Arithmetic, mathematic, same old form but assymetric

Ad Council PSAs were always a big deal – maybe not so much the message but the medium. Every few weeks a new PSA campaign packet arrived and dumped unceremoniously into the lap of the station’s production director for review.

The packets were immaculate in design: glossy, tri-folded envelopes sized about 9x11 inches, dolled up in colors and photographs promoting the latest campaign. Sometimes it was cartoon characters or clip art on the outside of the envelope - sometimes it was images from the television version of the PSA promotion. Inside was a treasure trove of information, most of which we did little with.

the one about the lord of the flies interview

Most of my Lord of the Flies presentation was to be an updated rehash of the paper I turned in the year before in high school, though I did have to double its length and the number of sources. I don’t recall doing this for anything in Comp I so this may have been the first year I was required to visit the library and seek out various periodicals with already published essays and reference them on the token bibliography page. As for the presentation, for what I was to distribute to the class, I constructed a sort of “family tree” of the characters (granted, none were really related) with hand-drawn caricatures that identified everyone by name, their role, and what they symbolized.

In the days leading up to my presentation (which was to be a Thursday) Michael Arthur and I went over what was to happen. Part of me recalls us visiting the room late one day to go over the layout and the best plan of action. The only thing Michel really blanched at was that he had to be up and ready to go by 7:00. Other than that, I think he was just as anxious as me to see how this was going to be pulled off. I think Ms. Fontaine was curious, too – a few sessions before the presentation I asked if it would be a problem using props or other characters. She said not all: those sorts of things could only serve to boost one’s grade. From the way she looked at me I could tell she wondered what I had up my sleeve.

Here’s what happened.

Thursday morning Michael and I got to the room a little before 7:30. I had noticed over a period of several weeks that students usually went straight to their seats when they arrived – no one ever walked around the partition between the podium and west wall. This meant that Michael could quietly sit back here among the surplus equipment and wait for my cue during the presentation. Ah, but when would that be? Today would be four more (possibly the last four) though, as I cautioned Mike, I had no clue when I’d get to go. My hopes were to get this over and done with as quickly as possible and let Mike go back to bed – but I couldn’t make any promises.

When class started Ms. Fontaine took her seat in the audience with the students and called the first speaker for the day. It wasn't me. While I was somewhat anxious to get started, I was thankful that class had started without anyone discovering the secret that stood (or, as I was told later, spread out reading a paper) on the other side of the wall.

At about 8:45 it was finally my turn. I got up and handed out the “study guides” to the class and began reading my research on The Lord of the Flies. First there was Ralph, then Jack, and maybe Sam and Eric next – I forget the order but I knew I needed to have Piggy near the end. A few seconds after I began reading the section about Piggy there came a knock on the glass door behind the wall. It obviously woke everyone up and I played off being startled.

“...and...oh, yeah, hey, I thought it might be best to actually bring in someone who knows a lot about this character an’ so I’ve asked the one and only Piggy to join us today. Hold on a sec!”

I walked around the wall and signaled to Mike to open the door loudly. Seeing the faces of my classmates when I came back around the wall was priceless.

“Well, welcome then Piggy, thanks for stopping...do you want to come in and be seen?”

“No,” wheezed Michael in a loud, whiny voice. “I’ve been stranded on a desert island for I dunno how many weeks and I didn’t wash up b’fore I came in so I smell pretty bad. Plus I gots assmar.”

“Huh-huh. Well, sucks to your assmar. Tell us a bit about yourself....”

Michael, with a copy of my research notes in hand, proceeded to read off information about Piggy and how life was good when the conch was around and how things got out of hand when Jack had his way. I half-sat on the tabletop of the right wing seats, situated in a way where I could see both Michael standing and the rest of the class wondering just what the hell was going on. I hammed it up, too, turning periodically to the class and acting impressed at what was going on. This ran for a few minutes before we decided to wrap this “interview” up in a most disastrous way. As I thanked Piggy for coming by, Michael threw open the doors and started yelling and making rambunctious noises to indicate he was being dragged away by Jack. As I said before, Michael knew The Lord of the Flies well enough to throw in some other jabs – “No...no! Don’t kill the pig! No! No! Take your hand off me...stop...” – and then, for icing on the cake, he tossed an old pair of glasses from the behind the wall onto the floor. Finally, with a thunderous noise, Michael dragged himself outside and slammed the doors. The interview was officially over.

“Piggy, everyone.” I started clapping and, while the rest of the class began applauding with mild confusion, I nonchalantly retrieved the glasses from the floor and went right back into the presentation, ending with a brief spiel on the titular character.

When I was done nodded a brief thank you and returned to my seat while everyone applauded once again. In my seat, the girl in front of me turned around and smiled: “that was good...but how did he know when to come by and be interviewed.” Because he’s Piggy, I said coyly. Mrs. Fontaine, also seated in the row in front of me, turned around as the next student ascended the podium and also said good job: “but he really didn’t look like Piggy,” she said with a wink. When I turned around I realized that from where she sat one could see through the large wall-length windows and anyone passing by. I always assumed she only witnessed one person walking along the old Avenue E service road that morning: a tall, skinny kid with unkempt hair that looked nothing like the character described and who was probably making a bee-line straight back to bed.

That didn’t cost me any points, though – I easily aced the presentation with an A.

Later than morning I met up with the rest of the Octumvirate and Michael and I laughed at pulling off such a bizarre interview. Who would have guessed that what had originally been a one-shot joke with the pizza server would go on to be a memorable college experience?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Lord of the Flies
(Gers, Harris)
Iron Maiden
From the album The X Factor
1995

I don't care for this world anymore
I just want to live my own fantasy
Fate has brought us to these shores
What was meant to be is now happening

I've found that I like this living in danger
Living on the edge: it feels, it makes feel as one
Who cares now what's right or wrong? It's reality
Killing so we survive wherever we may roam
Wherever we may hide, we've got to get away

I don't want existence to end
We must prepare ourselves for the elements
I just want to feel like we're strong
We don't need a code of morality

I like all the mixed emotion and anger
It brings out the animal, the power you can feel
And feeling so high with this much adrenaline
Excited, but scary to believe what we've become

Saints and sinners, something within' us
We are lord of the flies
Saints and sinners, something willing us
To be lord of the flies...

the one about media, culture, society, and so on

When the spring 1995 semester began I was still classified as a freshman and still eager to work in the radio station. However, for reasons I’ve never remembered, I missed the semester kick-off meeting and therefore didn’t do anything for FM 89.3 that semester, 7 a.m. newscasts or otherwise. There’s a part of me that thinks I assumed the schedule would holdover from the previous fall semester...but then if my classes didn’t even do this why would I expect a silly part-time schedule to do the same?

But I didn’t leave the Communication Building. No, that would have probably been a dumb move on my part, not taking a course in my major. Looking back, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to take another Communication course that semester. No, I still visited the Communication Building three days a week (M-days) to take part in yet another 100-level course. This one was titled Media-Culture-Society (COM-187) and its purpose, according to the instructor, was for us students to develop a historical knowledge and appreciation of media development in America. His desire, or so he reiterated more than once, was for us to never watch television the same way again.

There was a lot of history in this class. I mean, the syllabus began with the note that in 1872 James Maxwell theorized the idea of wireless communication. From there we discussed Marconi playing the mamba and listening to the radio, the rise of someone named Kent Atwater, and the role Felix the Cat played in the early days of television (...makes you wonder if he’ll show up 80 years after his first appearance to help usher in Digital Television later this month). The rise of cable television, programming syndication, and ratings were also major talking points in this class that really took its course title seriously.

