When we last left Nat Bernstein and his Wright at Night program, the zero-hit wonder group the Ska-Bees had stormed out of the studio after one program as house band, swearing to never return, and therefore throwing a wrench in Nat's plans (see Theme to Wright at Night). Wright at Night, like everyone’s program, was contractually ordered to produce five episodes. Perhaps "contractually ordered" is a bit strong here; let's say, instead, your grade was dependent on your ability to complete a 15-or-30-minute program every other week.
Nat did the only thing he could for his live-to-tape, sans-audience late night talk show: he just reused the tape from the first episode for each opening and closing on subsequent weeks. Yes, at least three out of the five episodes featured the same shot of the Ska-Bees playing the same theme song. Word around the department was that some of the Ska-Bees eventually caught a later episode and all but demanded their likeness be removed from the program. Their request was honored.
Wright at Night did not really gel as a late night talk show because Community Channel Seven did not have late night hours – they usually signed-off student programming between 9 and 10 p.m., making Wright at Night more of a prime time talk show that aired before the all-night Community Bulletin Board. In turn, guests were hard to come by, there was no band, and any thought of spontaneity was lost on the multiple takes during taping. By the last program, Nat had apparently given up all hope and taken his J.T. Wright character onto campus one afternoon for silly "man on the corner" type confrontations. It was painful, not just because the last show was a total flip of format from the previous episodes, but more so because it was apparent the cast and crew was just going through the motions to fulfill class requirements and vomit out a final show. Soon the semester was over and there should end the fateful tale of Nathan Bernstein, and more so, J.T. Wright.
Visiting campus four of five years after graduating (and after my dive into and surfacing out of graduate school), I ran into the faculty advisor for the radio station who, in the course of our conversation, mentioned Bernstein. I was surprised to hear that Nat had surfaced not long before at the department's spring awards ceremony, trying to bask in his former glory. Why he showed up in the first place never made sense but, never the less, as an alumnus he was allowed to present one of the awards and did so – after prefacing his remarks with a comedy routine a la J.T. Wright. He bombed, or so said the faculty advisor, since no one knew who he was or understood his jokes.
When I heard that sad little story all I could envision was Nat alone on stage, grasping a golf club the same way that Bob Hope would, trying to get a rise from people who didn’t understand who he was or why we was wearing that god-awful sweater. An easy target of ridicule, indeed.
The Foo Fighters, or at least Dave Grohl, sang about being Alone + Easy Target on their debut album, one whose tracks easily fit our station’s sound and got plenty of airtime the summer and fall semester of 1995. After that, most Foo Fighters became popular currency at the station, and rightly so.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Alone + Easy Target
(Dave Grohl)
Foo Fighters
From the album Foo Fighters
1995
They knew all along
They're not dumb, they were so wrong
She's not always fun
Hate it now, call when i'm done
Pieces fell in place
Puzzles suck, laugh in my face
Turn and swing the pace
I'll give this, keep the good waist
Head is on
I want out
I'm alone and i'm an easy target
Metronome
I want out
I'm alone and i'm an easy target
Crazy tv dreams might be true
Not what it seems.
Food and cavities, chewing words
Tear at the seams
He don't feel so good, don't feel bad
Not that he should
I don't feel so good, don't feel bad
Not that i should
Did you ever listen?
Get out
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Theme to Wright at Night
Being communication majors meant we were expected to put some time into the student-run television station just as we did the radio station. One of the class requirements, usually for upperclassmen, was to produce some sort of weekly television program. Some people created movie review programs, some attempted game shows, and others tried their hand at artsy dramas that made little sense outside the creator's mind. Nathan "Nat" Bernstein aimed to emulate David Letterman with the creation of "Wright at Night." J.T. Wright was Nat's radio name that he carried over to his television program, a sort of hip persona that he thought would mesh well with the supposed hip and trendy guests he would have on his show (see It feels like I'm talking to a lonely man without a vision).
Admittedly it was an interesting idea; however you have to realize that for something of this caliber to be successful you have to have a dedicated staff. Meaning, you either put everything else aside to make it work or you did it half-ass and let the viewers see through the whole mess for what it was. Nat envisioned a grand production with a house band and special guests and contests and becoming a minor campus celebrity. Again, I emphasize: we were college students with shoestring budgets. Our imaginations spit out grandiose ideas that time and money constraints dried out instantaneously.
I think the concept of the house band is what did the show in, sadly from the get-go, no less. Let's list some of the pitfalls, shall we?
