguely in love a few weeks ago). I waited 45 minutes. I asked the bartender if he'd be ever so kind as to call again. Meanwhile I was sitting at the bar with two really sorry drunks, nursing my H2o on the rocks, watching a Leonardo DiCaprio film, smoking too many cigarettes and feeling rather sorry for myself. Finally the cab came, but only after two hours and seventeen minutes (you'd better believe I was counting). The cab driver then had the chutzpah to ask me if I minded him dropping someone else off at a bar ten miles out of town before he took me home. "You're damn right I mind," I replied and then he still wanted to charge me full fare!
And so my night finally came to a close. It was almost two in the morning, I needed to be up for work at seven, and was convinced I was going to get banned from the radio forever (which hasn't happened yet, but if the FCC reaction time is less than lightning fast then the management of the station is more so) and I finally realized whose fault it all was. Here I had been blaming god, or whatever power it is in the universe that always likes making me look silly, but I was wrong (not that I was about to apologize!). My real tormentor was none other than David Dye. You see, the station manager wasn't sure if I'd show up so he set the board to play World Cafe Live just in case. Now it just so happens that World Cafe plays on the same channel as an mp3 player. Damn you, David Dye, damn you to hell...
vanish:
this is an amazing story, thanks for sharing! perhaps the universe was simply training you to have back up prepared for ditzy (evil?) station managers hehe.
josephtoo:
I didn't learn my lesson. I still go in sans backup, but haven't had any major catastrophes...other than the show I did on gaza, got some angry callers there, but silenced them with my righteous, absurdly political rock and roll.