Besides reading articles from the textbook about the history of radio and television, we also viewed “screenings” from the extensive archives of Dr. Blanc. Back then – and even now as I write this – I wondered how Fred Blanc managed to track down everything he did. He had memorable episodes from classic sitcoms, samples of “old time” radio comedies, and an assortment of advertising oddities. And a little bit of everything else....

One of the more memorable items was during the discussion of tobacco on television and – whoa and behold – Blanc pulls out a series of cigarette commercials, including a bizarre one featuring Fred Flintstone. That, and a montage of Old Joe print ads (playing pool and driving cars) set to something from the Miami Vice soundtrack (this was a few years before the camel’s demise). We also got an earful of Archie Bunker spew a line of racial slurs a mile long during another program – all in the name of education.

But, word to the wise with these “screenings” – don’t yawn or you’ll face the wrath of Blanc!

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Medium Cool
(Birdsall/Detmold/Kaika/Trombley)
The Reducers
From the album Shinola
1995

Downstream

So, how did you do on last week’s quiz? That’s great.

Not only did we have pen-and paper quizzes in the classroom, but there were hands-on quizzes in the lab workshops. Remember a few weeks ago the crazy camera movement quiz Propel had on the floor of the television studio? That counted as a quiz. And even if that activity wasn’t a graded quiz, the material learned from it would be possible topics for a later quiz. Of course, the camera movement game would not have been undertaken only for show – there would have been a reason for us participating in it. Aside from some strange fancy of Dr. Propel’s, that is.

All our quizzes came back to haunt us at the end of the semester. That’s when we students faced the dreaded “Final Exam.” I learned early in my freshman year to ask – if the instructor did not make it abundantly clear – if the final would be cumulative or not. If it was cumulative then everything from day one in the classroom was fair game for the test; it not, then we knew to focus on material since the last major test.

Dr. Propel smiled and said cumulative, as if that were a surprise. It wasn’t that bad because a few of us that were both in the class and put in time doing radio news or sports got together and pooled our resources. We put together a fairly comprehensive study guide of vocabulary terms and list questions (e.g. name two of the five FCC commissioners) to prepare ourselves. Of course this sort of thing worked great for the classroom final exam.

Not as much for the lab final, where we corralled into Studio 3 and waited our fate with Dr. Propel. He had us sit in a row of numbered chairs along one side of the room, though either the third or fourth chair had been pulled out into the center of the studio. We took our seats but were told not to get too comfortable as we’d be up moving around a lot during the next 90 minutes (the length of time designated for each final exam). There was little surprise when Dr. Propel explained he had another “fun” activity prepared and, just as before, we were supposed to be quick and on our toes when participating.

Our final would be to prove our mastery of the audio and video equipment by both operating it and answering questions about its role in the radio and television environment. When we began, the first student in the row was called forward; Propel then instructed everyone to move up a chair (this meant the person who originally, and reluctantly, took the third chair in the middle of the room was now against the wall in the second chair, and the person in the fourth chair now sat unhappily in the center of the room).

The first student was directed to follow Propel into the control room. There he was to cue a record on a turntable and identify its parts (e.g. motor, cartridge, etc.). He or she was then sent back to the studio and took a seat at the back of the row; the next person in line was called forward. This next person was asked to properly thread a reel-to-reel machine and record his or her voice. Then the following person had to operate the camera and zoom in on the person seated in the center of the studio. Another person had to record something to cart. Then the next person had to mix his or her voice with music from a CD and record this to a reel-to-reel. The subsequent person had to move the camera according to Propel’s instructions. And so on.

Those of us in the studio were always moving from one chair to another. Sometimes we were in our chairs for only a few second (Propel had asked something either relatively easy or the task at hand took very little time) or sometimes it felt like minutes crept by slowly. Through this cycle each student would be tested on some aspect of each equipment, though it differed for each person (discussing it afterward, another student and I discovered that while I had to mix my voice and music from a CD and record to cart, this other person had to mix voice and music from the turntable and record it on the reel-to-reel).

At any rate, I still remember to this day the one thing I faltered on. I was able to get through most everything without issue except for the downstream keyer. After doing something with the video switcher, I was asked the name of the last, or final, keyer in the switcher. I choked. I had no idea. The only reason why I remember the answer all these years later is because Dr. Propel began giving me non-verbal clues. It was like a bad game of charades: he sat in his chair and pretended he was casting a fishing line. My mind went blank, mostly as I tried to figure out what on earth he was doing. He then moved his fluttering hand away from him; this, I could only guess, was supposed to be a fish.

I finally said I didn’t know the answer.
“Downstream keyer,” came his answer.
“Fine, now what were you doing?”

The clue was that I had to cast the line “downstream” to catch a fish. I would not have guessed that in a hundred years. But such was the final exam (which I passed) and such was the final time I interacted with Dr. Propel.

And yes, we also had to spell potentiometer.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Downstream
(Morris Gould)
Irresistible Force
From the album Global Chillage
1995

Newsbreak: Twenty-four Seven

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Tom Foley lost twice election night: he lost his post as Speaker of the House, but it got worse when he conceded defeat to GOP newcomer George Nethercutt. Foley, a 15-term congressman, becomes the first speaker to lose re-election since the Civil War. Even if Foley had won had won his election in Washington State, the Republicans would still control the House, making Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich the pick for the speaker’s chair.

Today Jordan’s King Hussein makes his first public visit to Israel. His trip makes him only the second Arab leader to visit in full view of the world. The king will exchange ratified copies of the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty at a cultural center today with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Partly cloudy skies today with highs in the upper 60s; fair and cool tonight with a low near 44. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 50 degrees.

---

I’ll be honest: a few weeks dealing with Dr. Propel felt more like months. And months after the school year started it felt like a lifetime of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and being quizzed in Dr. Propel’s introductory class had flown by and I was more than ready for his class to end. Whatever happed in his class – anything discussed, anything written on the board, anything viewed on the monitor, anything hands-on we did in the introductory lab course – was fair game for what Dr. Propel lovingly called the “regurgitation.” This was, of course, the dreaded end-of-the-semester final test. And don’t think for a minute the test, much less this guy’s regular pop quizzes, were restricted to broadcasting.

What was one of the first things driven into our head far back at the start of the semester? Ah, yes: Dr. Propel’s office location and telephone number. This was not the sort of “memorization” that I had expected in college. Honestly the concept of office hours was new to me, as high school teachers had a designated classroom that served as an oversized make-shift office when needed. Not so here. Every instructor had his or her own office whose size and shape correlated to his or her position in the department. In short, the new guy got the three-sided room under the stairs and the head of the department got the spacious area with coffee maker and “secret” entrances.

The actual occasion when the instructor would be found in the office was also something lost on me – I really didn’t care when Dr. So-and-so or Dr. Whosis would be in their office. I was not making plans to stop by. But office hours were something nearly every student clamored about, though I found this comical. Many students circled or highlighted the days and time on the syllabus. It went without saying that many never utilized these office hours until late in the semester when, to be fair, obtaining an A was all but impossible and coming in to schmooze with the teacher wasn’t earning either of them (the instructor or the student) any brown-nose points.