A band must be found.
A band must agree to perform, for little or no payment, weekly.
A band must perform live-to-tape.
A band must perform in the only studio we have, already short of usable space because of other set pieces.
A band must be on time.
A lot of people hung around the first night of taping just to see what would happen and how Nat was going to pull this off. How was he going to be able to host his dream show as well as produce it from afar? How was he going to act when nothing went right that night?
The band wasn't on time to the first taping, by the way. They showed up late, which made the production crew mad. Then the band, an eight-piece local group called the Ska-Bees, got mad – they wanted to practice first. By no surprise, this riff was worsening at nearly the same rate as the riff between the host and guest. Soon both riffs were combined in an effort to save time and the single, larger riff was now between any two people in the studio. Thankfully there was no riff involving the audience because no audience existed. So there was a riff involving the non-existence of the audience, or where the audience-to-be should be located, which convoluted the whole show and made for a bigger mess.
For the record, this was my only encounter with the oddly named Ska-Bees, some local pains-in-the-brass third wave ska fanatics. I can only wonder how and where Nat found the band (consisting of a couple of guitars, drums, keys, trumpet and trombone, and a singer who was crossly regulated to tambourine for the instrumental theme to Wright at Night). The Ska-Bees didn't stick around long enough to sell any self-released album or do any radio promotions that first night. In fact, it was everybody's only encounter – the Ska-Bees were so pissed off about the whole thing they reportedly swore off the program and said they would never return.
Or so they thought.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Theme to Wright at Night
(unknown)
The Ska-Bees
From the television program Wright at Night
c.1997
Admittedly it was an interesting idea; however you have to realize that for something of this caliber to be successful you have to have a dedicated staff. Meaning, you either put everything else aside to make it work or you did it half-ass and let the viewers see through the whole mess for what it was. Nat envisioned a grand production with a house band and special guests and contests and becoming a minor campus celebrity. Again, I emphasize: we were college students with shoestring budgets. Our imaginations spit out grandiose ideas that time and money constraints dried out instantaneously.
I think the concept of the house band is what did the show in, sadly from the get-go, no less. Let's list some of the pitfalls, shall we?
A band must be found.
A band must agree to perform, for little or no payment, weekly.
A band must perform live-to-tape.
A band must perform in the only studio we have, already short of usable space because of other set pieces.
A band must be on time.
A lot of people hung around the first night of taping just to see what would happen and how Nat was going to pull this off. How was he going to be able to host his dream show as well as produce it from afar? How was he going to act when nothing went right that night?
The band wasn't on time to the first taping, by the way. They showed up late, which made the production crew mad. Then the band, an eight-piece local group called the Ska-Bees, got mad – they wanted to practice first. By no surprise, this riff was worsening at nearly the same rate as the riff between the host and guest. Soon both riffs were combined in an effort to save time and the single, larger riff was now between any two people in the studio. Thankfully there was no riff involving the audience because no audience existed. So there was a riff involving the non-existence of the audience, or where the audience-to-be should be located, which convoluted the whole show and made for a bigger mess.
For the record, this was my only encounter with the oddly named Ska-Bees, some local pains-in-the-brass third wave ska fanatics. I can only wonder how and where Nat found the band (consisting of a couple of guitars, drums, keys, trumpet and trombone, and a singer who was crossly regulated to tambourine for the instrumental theme to Wright at Night). The Ska-Bees didn't stick around long enough to sell any self-released album or do any radio promotions that first night. In fact, it was everybody's only encounter – the Ska-Bees were so pissed off about the whole thing they reportedly swore off the program and said they would never return.
Or so they thought.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Theme to Wright at Night
(unknown)
The Ska-Bees
From the television program Wright at Night
c.1997
Sunday, July 15, 2007
It feels like I'm talking to a lonely man without a vision
It didn't take a genius to grasp from J.T. Wright's radio shifts that he felt right at home mulling about on the airwaves (see Watch me unravel I'll soon be naked). Wright, the unholy air name for Nat Bernstein, always gravitated to the rock shifts. His outside schedule initially precluded him from the choice weekday rock shift he salivated over; thus he settled in for the long, weekend drive of the Road Trip (see And I'm dying at 90), which allowed him to chatter to an even smaller audience than we had on weekdays. Substituting in other formats wasn't really worth his time, as he felt he was strongest surrounded by "his" music. Whatever.
