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.
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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)