Anyway, Dr. Propel was in office 247. He repeatedly bragged he was the only radio/television instructor on the second floor (the rest of the offices belonging to print journalism instructors), though how and why he ended up where he did was never discussed or mentioned. By what can only be called pointless coincidence his phone extension was 1365.

The importance of all these numbers was lost as we students read the syllabus (and later watched Propel read the document in character. This was always a hoot, watching a fellow of infinite jest recite “serious” class rules in his nasally sing-song voice). With his trademark half-toothed grin, he eventually asked one session early in the semester if any of us caught on to what made his office and phone number special or unique. Our answer, in unison: no.

He couldn’t keep the secret any longer. You didn’t pronounce his office “two forty-seven,” you pronounced it “twenty-four seven” – as in twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, we got it. And from there it didn’t take us long to bridge the “three-hundred sixty-five days in one year” mantra that was abbreviated by his phone extension. Dr. Propel was ecstatic about this fact and his attempt to hide it from his students erupted in giddy fashion that day in class.

You see, this is one of those trivial moments from college...this, the correct spelling of potentiometer, the inane theme song of Mentos candy, and on and on....

- - - - - - - - - - - -
24/7
(Gerald B/T.J. Jackson/Taryll Jackson)
3T
From the album Brotherhood
1995

Newsbreak: Information Overload

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein ended 46 years of war Wednesday with the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. Leaders from both sides along with President Clinton cited the desert as a symbol of the once arid relations between the two nations that now can flourish together.

A judge Wednesday gave the three killers of American student Amy Biehl 18 years in prison instead of the death penalty, saying the three had a chance to become useful citizens despite showing no remorse. Biehl was in South Africa to educate voters and was driving friends home when she was pulled from the vehicle and stabbed to death outside the city of Guguletu.

One of the nation’s first female combat pilots was believed killed when her Navy F-14 fighter jet crashed into the ocean. Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen’s plane went down Tuesday off the southern California coast after taking off from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on a training exercise.

And all California residents may have to carry tamperproof ID cards to prove they are U.S. citizens if the state’s political leaders have their way. Republican Governor Pete Wilson has built his re-election campaign on a call for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Wilson said the ID cards would also be used to verify eligibility for health and social benefits.

Sunny and mild, a high of 71 today; cool tonight with lows in the mid-40s. Currently it’s 48 degrees.

---

Newscasts varied throughout my four years of undergraduate school, both in scope and involvement. They were obviously meant to be informative but you had to wonder about some of the stories that students chose for inclusion.

Troy Meadows, the News Director my freshman year, had spent some of his summer refining the previous newscast schedule to ensure this semester’s programming included a mix of local, national, and international stories. Looking back, this school year was the next-to-last year to put any sort of focus on world news – something that later faculty advisors said was covered by numerous other media outlets that we weren’t competing with.

Troy might not have liked that mentality. His schedule for this school year had seven daily newscasts of varying lengths that each figured in international headlines:

• The newscasts at 9 A.M., 3 P.M., and 6 P.M. were to be three-minutes and lead with the at least two prerecorded international stories that we got from British Information Services. Then we tossed some national stories into the mix, as well as local packages that were voiced by “reporters” who had done stories in and around the Grandville area. Recollections? First, this “British Information Service” was nothing more than pre-packaged stories recorded from an 800-number someone dialed on a daily basis. There was a tape deck in the news room (the more studio-based newsroom) that we used to record the phone call; someone else listened to the cassette and edited out the stories he or she wanted to use. Because Troy was really into radio news, I think he found this “BIS” service an impressive tool that sort of made our tiny station sound like it had world-wide connections. I know he championed the presumably free service on many occasions and went as far to defend our using of it when word got around that it was the “BS” service. Second, the national stories were to be rewrites of the top stories off the Associated Press wire service in the news room (the more classroom-based newsroom). I’ll get into “rewriting” later since it was something most students did extremely well in no way at all. Finally, the pre-packaged local stories would have been interesting to hear, but I only had a hand in creating one of them and my 7 o’clock newscast never featured them. I tend to think that more upperclassmen that did radio news did these newscasts since they had seniority and the programs aired during the time of day when more college-aged students were listening.
• The newscasts at 4 and 5 P.M. were to be sixty seconds and were described as more headline driven. Troy said in his notes that ideally this would be the top international, national, and local story of the day – maybe with a quick 15-second-or-less sound bite. Recollections? None – I don’t think I was listening to our station that late in the day.
• The newscasts at 7 and 8 A.M. and at noon would be ninety-seconds and would be the top international stories of the day and one or two local or national stories. Recollections? There are many, seeing how this was my scheduled time three days a week, but sadly, in looking over my obnoxiously-typed scripts I see three or four international stories and the weather – nothing about anything close to home. It sort of makes me wonder if I misunderstood which type of “newscast” I was supposed to be preparing. There is also some mild curiosity as to how much Troy listened to these newscasts – I don’t remember a lot of feedback. Well, there was some feedback. One morning after one my newscasts the DJ – probably Big Dog – gets on the microphone and says, “that's was the 60 seconds I've ever heard.” What an ass.
  

Anyway, over the next few years the lengths of the newscasts were more or less standardized for all broadcasts and a greater emphasis was put on local news. Any international headlines were all but excised in an effort to make the student do some work. I mean, the student could either go out and learn something about the campus and surrounding community or sit in production room and contact the “BS” service.

And we all know what we students should have been doing, anyway.

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Information Overload
(Rose)
Al Rose
From the album Information Overload
1995

Pizza Break?!

It was sort of funny the way the Octumvirate expanded as the semester progressed. It started off with two roommates and then doubled into four people. In less than a month it snowballed into a group of eight students, plus or minus a few here and there. Any worry that we incoming freshman had about meeting people was quickly forgotten as each newcomer arrived. I first met Morty, then Morty and I met Leonard and Stan. We met Phil when he showed up claiming to know Leonard from somewhere. We met Alan when Leonard introduced him as being in one of his classes. We met Michael when we went to dinner with Alan. And so on.

Rex Hall was one of four large dormitories that sat on an elongated city block at the northern edge of campus. The dorms had been built in such a way that their back doors all exited into one large, shared parking area. This is the area where we first met Michael Arthur a few weeks into the school year. Alan had mentioned his roommate might join us, to which we all said he was more than welcome, but the guy continuously never showed up. Was he shy? Was he afraid? Was he some alcohol-induced phantasm that Alan thought up late one night?

One evening in early September, Morton, Leonard, Phil, and I approached the entrance to the long tunnel that led to the cafeteria. Alan usually waited for us here but tonight he had not yet arrived. Or so we thought. We found Alan off to one side of the parking lot watching someone throwing an aerobie, those lightweight, pink flying rings. Michael was going for height, trying to see how far above the buildings he could throw the disc-like toy. When he saw us he instead playfully flung it toward the four of us, barely missing Leonard’s head.

From this introduction, Michael could best be described as a very relaxed person. Very little fazed him and he much rather wanted to have fun than worry about bookwork or the seriousness of the semester. Still for all his playfulness his usual dress code was collared shirts, khaki pants, and the like. His major was English (I found that rather non-descript since he didn’t explain if his specialty was the language, composition, or literature) and he often identified himself as a “literary jock.” I like to think this stemmed from the quiz bowls he participated in that allowed him to showcase his amassed trivial expertise. Perhaps had academic strengths and prowess been celebrated in the same way that athletes were showered with praise then Michael’s abilities would have been better known across campus. Instead I’m sure he was thought of as nothing more than some geeky bookworm. On rare occasion he let slip with some of his arcane references during meals that resulted in nothing but confused looks from most of the rest of the group.

