The Laughing Wolf

Radio Daze

I love the variety of music now available to me, and don't explore it as much as I should. I tend to find myself listening to the new Dave FM and Album 88, the latter being a student station. Listening has reminded me of a few things, so I decided I would bore you this morning with a memory.

I've done professional radio work, and got my start at a student station. Like Album 88, we played a lot of things. In retrospect, a lot of it is garbage, just like a lot of what is on Album 88 is garbage. No offense to them, as any station that will play Little Bunny Fu-Fu has moxie, but the fact is that a lot of the current new and cool will be tomorrow's dead and stinky.

Unlike what I have heard so far on Album 88, good 'ol WEGL in Auburn went off the air around 11 or midnight most nights. That was when we struck. There were several of us who would go in and "take over" the radio station and do what we called The Mercenary Hour. Formal programming was over. Requests and our own strange tastes ruled. The first song was usually either Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner or Airborne's Soldier Of Fortune and from there on out it was unscheduled, unsupervised, and a lot of fun. We would play tracks off various albums because no one was playing them; we would play whole albums so people could listen to all the songs; to the dismay of the Music Director, we sometimes went into his domain and got new albums and played them (or found where the forbidden albums were and would play them); we took requests from those who had to be up at odd hours working; we took requests from those up partying; and, we had fun. Anything went, and we would even pull out fun classical, jazz, and other genres, though most of it was rock.

Listening to the music and the good (and very bad) announcers on Album 88 has brought back a lot of very fun memories. Of watching another DJ hold a bulk eraser over a pre-programmed tape that the person who demanded it be played could not be bothered to come in to do. The results were spectaular, trippy, and got a frantic phone call to "PULL IT OFF!" The music the other DJ (and I) wanted to play had already been cued for about 10 minutes at that point, so we speedily complied with the order. Of the problems I had pronouncing Martina's last name. Of hazing new announcers (news in particular) by painting the window of the news or music booth with rubber cement and lighting it while they were on the air. Of a few other things we won't go into.

Thanks for the memories Album 88. Thanks also for the different music and the variety of music played.

-30-