SHORT STORY INTRODUCTION

This first piece originated as a gift for my daughter. I wanted her to know what her daddy did before she was born. It started as bullet points and grew into something that is now 22 pages and counting. It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written that didn’t involve academia. My quiet hope is to do for radio what Anthony Bourdain did for restaurant kitchens. In time, I hope to give her a much more detailed story with chapters about each radio job I’ve held. For now, this opening segment will suffice.

Can my work help your business? Contact me!

“THE LAST PICK”

2024

It was the final segment of the final show of my first paid rock-radio DJ job. I was in the “dollar-a-holler,” non-rated market of San Luis Obispo, CA, and needed to play one last song before leaving the building and then leaving town. New owners were imminent and rumor was… everyone… EVERYONE… would be fired. I, however, had a safety net. A confirmed job with friends was waiting for me at a station down the coast in the MUCH larger market of San Diego. This rare combination of circumstances afforded me an extraordinary level of on-air freedom. So… what to do with my final ten minutes?

The current owners were packed and virtually gone. Perhaps that’s why they allowed me to continue my airshifts even after I gave two-week’s notice – something unheard-of in broadcasting, and even weirder considering my tumultuous 17-month relationship with them. They apparently just didn’t care anymore and so I, apparently, had nothing to lose. I could play any song I wanted and literally be miles away before it ended.

Should I stick to the playlist and be safe? Go snarky with “The Last Worthless Evening,” a new one from Don Henley? Try sincerity with “Goodbye Baby So Long,” a personal fave by the hip but relatively unknown LA band The Blasters? Risk the station’s broadcast license with “Starfucker,” an untouchable album cut by The Rolling Stones? So many choices. TOO many choices. Having mulled the issue for two weeks, this last pick for was coming down to a game-day decision.

– –

The California Central Coast evening was surprisingly warm for this mid-November night in 1989. Several air staffers had dropped by to deliver good wishes with varying degrees of zeal. Due to the station’s imminent sale, everyone was struggling to stay employed or at least keep their options open. Mostly these visitors kept their cards close, being congratulatory but cool. One “well-wisher” – the latest program director – was emerging as the station’s unanimously agreed-upon twit. Several months prior, glancing up from my mic during a Saturday night show, I saw him down the vacant hallway on one of his stoned, late-night station visits, stealing a half-dozen rolls of toilet paper. This guy was my boss? Yes, yes, he was. Arriving this evening, he immediately hit me up for work. “Once you get set up at KGB next week, call me, okay?” Overhearing this tone-deaf request, Paul, the overnight guy who would ultimately have a bigger major-market career than any of us, just smirked. “Um, no,” he said. That was easy.

Mercifully, the two decent sales guys, Mike and Tom, also stopped by…with beer. “Decent sales guys.” That’s a rare thing for a DJ to say. The fictional WKRP airtime salesman Herb Tarlick was closer to reality than most people know, but Mike and Tom, KPGA’s salesmen, were nothing like that. They were both solid, as new to their gigs as I was to mine, as we all were, and they loved their jobs for the same reason we all did: the rock’n’roll. It seemed appropriate to allow myself a bottle (just one), as their client, the local Coors bottler, was the sponsor of my nightly all-request feature, “The Coors Six-Pack.” Across all the stations in all the markets I would work, this was the only time I drank on-air. Even with one beer, I felt off-balance.

My girlfriend of the moment was also in the hallway. Her presence was probably what affected me most that night. “Tangerine,” as she called herself, was forbidden from the station during working hours as she tended to be a distraction. Having been on the air enough already, even if only in San Luis Obispo and at my San Diego State college station, I knew I needed maximum focus to pull off this “pro” stuff… even if it was a micro-market. Though not many, there actually were listeners and commercial dollars at stake. Mistakes on the air mattered. And “pro” barely covers it: I was making less than $1,200 per month. Even in 1989, that sucked. Nevertheless, in the interest of protecting whatever future my career may have had, off-air distractions were to be avoided no matter how welcoming they might be.