Michael and I didn’t interact much but the two of us did have Piggy. I was recently out of high school fresh on a multi-month class project involving The Lord of the Flies and still had characters and quotes on the mind. I had not spotted a Jack or a Ralph yet on campus but that large guy behind the pizza counter surely could double for Piggy due to his general annoyance.

There was, unbeknownst to most everyone it seemed, a silly rule that said you could not receive your main entrée or a secondary item, like pizza, at the same time. If someone wanted both the meatloaf and a slice of pepperoni that person had to find a table and set down his or her tray before returning to stand in line for that coveted slice of pizza; the general reasons being the staff encouraging better eating habits and trying to curb waste. I had discovered this the hard way early in the semester and remember being a bit perturbed but trying more not to laugh as I stood listening to this whiny kid waving a spatula and sputtering something about some policy. This anecdote amused Michael to no end because, as I later found out, he too had run into this same problem. Michael acted differently than I did for he went and told off the employee – telling him “sucks to your policy” or some such – and made it a habit of getting a slice of pizza a few times a week just to stare down his adversary.

This then was the genesis of my long-association with Lord of the Flies characters at college, most notably with my mimicking of rotund, bespectacled kids in striped red shirts named Piggy. The following semester was the last semester for pizza counter Piggy as he disappeared or graduated or something. Still, this bulgy cafeteria employee was the inspiration for a Lord of the Flies interview I did in an English composition course the next semester. Toward the end of my senior year I had to script a scene for a television writing course and chose to relive the Piggy interview from my freshman year.

Yes, all that happened because it was time for a pizza break.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Pizza Break
(Ben Fleming/Simon Fair Timony)
The Stinky Puffs
From the album Little Tiny Smelly Bit
1995

They think that they locked me in here, but it's more like I locked them out.

You encounter people like Phil Hertz all the time at college, the guy who just shows up one day and who sticks around long enough to be considered one of the gang. To the best of my recollection, Phil joined our Octumvirate after meeting Leonard somewhere and then joining us for lunch.

Phil was the fifth to join our group after the two sets of roommates (Morty and myself and Stan and Leonard). Because Stan didn’t make it every day for lunch, the three of us usually came up with some ideas on how to spend some of our free time, such as seeing a movie or playing a round of pool in the student center. We’d always invite Phil but ask if he was okay with the time. Without a doubt Phil usually quipped that the three of us were leading this party and that he only needed to know the time to show up and he’d be there. Eventually Phil came to call us the Triumvirate, which he later expanded to include eight. Namedropping an ancient Roman political alliance was nothing outrageous for who we dubbed “Professor Phil” – if someone could major in General Studies or Useless Trivia then Phil would probably go on and earn a master’s degree.

Another one of his eccentricities was his fondness for wearing hiking boots, appropriately enough since a couple times a month he was living out his weekends in a tent at the nearby state park. I never knew what sparked his interest in this lifestyle but he would usually sneak away from campus on Friday afternoons and not return to Bowman Hall until late Saturday or even early Sunday morning. He claimed the outdoor air invigorated him and that the tranquil atmosphere allowed him the silence he needed to catch up on his class work. None of that ever convinced the rest of us to venture out with him, although, like Stan, he did try to talk us into it. Because we didn’t go with him, lunch on Monday usually featured an anecdote or two about seeing signs of an alligator or discovering some tasty wild flower or fungus. Have no fear, mind you – they were safe to eat. At least according to Phil’s field guide.

The rustic restaurant that he made for himself out in the wild was always happily exchanged for the campus cafeteria. While many students liked to make fun of the food or mock the general blasé of the buffet, Phil had a certain fondness for the food and championed the people who put it together behind the scenes. I can still vividly hear Phil responding when one of the Octumvirate thought out loud about going back and getting a second chicken patty sandwich: “You paid for that sandwich, get back up there and get that sandwich!” Phil followed suit by grabbing a second helping of vegetables, be it carrots, broccoli, maybe mashed potatoes, or even some of that stewed tomato concoction that scared off everyone else. That guy loved him some vegetables.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Mushroom Boy
(Crow, Heavy Vegetable)
Heavy Vegetable
From the album Frisbie
1995

People locked me in here
'bout a couple years ago.
With a handful of seeds
for the garden I grow
The sun shines on the window
in the basement at the house
They think that they locked me
in here, but it's more like I locked
them out.
It's not so bad.
It's not such a drag.

Another prop has occupied my time

Into the Music Library appeared a peculiar album one day. Upon its cover were spacemen, two, with keyboards. Displayed in a font that looked as futuristic as the two spacemen didn't were the words, "The Moog Cookbook." Curiosity reared its head and listening instigated soon thereafter. Our lives were more or less the same after that moment.

I've always gotten a kick out of musicians revamping a song in a style or format far from the conceived version. Think Pat Boone in his metal mood. Hence, the Moog Cookbook was right up my alley.

From what we were able to glean from the liner notes and the accompanying press notes in the package (yes, we actually received the full album in the mail; we couldn't get the popular stuff that all the kids loved but we got these guys...), the "band" of Meco Eno and Uli Nomi performed a number of popular 90s alternative tracks exclusively on 70s era Moog analog synthesizers. In reality, it was Brian Kehew and Roger Manning Jr. (think Jellyfish and Imperial Drag, respectively) paying tribute to the beloved instrument of yesteryear.

Now while we did play some pretty outrageous stuff from time to time (Tribal Life comes to mind), there wasn't any way that anything on this disc would get played on the air. Why? It didn't fit. That would have been the usual way of thinking of some of the conservative student directors. I mean, it was a nice novelty to share with others in the office, but it didn't need to be played on the air.

You know we did, though. There were, thankfully, people who liked to keep things light and throw the listening audience a curveball once in a while. John Fletcher probably played this on the Wednesday night music show, and I remember our station manager, Martin Manning, was known to borrow it from the station office to “study” the tracks in his office. Tracks like a trippy Smells Like Teen Spirit, Black Hole Sun done up with a pseudo-salsa beat, and Green Day’s Basket Case done up in such a sunny, smarmy 70s pastiche that you almost forget the semi-serious rant of the lyrics. There was also, most memorable for us, a version of R.E.M.'s The One I Love performed in a smarmy lounge style. After its brief usage during a few rock shifts it became a popular item in the production rooms, where we'd milk the tracks for use as bed music, for use in liners and station promos, and essentially for any use that would that would get the music on the air in some veiled form or fashion. And we did, too, but not as often as the group probably wished.

We actually received a lot of albums like this that never received any full time exposure, but rather were kept in the music library in a plastic bin marked "Production Music." If you needed something that sounded both strangely familiar and strangely foreign, chances are that production music (sometimes called “closet music” because it was only used in those closet-sized production rooms) would fit the bill. And this album fit it pretty well.

While their first album focused on 90s alternative hits, Moog Cookbook returned to surprise most everyone two years later with a sophomore album that googily moogilied a handful of well-known classic rock songs. Ten years on, I wonder if they’re up for a third?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
The One I Love
(Bill Berry/Peter Buck/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe)
The Moog Cookbook
From the album The Moog Cookbook
1995

This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I've left behind
A simple prop to occupy my time
This one goes out to the one I love

Fire (she's comin down on her own, now)

This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one Ive left behind
Another prop has occupied my time
This one goes out to the one I love

Stumbling around, can't even see, all to escape reality

Walking through the ground-level halls of the Communication Building, it would be hard to miss the main control room/studio of the radio station through the two large glass windows. From the hall, one could look in at the student on duty getting hands-on training with the various consoles, controls, and other equipment needed to get the station on the air. While on the outside the studio appeared to be kept somewhat neat and presentable, inside it could be a real mess.