To be fair, he did know his music, though it was often to the level that suggests you might want to come up from air now and then. Nat was...scratch that. J.T. Wright was all about show-prep (see Boy, you can't play me that way), seeking out news and gossip about the bands or topics remotely associated with the songs. Granted, this was the sort of thing that student management advocated – the ability to ad-lib – and Nat met the prerequisites. But that's all he talked about outside the studio; it was as if he life was run by Hollywood and whatever other entertainment news there was.
Without a doubt, his familiarity and comfort level in the studio led to some strange sounding DJ shifts, mainly for the one-off shout-outs to...well...things. Let me explain that one: I vividly remembering listening to one of his shifts. I was seated with a few other people in the main office. Nat was backselling and going on about the "twenty minutes of today's music" (or some other silly slogan) that our station was preparing to play. Shortly before he ended his spiel he suddenly blurted out the words "Care Bears" in mid-sentence. What did Care Bears have to do with anything? Well, nothing, he explained later, "Care Bears" was just today's word. Eventually we learned the truth: Nat's friends would call him up when he was on and give him some word or phrase to work into his shift - which was, on that day, "Care Bears." Other call-backs to the previous decade included “scratch and sniff stickers,” “He-Man,” “Charlie Brown,” and “Rubik’s Cube.”
The group Dishwalla brought up Charlie Brown, too. Their song, Charlie Brown’s Parents, likens trying to understand part of a relationship to trying to understand how the adults spoke in the animated Peanuts specials, usually in the form of a trombone (like the beloved Miss Othmar). The song got some airtime on our station but it didn’t seem to garner much attention like Dishwalla’s song about blue cars. The trombone, while not pertinent to this part of the story, did figure into the next chapter of J.T. Wright’s adventures.
Funny how that happens....
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Charlie Brown's Parents
(Scott Alexander/Rodney Browning/Kolanek/George Pendergast/J.R. Richards)
Dishwalls
From the album Pet Your Friends
1995
I can't hear
What you're saying
What you're doing to me
Can't you see
It would take the jaws of
Life to pry open your words...
So pry open your words
I don't want to talk about Elvis
No I don't want
To go on pretending
Because it feels like I'm talking to
Talking to Charlie Brown's Parents
It feels like I'm talking to
A lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Why he's a lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Ooh
Cause I can't hear
What you're saying
What you're doing to me
Can't you see
It would take the jaws of
Life to pry open your words
I don't want to talk about Jesus
And I don't want to go on converting, no
Because it feels like I'm talking to
Talking to Charlie Brown's Parents
It feels like I'm talking to
A lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Why he's a lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Ooh
Why he's a lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision (2x)
Cause I can't hear
What you're saying
What you're doing to me
Can't you see
It would take the jaws of
Life to pry open your words (repeat)
To be fair, he did know his music, though it was often to the level that suggests you might want to come up from air now and then. Nat was...scratch that. J.T. Wright was all about show-prep (see Boy, you can't play me that way), seeking out news and gossip about the bands or topics remotely associated with the songs. Granted, this was the sort of thing that student management advocated – the ability to ad-lib – and Nat met the prerequisites. But that's all he talked about outside the studio; it was as if he life was run by Hollywood and whatever other entertainment news there was.
Without a doubt, his familiarity and comfort level in the studio led to some strange sounding DJ shifts, mainly for the one-off shout-outs to...well...things. Let me explain that one: I vividly remembering listening to one of his shifts. I was seated with a few other people in the main office. Nat was backselling and going on about the "twenty minutes of today's music" (or some other silly slogan) that our station was preparing to play. Shortly before he ended his spiel he suddenly blurted out the words "Care Bears" in mid-sentence. What did Care Bears have to do with anything? Well, nothing, he explained later, "Care Bears" was just today's word. Eventually we learned the truth: Nat's friends would call him up when he was on and give him some word or phrase to work into his shift - which was, on that day, "Care Bears." Other call-backs to the previous decade included “scratch and sniff stickers,” “He-Man,” “Charlie Brown,” and “Rubik’s Cube.”
The group Dishwalla brought up Charlie Brown, too. Their song, Charlie Brown’s Parents, likens trying to understand part of a relationship to trying to understand how the adults spoke in the animated Peanuts specials, usually in the form of a trombone (like the beloved Miss Othmar). The song got some airtime on our station but it didn’t seem to garner much attention like Dishwalla’s song about blue cars. The trombone, while not pertinent to this part of the story, did figure into the next chapter of J.T. Wright’s adventures.
Funny how that happens....