In radio, it was considered emotional Russian roulette at best – and genuinely deadly at worst – to become real-life friends with anyone met via the request lines. The real-life murder of Denver radio talkshow host Alan Berg in 1984 and the fictional story of Clint Eastwood’s “Play Misty For Me” held permanent real estate in the head of every radio performer in America, whether they admitted it or not. There was a line, subtle but very much present, between radio people and their audience. As the old saying goes, “Here, thar be monsters.”

Relationships with audience members were seen as questionable professional judgement. There were numerous stories where they lead to stalkers, restraining orders and other shitstorms often affecting not just you but your coworkers. Nevertheless, in an industry filled with essentially lonely people, friends are occasionally made and relationships sometimes consummated. “Good luck with that,” was the usual cynical hallway response. And it was indeed over the request lines – with her constantly asking for the Led Zeppelin song of the same name – that I, an insecure, lonely and inexperienced 25-year-old, met “Tangerine.”

As conventional wisdom would have predicted, she was a deeply troubled girl, having at 19 already taken enough LSD for a lifetime. Our relationship, indeed, prolonged by my profound loneliness, served to bring home the adage I’d already heard and would hear again at station after station: Never. Date. Listeners. In the final review, even with her rare moments of sobriety-inspired kindness and good humor, as well as her parents’ warm acceptance, the intense desperation and darkness she carried scared me. I recognized it, sure. But in my long-form emotional state, I didn’t care. I knowingly took the risk.

It was almost midnight, and the end of my final Central Coast show loomed. I was less than 12 hours from U-Haul time and, with some relief, establishing a separate geographic base of operations from Tangerine. I felt sick about it but I knew what I had to do. This SLO beginning had all the hallmarks of a promising career, for which I’d already put in years of preparation. It was much too early to consider either staying put or partnering up.

With all this churning around me, the night was turning out surprisingly well. As the only staffer to move from another market to take their job, I’d always felt like an outsider amongst my coworkers who were SLO locals. I hadn’t expected any sort of send-off. But with in-studio visitors and well-wishers on the request lines, I was at a loss and quietly pleased – though not enough to change my mind. 

Now, how to sign off from this 17-month experiment in self-sufficiency, patience, pain, exhilaration, frustration, diplomacy, creativity and growth? It was 11:50pm. What song should I play as my final pick?

Can my work help your business? Contact me!

– – – – –

SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS/FACEBOOK

I don’t go long on social media posts. Honestly, I don’t post much at all anymore. On occasion, though, I am able to tell a decent story and evoke a unique time and place. With these two posts, I was moved to not just write something but to leave a written record of where my head was at during each event. Sure enough, these posts come back every year as Facebook “memories” and I’m glad they do.

“ON THE PASSING OF THE WHO’S JOHN ENTWHISTLE”  

JUNE 27, 2017

I remember that day well. I was a part-timer doing a midday fill-in air shift at a station in San Bernardino, California, that did not play the Who. The general manager, an odd little man who seemed to make it a point to never speak to me, this time took the opportunity and seemed weirdly gleeful in sharing his news in the hallway outside the air studio.

I was in the process of organizing the “Lunch Blocks” feature for the noon hour. We played requests for blocks of music by the same band, the “chooser” winning free lunch and getting to hear themselves on the air if I could reach and record them in advance (never live!). Upon hearing about Entwhistle, I quickly reorganized and began desperately free-associating about how to pay tribute to a man whose music was not actually available to me in the studio. Ultimately, I played a set of the Offspring, specifically closing out with their song “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” An oblique reference to the Who’s “The Kids Are Alright” was as close as I could come. It wasn’t satisfying but it gave a tiny bit of context by which I could bring up Entwhistle’s passing on the air and talk about his brilliance.

John Entwhistle was the best bass player in rock, period. He was what Ozzy Smith was to playing shortstop, what Brooks Robinson was to playing third base. He utterly redefined for all who followed what was going on in that department. And for a band that seemed regularly on the edge of complete chaos, Entwhistle also seemed the most steady and sane guy in the group. Well, considering he OD’d, so much for that.