Hidden under counter tops or inside cabinets were jumbled nests of cords and wires, each a vital component to getting the station up and running. Just how vital some of these random zigzagging wires were was another story. What happened if we removed that dusty cord along the back wall: would it disconnect the seldom-used studio television from the audio board (and therefore cause little notice), or was it one that bridged the studio to the newsroom, one that, if removed, would cause the engineer headaches and wild cursing streaks? I dunno – let's unplug it and see.

Anything? Anyway....this general disorder of equipment was something I didn't know about until my senior year, when something was mentioned in passing with one of the production assistants, or PA. PAs were senior-level students that showed some ability to retain knowledge and therefore were paid a scrawny stipend to work after hours and assist other students with audio and video equipment. Doug Landau was one such PA, one more interested in engineering aspects of audio and video production than creative side most students had.

Doug had been supporting the current department engineer with the installation of new equipment somewhere and said how both of them were getting tired of dealing with "the house that Jack built." When I questioned him, Doug said this was their reference to the previous engineer, Jackie Abbott, and his disorganized, slipshod way or setting up equipment.

Ah, Jack! Yes, I remembered Jackie, or Jack, Abbott from my freshman year. He was the older gentleman with the buzzed haircut and black horn-rimmed glasses that looked like he never quite left the 1950s or 60s, the guy who seemed distant and aloof and who had little in common with the students he was surrounded by on a daily basis. Judged solely on age, Mr. Abbott surely must have been the engineer (some sort of parlor magician, perhaps?) who helped setup the original equipment when the Communication Building opened. As new items were added in later years, Abbott apparently did little to keep things neat and tidy behind the scenes. This was why it took longer for Abbott's replacement to tear out the main studio's equipment one summer – he had to sort out what wire went where...and why.

That's why Abbott was the bane of existence to Doug: simply updating a piece of equipment meant sorting through unmarked wires and trying to understand why five cords were used when one should have sufficed.

Jackie all but disappeared via retirement after my freshman or sophomore year – I don’t recall which and frankly it doesn’t really matter. I hope all his original projects have been cleaned up, though.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Jacked ‘95
(The Parka Kings)
The Parka Kings
From the album 23 Skidoo
1995

We're all dressed up with no where to go
Where to tonite hey I don't know…
Stumbling around, can't even see
All to escape reality

Hacked, I'm jacked
Messed up and out of whack
Hacked, I'm jacked today

(Who) Left with our friends?
When will this drug -crazed madness end?
Responsibilities out the door
I just want more and more and more

You get caught up in all the motion and never hear the simple things when they call

Our Saturday morning folk show (see Jesse James behind the wheel) at the undergraduate station was a hybrid of music, a juxtaposition of sounds that didn't always sound the best together but we made them work the best we could. The majority of music played during the four hours was generally referred to as "contemporary folk." In reality, I suspect most of it could have easily been played during the "softer" rock shifts; the only reason why it wasn't probably had to do with popularity. That is, Counting Crows could sound folkie but were still thought of a rock group. Sons of the Never Wrong were classified as folk and it was the folk show that highlighted them. Regularly.

Brad Phasner, the originator of the folk program, had sent word to records labels and magazines promoting this as well as asking for complimentary copies of albums to help boost our fledging library. One of the discs received was Three Good Reasons by a Chicago-based group called Sons of the Never Wrong. It did not take long for the title track to garner airplay and become a fast favorite of Brad, me, and listeners who called in asking who they were.

They were Sue Demel, Bruce Roper, and Nancy Walker, taking their collective name from mumbling through The Guns of Navarone. Three Good Reasons was their debut release on the Waterbug label, and four more albums have followed, the most recent being 2005’s Nuthatch Suite. Walker has since been replaced by Deborah Lader.

Three good things about listeners during the folk show that I never got from other shifts? One, listeners actually seemed generally interested in the music. There was no other format I was aware of that had people calling in and wanting to know where we got the album. Could they get a copy? (No.) Could we tell them how to buy a copy? (Yes.) Which is why Brad always gave out record label information in the early days of the program. Second, listeners seldom sounded like students, which all but proved that this type of music was attracting a community-wide audience that had only been assumed. Now we had proof. And certain people called often enough you might recognize voices. Third, and most bizarre to me, was that listeners went to bat for us. When the folk show was bumped from Saturday to Sunday mornings because of the Foreign Language department, I was told a few people called to protest – one going as far to say he would skip church for this music. I always assumed he ended up missing church because, while appreciated, his one call didn't sway station management.

There may have been a fourth reason but I couldn't think of it at the moment.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Three Good Reasons
(Roper)
Sons of the Never Wrong
From the album Three Good Reasons
1995

And Mary was amazed that they would ever even meet
But god her help he sought his trinity to complete
And god said to Mary
Dear Mary please trust me what I’m about to do
But I’ve got three good reasons
Three good reasons
Three good reasons
And one of them is you

And there are three sisters
One prayer, one hymn, one graces
Whose countenance is required in whole or part
And often found in quite places
They will stand and watch over your shoulder
Smile on and see you through
Cause they’ve got three good reasons
Three good reasons
Three good reasons
And one of them is you

And where the ocean meets the land everything seems to rise and fall
You get caught up in all the motion
And never hear the simple things when they call
Oh you can stand out on a mountain top
And why the sky’s so blue
But that’s cause there are three good reasons
Three good reasons
Three good reasons
And one of them is you

We never got it off on that revolution stuff, what a drag too many snags

You meet a lot of interesting characters in life and easily one of the most memorable from my days in graduate school is the Young Dude, an undergraduate physically in the 1990s but mentally residing in the 1970s, if that.

Shortly after the semester began was the first meeting of the entire radio station staff. At this station everyone had to actually be enrolled in a particular section of a class and therefore receive credit for their work. Everybody in the class knew each other in some way – either from previous classes or working at the radio station – and so naturally eyes focused on the new guy at the head of the class. In turn, the new guy (me) eyed the students, trying to interpret attitudes from non-verbal clues or muffled comments. It was a typical looking group of students until Paulie Zizzo sauntered into the room.

Let me preface any perceived hostility by saying that Paulie was a genuinely good-hearted person. He was courteous, he was extremely friendly, he got along with everyone, and would try to help out whoever needed a hand. However, more than anything, what made Paulie stand out from everyone else on that campus was his penchant for the 1970s. Not just quoting television (which he did) or listening to music (which he did) but dressing like it was the 1970s – 1974, specifically. In Paulie's world it was 1974 and everyone else was just visiting from the future (at least, that's how I took it).

Young Mr. Zizzo – who identified himself on the air as the Young Dude, thanks in part that Mott the Hoople song from two years prior (meaning 1972) – was a short, skinny kid with a mane of long, wavy brown hair; other facial hair included sideburns and what was built up under his nose in the form of a moustache. Tinted glasses shielded his eyes, and he walked with a pronounced gait that made him look overly relaxed. His wardrobe consisted of high collars, earth tones, and high water pants – nothing remotely en vogue for 1998.