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Charlie Brown's Parents
(Scott Alexander/Rodney Browning/Kolanek/George Pendergast/J.R. Richards)
Dishwalls
From the album Pet Your Friends
1995
I can't hear
What you're saying
What you're doing to me
Can't you see
It would take the jaws of
Life to pry open your words...
So pry open your words
I don't want to talk about Elvis
No I don't want
To go on pretending
Because it feels like I'm talking to
Talking to Charlie Brown's Parents
It feels like I'm talking to
A lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Why he's a lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Ooh
Cause I can't hear
What you're saying
What you're doing to me
Can't you see
It would take the jaws of
Life to pry open your words
I don't want to talk about Jesus
And I don't want to go on converting, no
Because it feels like I'm talking to
Talking to Charlie Brown's Parents
It feels like I'm talking to
A lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Why he's a lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision
Ooh
Why he's a lonely man without a vision
Stuffed his mouth with indecision (2x)
Cause I can't hear
What you're saying
What you're doing to me
Can't you see
It would take the jaws of
Life to pry open your words (repeat)
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Watch me unravel I'll soon be naked
Some of the more bizarre memories of Nat Bernstein (see We know the places where to go - we're on the radio) included his penchant for fancy clothes. Not three-piece suits or anything, mind you, but the type of thing you really wouldn't expect a college student to be wearing on a semi-regular basis. I suppose if he were still in high school and subject to the high-school mentality of social classification, he might have been thought of as "preppy." You know, dress shirts and shorts and canvas tennis shoes; rugby shirts and leather shoes with no socks; or low-cut sweaters and slacks. Oh, yeah - the sweaters. I remember a lot of people getting a kick out of his wearing of sweaters, especially without undershirts, thereby allowing the four or five strands of chest hair to stick out. Of course, Nat was blissfully unaware of this. Not a pleasant memory by any accord, but never the less a funny one.
Also funny, albeit just as creepy, were Nat's attempts at wooing the female members on staff. Let's be frank – it didn't work. Especially on days he wore sweaters.
Perhaps his most annoying feature was his vocal delivery. I like to think that even if I had never met the guy and had just heard him on radio that I would still find him repulsive. Outside of the main studio he already had a wearisome voice – a bit whiny, a bit nasally – that could easily rub you the wrong way. Behind the mic, though, he literally amplified these irritants. Harking back to his desire to be in top-40 radio, I think he tried to sound like he was already well established in the medium. This, unfortunately, came across as one mimicking someone else in radio. Nothing in his delivery was conversational; rather swiftly spoken with false urgency and formulaic phrases. Adding to the shipwreck was that this was all part of his on-air act, that of the persona of J.T. Wright. On the air, J.T. Wright sounded slick and cool and hip and oozed awesomeness from some bodily orifice (or through the low-cut neck line of his sweater).
Appropriately I bring up Weezer’s Sweater Song, a mid-1990s classic piece of pop rock that got a lot of attention on our station. So much attention, that I soon discovered a few of the more competent DJs were conversing at the party. You know, at the beginning of the song, those voices chattering away in hushed, but buzzed, tones – the ones that sound as if they all met accidentally at so-and-so’s party to hear Weezer perform? Some DJs turned the mic down low and would “talk back” to the voices, promoting the station or telling jokes until the vocals of the song kicked in. J.T. Wright picked up on this and started to “mingle at the party,” too. Of course, where others talked only briefly, J.T. mumbled throughout most of the song, even as going as far to pretend the people at the party were wondering “where J.T. Wright is?”
J.T. was right there, of course. Thankfully he would be moving on to other projects, among them his own television program.
Talk about wanting to grab the thread and wanting to run away.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Undone – The Sweater Song
(Cuomo)
Weezer
From the album Weezer (Blue)
1994
I'm me
Me be
Goddamn
I am
I can
Sing and
Hear me
Know me
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Oh no
It go
It gone
Bye-Bye
Who I
I think
I sink
and I die
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Watch me unravel I'll soon be naked
Lying on the floor, I've come undone
If you want to destroy my sweater
(I don't want to destroy your tank-top)
Hold this thread as I walk away
(Let's be friends and just walk away)
Watch me unravel I'll soon be naked
(Hate to see you lyin' there in your Superman skivvies)
Lying on the floor, I've come undone
(Lying on the floor, I've come undone)
Also funny, albeit just as creepy, were Nat's attempts at wooing the female members on staff. Let's be frank – it didn't work. Especially on days he wore sweaters.