As it would happen, a few days later I would see the Who (or as I was already coming to refer to them, the Whalf) at the Hollywood Bowl, amidst some controversy as to whether the show and tour should even go on. I had loved that band since I was a teenager, first seeing them at the Forum in 1980 and, due to the INCREDIBLE VOLUME OF THE SHOW, losing much of my hearing for the next three days. But that was enough. I was sold. The Who were for me. I thought their show SHOULD go on as planned. I mean, what else are they gonna do to commemorate the passing of their partner, co-founder and fellow creative genius… NOT play? That didn’t make sense.

I hope you can see for miles and miles, Mr. Entwhistle. The bass solos in “My Generation” haven’t been the same without you… and that’s saying something because I traditionally HATE bass solos. Thank you for making them respectable.

Can my work help your business? Contact me!

– – – – –

SOCIAL MEDIA POST/FACEBOOK

“THE DAY JOHN LENNON DIED”

DECEMBER 8, 2015

I remember that 35 years ago today it was a Monday, a regular school day. I had to work in the evening scooping ice cream at my Baskin-Robbins job. Since it was early December and cool, the night was slow, especially with three of us working the counter. I’d turned 17 two days earlier and was in the midst of discovering my almost fanatical love of music and radio. Earlier that year, in the spring, I’d given a speech as an assignment in my English class. I chose as my topic the evolution of the Beatles. Students were allotted 15 minutes. In my exuberance and over-reliance on audio-visual aids, I went almost 45. Mrs. Martinson, my teacher, must’ve sensed my excitement because she didn’t dock me for going long. She saw something in me that would eventually blossom.

We always listened – well, I insisted we listen – to the radio when working in the ice cream shop. Tonight it was KMET, as usual, at least for me. As soon as I got to work at 6pm we began hearing odd reports from the station that something had happened to John Lennon in New York City. None of it was very detailed and in those pre-internet days we just had to wait and listen to see if the story played out into anything of substance. Those reports kept coming , though: John Lennon has been attacked, John Lennon has been shot, John Lennon has been seriously injured, etc. The three of us in the shop kept working and listening, growing more anxious to hear how the story would play out, if at all.

I don’t remember which jock made the actual announcement because it hit me like a steel bar across my head. I do remember that it was after 9pm and we still had an hour to work before closing the shop. “John Lennon has been shot and killed tonight, outside his apartment building in New York City.” This simply didn’t compute. My head went into a sort of vapor-lock. Lennon’s album “Double Fantasy” had just recently come out and I reminded my parents at every opportunity that it was on my Christmas wish list. How could this man that stood for love and peace, who had finally gotten his life together after more than 5 years of virtual reclusiveness, have been murdered? I really don’t remember much about the rest of that night. I was stunned. I rode home on my moped and watched the TV news into the night and early morning. The next morning I was drained and still stunned. It was all we talked about at school for days.

Eventually, I would work with – twice – one of the jocks that was on the air at KMET that horrible night. First at KMET proper, when I was a fumbling promotions clerk too timid to ask; and again ten years later when I’d attained a much more responsible position at a station in Santa Barbara where he’d become General Manager. Then, with more courage and confidence, I asked him several times about that night in December 1980. It was as surreal for him in his way as it was for me in mine. The only situation that could compare would have been to be on the air the morning of 9/11. To this day I get a knot in my stomach when I hear a station play more than two songs in a row by the same artist without explanation. I immediately wonder who died. And I also cannot listen to “Imagine.” Just. Too. Sad.

Over the years, my opinion of Lennon and his music have evolved, from considering him practically a saint to more pragmatically seeing him as a damaged young man who tried his best, and occasionally failed, to cope with pain and fame and family – much like us all. I now see that night 35 years ago when John Lennon was killed as a line of demarcation in my own maturity. I hadn’t yet had a girlfriend, a first kiss, a car, or lost a parent or grandparent, but I also no longer was an “unscathed kid.” I could now and forever say with absolute, regrettable certainty that I had lost a hero.

Can my work help your business? Contact me!

– – – – –