Of course, radio is not a visual medium so listeners totally missed out on this get-up. Listeners could get an earful of Paulie's minor speech impediment – the more he talked the more he tended to slur his words – which wasn’t really a detractor but unfortunately didn't help sell the Zizzo package. I have no idea what instigated this attitude – be it because of mental illness or his way to fit into life. Frankly, it never really seemed like it was my business. While he may have been a bit clueless on modern advances and wished he was living his life in 1974, he at least showed on time for his shifts and tried to better himself in his craft.

Speaking of Clueless, there was a movie of that name released a few years prior to this (meaning 1995), and on the soundtrack were a number of songs that got scant airplay back during my undergraduate days. I don’t think we did much with the compilation as I recall the disc stayed in the office a lot. Evidently the tracks, such as World Party’s cover of the David Bowie song, really weren’t our thing.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
All the Young Dudes
(David Bowie)
World Party
From the original motion picture soundtrack Clueless
1995

Well Billy rapped all night about his suicide
How he kick it in the head when he was twenty-five
Speed jive don't want to stay alive
When you're twenty-five
And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks
And Freedy's got spots from ripping off the stars from his face
Funky little boat race
Television man is crazy saying we're juvenile deliquent wrecks
Oh man I need TV when I got T Rex
Oh brother you guessed
I'm a dude dad
All the young dudes (Hey dudes)
Carry the news (Where are ya)
Boogaloo dudes (Stand up Come on)
Carry the news
All the young dudes (I want to hear you)
Carry the news (I want to see you)
Boogaloo dudes (And I want to talk to you all of you)
Carry the news

Now Lucy looks sweet cause he dresses like a queen
But he can kick like a mule it's a real mean team
But we can love oh yes we can love
And my brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones
We never got it off on that revolution stuff
What a drag too many snags
Now I've drunk a lot of wine and I'm feeling fine
Got to race some cat to bed
Oh is there concrete all around
Or is it in my head
Yeah
I'm a dude dad
All the young dudes (Hey dudes)
Carry the news (Where are ya)
Boogaloo dudes (Stand up)
Carry the news
All the young dudes (I want to hear ya)
Carry the news (I want to see you)
Boogaloo dudes (And I want to relate to you)
Carry the news
All the young dudes (What dudes)

Carry the news (Let's hear the news come on)
Boogaloo dudes (I want to kick you)
Carry the news
All the young dudes (Hey you there with the glasses)
Carry the news (I want you)
Boogaloo dudes (I want you at the front)
Carry the news (Now you all his friends)
All the young dudes (Now you bring him down cause I want him)
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes (I want him right here bring him come on)
Carry the news (Bring him here you go)
All the young dudes (I've wanted to do this for years)
Carry the news (There you go)
Boogaloo dudes (How do you feel)
Carry the news

Electronic Behavior Control System

This is a test. For the next thirty seconds, this station will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.

I've made mention of the transmitter logs (see Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125), which the operator on duty had to sign and date before assuming responsibility for what was being broadcast. One of things everybody had to know who worked the control room was how to perform a weekly test of the Emergency Broadcast System, the EBS. Created in the mid-1960s and very much civil defense chic, the test was both a sense of honor (for DJs who were now the ones giddily interrupting someone else’s programming, much as the EBS has interrupted their television and radio programming growing up) and nuisance (as it took up precious time in their music shift).

At some point every week there was to be a test of the EBS equipment. In short, it simply meant you ran a recorded introduction, turned up one of the channels on the audio board that played the recognizable tones (at 853 Hz and 960 Hz), and then played the recorded concluding remarks. That was the test, in all its push-button simplicity.

This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and federal, state, and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency.

It was beaten into our heads that we had to know this in the event someone from the FCC ever walked in and requested we run a test. Dr. Propel, on par with his usual goofiness, often would waltz by the studio window, wearing an old brown fedora with a tag in the brim that had the word "PRESS" scribbled out and replaced with the letters "FCC." While an obvious joke, it was to drive home the point that you had to know the test.

If this had been an actual emergency, the signal you just heard would have been followed by official news or information.

The Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), on the other hand, was a group of performance artists and musicians from Rhode Island that helped introduce the concept of video scratching. Here's how EBN's Brian Kane, Josh Pearson, and Gardner Post worked: take a clip off television news of someone announcing, "Emergency;" then of someone else saying, "Broadcast;" followed by "Network" said by someone else. Create some funky backbeat rhythm to go with that and you've got what EBN did best. There were a few other similar artists out there around this time, mixing and mashing together sounds with the latest in digital audio equipment. In the past, to create something akin to this you’d probably have a live band performing to an audiotape spliced together of lost-and-found sounds. EBN, and others, could simply record a sound into their computer and then cut, copy, and paste to their heart’s content. Add some visuals – on the fledging CD- ROM medium – and you’ve got a video, albeit not on par with what MTV plays (or played, as was the trend).

This station serves the local area. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Of course, back at the station, by the time everybody had mastered the art of the weekly test of the 30-year-old EBS, the powers-that-be finally updated the concept, resulting in the Emergency Alert System (EAS). There was a difference, as well as mass education of everyone to know how to operate the EAS. It just didn't gel with some people....

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Electronic Behavior Control System
(EBN)
Emergency Broadcast Network
From the album Telecommunication Breakdown
1995

The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder

As undergraduates it was inevitable that we would be required to enroll in the advanced television course where our chief assignment was to create our own television program. The most time-consuming aspect wasn't writing or shooting but rather editing together our various clips of video. Because the video editing bays were always in use during the day - either by television station staff, lab practicum classes, or someone else enrolled in the advance television course – we had the option of signing up for "overnight editing," which I must confess could be as miserable as it sounds.

Once you requested this nighttime shift you were expected to be at your video bay that night at ten o'clock and working – be that until midnight or six the next morning. But cooped into the closet-sized space with noisy equipment and a just-as-annoying collaborator for more than thirty minutes easily took its toll. Breaks were frequent, as were the late-night delivered pizzas from the local joint a few blocks away (with Zero bars for desert from the machine upstairs). When it was time to get away, students stumbled in a daze toward the newsroom for fresh air, something to eat, a chance to chat with whoever else was still around, and catch some late night television. The program of choice?

Tom Snyder.

During the spring of 1997 and the following 1997-98 school year, those of us stuck in the communication building had regular visits with Tom and The Late Late Show. Usually a couple nights each week we were Tom's audience, lounging on bulky furniture or sprawled across the floor with our minds unwinding after hours of school and work. How we managed to frequently miss our bed times (and still make it to class later that day) still amazes me a decade later, and so I assume there must have been some magic in those pictures flying in the air. How we first found Tom is an answer lost to the ages but there was something about this erudite man that we all gravitated toward. Even students who seldom fraternized with others during the day, and who would be working overnight to complete a project, might meet by chance and soon find themselves sharing a laugh with Tom and the rest of us. One thing that made it special was the fact that there wasn't then – and isn’t now – anything else like the colorcast: the atmosphere of the studio, the long-form topics discussed, and the wide spectrum of guests whose discussions could evoke a difference of opinion or a giddy laugh from the host. We never called in – we often thought about it – and so we just listened. And if the guest wasn’t grabbing our attention for whatever reason, we just listened to Tom.

We in the audience laughed a lot, too – at stories about trains, dogs, the Companion, or whatever else; at his banter with the stage crew; at the quick-witted mockery when things went awry; and the jokes he shared from other viewers:

When did Pinocchio realize he was made of wood and not a real boy?
The day his hand caught on fire.