Perhaps his most annoying feature was his vocal delivery. I like to think that even if I had never met the guy and had just heard him on radio that I would still find him repulsive. Outside of the main studio he already had a wearisome voice – a bit whiny, a bit nasally – that could easily rub you the wrong way. Behind the mic, though, he literally amplified these irritants. Harking back to his desire to be in top-40 radio, I think he tried to sound like he was already well established in the medium. This, unfortunately, came across as one mimicking someone else in radio. Nothing in his delivery was conversational; rather swiftly spoken with false urgency and formulaic phrases. Adding to the shipwreck was that this was all part of his on-air act, that of the persona of J.T. Wright. On the air, J.T. Wright sounded slick and cool and hip and oozed awesomeness from some bodily orifice (or through the low-cut neck line of his sweater).
Appropriately I bring up Weezer’s Sweater Song, a mid-1990s classic piece of pop rock that got a lot of attention on our station. So much attention, that I soon discovered a few of the more competent DJs were conversing at the party. You know, at the beginning of the song, those voices chattering away in hushed, but buzzed, tones – the ones that sound as if they all met accidentally at so-and-so’s party to hear Weezer perform? Some DJs turned the mic down low and would “talk back” to the voices, promoting the station or telling jokes until the vocals of the song kicked in. J.T. Wright picked up on this and started to “mingle at the party,” too. Of course, where others talked only briefly, J.T. mumbled throughout most of the song, even as going as far to pretend the people at the party were wondering “where J.T. Wright is?”
J.T. was right there, of course. Thankfully he would be moving on to other projects, among them his own television program.
Talk about wanting to grab the thread and wanting to run away.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Undone – The Sweater Song
(Cuomo)
Weezer
From the album Weezer (Blue)
1994
I'm me
Me be
Goddamn
I am
I can
Sing and
Hear me
Know me
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Oh no
It go
It gone
Bye-Bye
Who I
I think
I sink
and I die
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Watch me unravel I'll soon be naked
Lying on the floor, I've come undone
If you want to destroy my sweater
(I don't want to destroy your tank-top)
Hold this thread as I walk away
(Let's be friends and just walk away)
Watch me unravel I'll soon be naked
(Hate to see you lyin' there in your Superman skivvies)
Lying on the floor, I've come undone
(Lying on the floor, I've come undone)
Sunday, July 1, 2007
We know the places where to go - we're on the radio
Nathan "Nat" Bernstein was probably a second-year senior or so when I was a second-year sophomore or junior. Hold on a second – using class ranks is often pointless in college; suffice to say he was older than me and graduated a year before I did. Anyway, Nat's biggest goal in life, it seemed, was to excel in some sort of entertainment program, though his biggest achievement while associated with the communication department was that of a joke.
One of his good friends was Syd ("the Kid"), the program director. Syd worked at a top-40 radio station and tried to make this undergraduate, college-run station sound like one. Nat wanted to work at a top-40 radio and tried to sound like he did on our station. Syd, who kept things around the station fairly professional, heavily influenced everything Nat did or tried to do (perhaps too professional for a bunch of kids just learning the ropes). Nat made a point of jumping on current music trends, subscribing to the Billboard Monitor magazine, and trying desperately to sound hip and cool and relaxed.
His attempts to get "in" didn't always take well with others. Wanting to get his feet wet with broadcasting, he would often sign-up for extra shifts (rock shifts if possible) and make appearances to get his name out there. Here the problem was that he usually arrived on the scene with his idea of how things were going to happen, tepid to the changes insisted upon by whoever was coordinating the event. This "doing it my way" attitude didn't sit well with people. Nor did his personality, described in one word: fake. Fake smile, fake interest, fake appreciation, and so on. He also wasn't too keen on having things explained – he usually already "knew how" to do something.
In fact, Nat usually had always "heard" of something previously but, though he felt he knew enough to get by, he usually had to enlist help from someone else. For example all students on staff had to know how to receive and give a weekly Emergency Alert System (EAS) test. Well, Nat had "heard" of it and "seen" it done, so he was in the clear. Then such a test showed up on his shift and whoever was in the hall or the music office would get caught up in one of his acts. Feigning friendship, Nat would call you in to the studio and explain the predicament he was in – since "no one showed me how to complete one of these." Once you helped him out of his jam, though, you were expendable. You might be allowed the pleasure to be seen talking with Nat but soon the novelty would wear-off and he'd run you out, citing the "do not disturb studio host" rule.
Speaking of someone who might be stars, who could forget the Wannadies’ cheerful tune of trying to find exposure? Might Be Stars popped up on a weekly preview disc and quickly became a station standard, though it wasn’t until later we discovered they were from Sweden (and thoughts of ABBA and Ace of Base circulated...). We also, surprisingly enough, received a copy of the actual album (a rare treat for any album), which I didn’t discover until years later was a grab-bag of songs from previous Swedish albums repackaged to make a bigger splash in the American charts.
While I liked most of the tracks, I don’t think the Wannadies got as to be the stars they wanted to be (at least, in America).
Also, neither did Nat.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Might Be Stars
(Wannadies)
The Wannadies
From the album The Wannadies
1997
We spend our money on guitars, write songs about our broken hearts
We're shit city stars
And when we don't we're still aware that we're pop revolutionaries
Aren't we cool
Some say we pretend we live in a dream world
We don't think so
Rule number 1 pretend it's fun, OK now
Chances are we might be stars and live forever
Chances are we might be stars beloved forever
Chances are we might be stars and shine until
We fall down
We know the faces one should know, we know the places where to go
We're on the radio
We never stop we carry on, pretending life is like a song
Aren't we cool
Some say we pretend we live in a dream world
We don't think so
Rule number 10 just try again, OK now
Chances are we might be stars and live forever
Chances are we might be stars beloved forever
Chances are we might be stars and shine until
We fall down
One of his good friends was Syd ("the Kid"), the program director. Syd worked at a top-40 radio station and tried to make this undergraduate, college-run station sound like one. Nat wanted to work at a top-40 radio and tried to sound like he did on our station. Syd, who kept things around the station fairly professional, heavily influenced everything Nat did or tried to do (perhaps too professional for a bunch of kids just learning the ropes). Nat made a point of jumping on current music trends, subscribing to the Billboard Monitor magazine, and trying desperately to sound hip and cool and relaxed.
His attempts to get "in" didn't always take well with others. Wanting to get his feet wet with broadcasting, he would often sign-up for extra shifts (rock shifts if possible) and make appearances to get his name out there. Here the problem was that he usually arrived on the scene with his idea of how things were going to happen, tepid to the changes insisted upon by whoever was coordinating the event. This "doing it my way" attitude didn't sit well with people. Nor did his personality, described in one word: fake. Fake smile, fake interest, fake appreciation, and so on. He also wasn't too keen on having things explained – he usually already "knew how" to do something.
In fact, Nat usually had always "heard" of something previously but, though he felt he knew enough to get by, he usually had to enlist help from someone else. For example all students on staff had to know how to receive and give a weekly Emergency Alert System (EAS) test. Well, Nat had "heard" of it and "seen" it done, so he was in the clear. Then such a test showed up on his shift and whoever was in the hall or the music office would get caught up in one of his acts. Feigning friendship, Nat would call you in to the studio and explain the predicament he was in – since "no one showed me how to complete one of these." Once you helped him out of his jam, though, you were expendable. You might be allowed the pleasure to be seen talking with Nat but soon the novelty would wear-off and he'd run you out, citing the "do not disturb studio host" rule.
Speaking of someone who might be stars, who could forget the Wannadies’ cheerful tune of trying to find exposure? Might Be Stars popped up on a weekly preview disc and quickly became a station standard, though it wasn’t until later we discovered they were from Sweden (and thoughts of ABBA and Ace of Base circulated...). We also, surprisingly enough, received a copy of the actual album (a rare treat for any album), which I didn’t discover until years later was a grab-bag of songs from previous Swedish albums repackaged to make a bigger splash in the American charts.
While I liked most of the tracks, I don’t think the Wannadies got as to be the stars they wanted to be (at least, in America).
Also, neither did Nat.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Might Be Stars
(Wannadies)
The Wannadies
From the album The Wannadies
1997
We spend our money on guitars, write songs about our broken hearts
We're shit city stars
And when we don't we're still aware that we're pop revolutionaries
Aren't we cool
Some say we pretend we live in a dream world
We don't think so
Rule number 1 pretend it's fun, OK now
Chances are we might be stars and live forever
Chances are we might be stars beloved forever
Chances are we might be stars and shine until
We fall down
We know the faces one should know, we know the places where to go
We're on the radio
We never stop we carry on, pretending life is like a song
Aren't we cool
Some say we pretend we live in a dream world
We don't think so
Rule number 10 just try again, OK now
Chances are we might be stars and live forever
Chances are we might be stars beloved forever
Chances are we might be stars and shine until
We fall down
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