And then somewhere in the mix we remembered we were there for a reason and we had work to do. Out of courtesy we waited until a commercial to make our less-than-energetic exit.

The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder debuted on the CBS Network in January of 1995, and ran for over 800 episodes, coming to a close on a Friday night in 1999.

While we mourn his passing, we quaff a colortini to the man who helped get us through those late, late nights.

Good night, Tom.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder
Theme Music Composed and Performed by
(David Sanborn)

Crazy tv dreams might be true, not what it seems

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

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)

This big dog bites, hah

There are not many memories from Tuesday mornings to dwell upon – aside from the excessive desire to play Cuban Pete on a weekly basis (see Chic-chic-ky-boom) – and I realize I cannot correctly identify either host all these years later. It was either "John and tha Big Dawg" or "Bob and the Big Dog" or some such silliness – but who really cares at this point in the game? Neither host was particularly friendly, especially to a lowly freshman much like myself. I probably was a bit disenchanted after my first Monday to come in that first Tuesday and find two completely different people behind the board that I would have to figure out how to work with. A stranger in a strange land; a foreigner, if you will.

The one who called himself "Big Dog" (I think he was the big dog) was a large kid named Todd (he of “windometer” fame, see The masquerade is played and neighbor folks make jokes); he usually ran the console, coming off with an over-zealous attitude that he was a good DJ even if his output said otherwise. His accomplice behind the mic was a short, squatty woman whose name I don't recall – maybe Bobbi? Nothing anyone ever did seemed to please her and I can see her face – masked in dour boredom – popping into the newsroom to tell me "five minutes to air" or some other piece of news that I was already well aware of. There wasn’t a lot of cheery chemistry between the two, almost a forced togetherness: I don’t recall the banter between the two but Todd laughed at his jokes a lot and the girl spoke with the same enthusiasm one does when discussing one’s own funeral arrangements. Almost on a weekly basis Todd showed Bobbi how to run the console, playing the part of educated trainer.

One of Big Dog’s more obnoxious moments involving me came midway through the semester. As I mentioned elsewhere, there was no noticeable element identifying a newscast that semester, such as a news introduction (see, for example, Sleeping Beauty). Therefore, before you began the top-of-the-hour news, you had to give the required top-of-the-hour legal identification of the station, containing the station call letters and the city of license. This wasn’t a big deal: early on, I just sputtered out the call letters in a pretty pathetic voice and then went on with the news items. Later in the semester, when I was more confident and adventurous, I found other ways to use them, such as saying, “Good morning, it’s seven o’clock at...” followed by the call letters, the city, and my brief announcement that, “this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak.” You know, trying to not make the call letters the first words out my mouth (or, blandly reciting four letters of the alphabet like everyone else).

Anyway, there never was a problem with this introduction except for one morning when Todd was more frenzied than usual. I must note that there was seldom any sort of on-air cross-talk between me and any of the daily morning show hosts, and therefore I found myself a bit of a loss when, immediately after I concluded the newscast, Big Dog jumped on the mic to correct me. There was a syrupy sincere “thank you” for my “hard work” on the news that morning, followed by a reminder to always start with the Legal I.D., which he then rattled off as an example. This was on air. Live. A bit crass wasn’t it, I think looking back? Couldn’t he have just done his own I.D. and then come over after the music was going to let me know? That is, if I hadn’t given the I.D. – which I had.

Without thinking, I answered back with a cold, clear, “I did.” That, too, went over the air. Live. I already wasn’t too thrilled with this bunch, and I always got the impression they felt the same of me, and so this was hardly a way to mend fences.

Speaking of Foreigners....heh-heh...Lou Gramm was back by the mid-1990s to lead his boys through another album of classic rock sound-alike music, incidentally their last studio album to date. You sort of wonder how bands like this managed to stay afloat with all the “alternative” and “hip-hop” artists reworking the popularity meter.

I have to wonder, when I hear the sloppy sounds of Big Dog, how something of this caliber was even popular?

Feel free to theorize if the proceeding ambiguous sentence referred to the song or Todd, by the way.

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Big Dog
(Lou Gramm/Jeff Jacobs/Mick Jones/Bruce Turgon)
Foreigner
From the album Mr. Moonlight
1995

Big dog, scratching at the door
With this big dog, you won't want to round, no more
My big dog, guiri, bites, hah-huh-grrrrrr

Big dog, growling, grrrrrr
Bad dog, babe, you better keep away
Guiri, guiri, guiri, hah-huh-grrrrrr

This big dog bites, hah

Grrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrr

Big dog

Big, big dog

Grrrrrrrrr

Big dog, grrrrrr

My big, big dog

Big dog, bites, grrrrrrrrr, grrr

Big dog, hah-huh

Grrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrr

Grrrrrrrrr

Big dog, hah-huh

Big, big dog

You better get adviced
You better let this big dog

You know I’d like to believe this nervousness will pass

There was a public service announcement (PSA) in rotation for years at the undergraduate station that featured a young wispy-voiced individual that spoke of being timid and unsure of himself – “girls wouldn’t give me the time of day. Hey, Julie! Do you have the time?” A valley-girl-like voice chimed back, a clearly delivered and aloof, “SHUT UP!” What made an already an oddly amusing and memorable PSA even more so was the “boy” changed once he signed up for Selective Service. Overnight his voice lowered an octave or two and he said he felt more responsible and mature. Plus, Julie had time for the kid, whose name was revealed to be Brad. Needless to say, Brad’s frequent encounter with Julie ran for many years and for many reasons – partly because the PSA had no set termination schedule and partly because “young Brad” sounded like some of the DJs. Also thanks to its longevity came various attempts to parody its simplistic two-voice approach at humor.

My part in this came in the form of a promo for the station’s modern rock programming featuring a nervous, wimpy-voiced kid who admitted he used to listen to far inferior music before “overnight” switching to a more mature voice and level of musicality. Of course we needed “inferior” music for “Brad” to reference and I came up with an unlikely trio: Whitesnake, Europe, and Seven Mary Three. Why?

Let’s see: I had found an old Whitesnake 12” single in the music library archives earlier in my career at the station and made a point of annoying others by hanging the sleeve (featuring an unsettling tryin’-to-look-tuff photo of the band) on the office wall. This probably paved the way for my short-lived usage of David Coverdale as a punch-line (see Escher Sketch (A Tale of Two Rhythms)). Europe hadn’t been lampooned in a while and I’m not sure why they popped into mind, but I would later use their popular Final Countdown album for another humorous bit at the station.

Seven Mary Three was a Virginia-based band that formed in 1992 by Jason Ross and Jason Pollock. After signing on a full-fledged band, the group migrated to Florida where they soon had a fluke hit that caught the ear of a record company big wig. Soon thereafter Cumbersome went from a regional hit to the national airwaves as featured on their 1995 album, American Standard.

I’m pretty sure the reason for naming them in my promo had to do with my observation of how people I worked with felt about the band – a very love-them or hate-them attitude. Some people thought the song was okay and liked the band’s sound, while detractors loathed that sound, especially when featured in a 4-minute song appropriately named Cumbersome. Maybe that was part of the joke, an inadvertent way for people to poke some fun at the band. I do know one of the reasons I chose them was that for all the fans who spoke so highly of them, the station never heard anything other than Cumbersome from them. We never got another song from them, much less any sort of album, and so we all thought of them as nothing more than a glorified one-hit wonder.

My only other memory was thinking that at some point it would be funny to redo the song as a disco tune. Yes, I envisioned Cumbersome sung to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. Can’t you hear it: “And I’ve become – cum-cum-cumbersome.....”

Maybe not.

No clue, either, as to the status of Brad and Julie, or even the PSA. I would like to think it graduated long ago (and it probably has) but you sort of wish they'd have a reunion some time.

Right. Maybe not.

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Cumbersome
(Pollock, J./J.A. Ross)
Seven Mary Three
From the album American Standard
1995

She calls me goliath and I wear the David mask
I guess the stones are coming too fast for her now
You know I’d like to believe this nervousness will pass
All the stones that are thrown are building up a wall
I have become cumbersome to this world
I have become cumbersome to my girl

I’d like to believe we could reconcile the past
Resurrect those bridges with an ancient glance
But my old stone face can’t seem to break her down
She remembers bridges, burns them to the ground
I have become cumbersome to this world
I have become cumbersome to this girl

Too heavy too light, too black or too white, too wrong or too right, today or tonight
Cumbersome
Too rich too poor, she’s wanting me less and I’m wanting her more
The bitter taste is cumbersome

There is a balance between two worlds
One with an arrow and a cross
Regardless of the balance life has become
Cumbersome

I see you dancing on the stage of memory

At both stations I worked at – as well as most every station I didn't – the programming was scheduled by what was called a program clock (or "wheel") that was nothing more than a circular diagram indicating the order of the various items played each hour, be it music or otherwise. The concept was simply to show what aired at a given time, such that a DJ, unsure of what to do at about 18-20 minutes after the hour, could look at the clock and know that it was time to take a stop set, or live break, and not play music (or, conversely, the DJ could have paid more attention during training and already known). Most of the clocks were universally identical and only fine-tuned to the specific formats (meaning, the "rock clock" instructed the DJ to play a "rock liner," while the "jazz clock" demanded a "jazz liner").

The radio station I worked at in graduate school had very simple clocks because they had no sub-genres of music and the scant instructions on the diagram were but reminders: a stop set at quarter-after and quarter-till, a live PSA here, a live promo there, and some liners every so often.

Things were a bit more complex at my undergraduate radio station because of music categories that were arbitrarily created and assigned by student management. Most of these categories came into play during the modern rock format, where we had the most music, the most DJ shifts, and, in turn, where the student staff spent most of their time. Depending on an individual song's style, sound, and speed, a lot of these categories emulated the type of thing you'd hear at a commercial station...which means Syd ("the Kid") probably pushed these categories during his reign as program director.

Let's see...at the top of the hour was a "power cut" – something popular, strong, and loud to shoot us out of the starting gate and grab your attention and then keep it (see I'm not listening when you say good-bye); these were assigned the abbreviation of P. The N category was "new release" and we designated one song each hour as a new song, based on when we got a copy off a weekly preview disc. Harkening back to the mid-1980s were the "flashbacks" – type F – that also got (thankfully) one spin an hour. "Currents" were the popular songs that didn't make it into the P category, with "Recurrents," if memory serves correctly, one-time C-category songs. All these categories – plus the other scheduled elements – made the clock look like a large pie with many, many slices; but in a linear fashion, this clock diagram might look like this:

(Legal ID)-P-(Live break)-C-C-(liner)-R-(stop set at 0:20 after)-C-F-(weather break at 0:30 after)-R-N-C-(stop set at 0:50 after)-R-R

These recurrent songs were mostly once-upon-a-big-time bands – like the Nixons. I know our station, as well as others out there, probably played Sister to death in the years after Foma was released. I know it appeared on a few of our preview discs, most likely an attempt to make sure that every station had a few copies on hand so no one could claim ignorant. Then came the acoustic version, which we entered into rotation for no real good reason. It's not a bad song by any stretch and I recently within the past year found the song again (as well as the acoustic version) and was reminded of how things were a decade ago. As for the band, I think they're still out there, believe it or not. The foursome that composed this song lasted only this album before switching out some members for their self-titled album in 1997. An album in 1999 and another in 2000 shows that the four are still hard at work, no doubt searching for another hit. Best of luck boys.

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Sister
(Brooks, Davis, Humphrey, Maloy)
The Nixons
From the album Foma
1995

Here I am again, again ... overwhelming feelings
Thousand miles away from your ocean home.
Part of me is near
Thoughts of what we were invade
The miles that stand between, can't separate
Your all I hoped you'd become
Sister I see you - dancing on the stage of memory
Sister I miss you
Fleeting visits pass still they satisfy
Reminders of the next overshadow good-bye
Our flames burn as one

Sister I see you - dancing on the stage of memory
Sister I miss you
All I am begins with you, thoughts of hope understood
Half of me breathes in you, thoughts of love remain true
Here we are again saying good-bye
Still we fall asleep underneath the same sky
You're all I knew you'd become

Sister I see you - dancing on the stage of memory
Sister I miss you
Entwined, you and I, our souls speak from across the miles
Intertwined, you and I, our blood flows from the same inside
I see you walking there....
See you walking in my mind...

Dawganova

Our Saturday morning folk show (see Jesse James behind the wheel) at the undergraduate station was a hybrid of music, a juxtaposition of sounds that didn't always sound the best together but we made them work the best we could. One of the types of music featured was what might be thought of as "acoustic music" – instrumental tracks featuring guitars, banjos, mandolins, or some other sort of stringed instrument.

When the format was launched, I think its creator (Brad Phasner) wasn't sure what sort of music we were going to wind up with. He had his own private stash of music that he started off with but we would need more to make this new endeavor work. I had become interested in the new format early on and assisted Brad with promotion, including notifying record labels, magazines and online portals that the station was looking to start a new format that was sort of an "anything goes." Easily, more than half of what we ended up with was the contemporary folk music, with the discs of acoustic music probably made up another quarter percent. The remainder of the folk show's library was...was...well, that's another story. Looking back, I always found it odd how it all fit together.

Our library of acoustic music was probably the second largest category of the folk show; a lot of the discs were compilation albums, usually samplers from an all-acoustic label – like David Grisman's Acoustic Disc label. Grisman is a renowned mandolin player, whose nickname "Dawg" features into many of his album that are of a bluegrass/acoustic jazz variety. Grisman, or at least his label's promotional department, unloaded a number of complimentary discs on our station (and continued to provide an occasional compilation from time to time). Listeners seemed to like the sound, as calls asked for further album information. Brad was so impressed with listeners' reactions that he soon began announcing all album titles and labels and release year, along with song title and artist. Dawganova was one such album that got a lot of airtime, notably for its leadoff track.

In the pursuing years, and under my brief leadership, the format expanded the number of acoustic tracks in rotation and the number of times they were played each hour. Since the program was initially four hours and usually favored the contemporary folk singers, we sort of "flipped" the format – two hours would be 60-40 favoring the acoustic, instrumental tracks, the other two for everything else. And to add whatever variety we could to the format that semester, we always switched around the hours: one week the first and third hours would be acoustic, the next week the second and third, and maybe the week after that just the first and fourth.

Grisman continues recording music (recent album titles – Dawgnation and Dwag's Groove – suggest you can't keep a good dawg down), with his most recent work titled DGBX, the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience (2006).

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Dawganova
(Grisman)
David Grisman Quintet
From the album Dawganova
1995