You’re taking your guidance from the force

There wasn’t any sort of specific science to how PSAs were rotated in and out of the control room but there was some rhyme and reason instilled into the process to ensure some continuity. This method always seemed to be there: when I became Program Director I picked up the process as it had been left for me, improved it where necessary, and allowed those that followed me to do the same. It was fairly simple and painless.

Thirty second (0:30) spots were recorded to 0:40 second cartridge tapes and labeled in red. Labeling was done with a typewriter and one of the never-ending packets of labels that always seemed to come out of nowhere. Running out of labels one week? By the start of the next another packet surfaced – usually with a few sheets already missing. I’ve no idea how they were kept in stock unless they got passed along with Son of Funkenstein CDs (see I Can Feel It In My Heart Something's Wrong).

the one about finding piggy

One year before I was a student in English Composition II, I was a student in a senior-level high school English class. The major topic for that spring was an all-out study of William Golding’s classic, The Lord of the Flies, part of which involved me composing an “in character diary” as well as a short essay (maybe three or four pages). Golding’s novel struck a nerve and I ended up quoting bits of it in high school and – apparently – into college (though I doubt I was ever in a position to chant “kill the pig, cut her throat” in conversation, polite or otherwise).

What with the memorable character of Piggy still fresh on the mind, I came to college and during my first semester discovered a modern-day Piggy working behind the pizza counter in the Belvedere-Agora cafeteria. In my mind, Piggy looked like the young boys from The Far Side cartoons: dumpy-looking children with striped shirts tightly fit over a balloon-shaped frame and wearing glasses with thick, clear lenses that may (or may not) hide pea-sized eyes. This too described Piggy in the cafeteria, though this “young man” had elected to add “facial hair” into the already burgeoning equation. It wasn’t pretty – but his annoyed grunts waving the pizza spatula around were always worth a laugh. Someone had put him on pizza patrol and there was no way he lettin’ anyone walk away with both an entrée and a slice of pizza on the same tray. Sucks to that rule...and yeah, sucks to his assmar while we’re at it, too.

Also versed in The Lord of the Flies was fellow student Michael Arthur who I had met my first semester on campus through a mutual acquaintance. Late into that semester I had tried ordering pizza for dinner, only to get read the riot act because I couldn’t have two main courses at the same time. It might have been an important statute in the cafeteria code but it sounded asinine coming from this student.

By now it was the spring semester and in Comp II, Ms. Fontaine directed us to pick something – practically anything – from the realm of literature and compose a ten-or-so page essay on some aspect of it. We had done minor writing assignments most of that semester but this major essay came midway into the course and would serve as a sort of mid-term project. Honestly, I was a bit lazy and therefore got permission to revisit The Lord of the Flies – careful of course to not mention that a huge chunk of my essay would come from something a year old. Oh, yeah: other requirements for this essay included that we read the completed text aloud to the rest of the class and that we create a one-page capsule review to share. At the end of the project each student would have 25 or so one-page write-ups that would go on to become – surprise! – potential test material.

Somewhere along the way genius struck. If this was to be a presentation then I needed something that grabbed everyone’s attention, something memorable. My topic was to be the symbolism behind the names and traits of the characters – Ralph and Jack, Simon and so on – of which Piggy always seemed the popular one for various reasons. (I’m sure the fat, loud, nerdish types are popular literary stereotypes.) What better way to introduce the character of Piggy then by interviewing him about his time on the island and his encounters with the other characters! (Never mind the fact he never leaves the island....) And what better person to portray Piggy than that guy serving pizza in the cafeteria?

Alas that was not to be and so I asked Michael if he’d be interested in this plum role. As soon as he agreed – and I like to think it wasn’t a difficult sell – I began drafting just how this would play out.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Piggy
(Simmerlein)
The Fringe
From the album Chardonnay
1997

the one about the brief tenure of the first university president

It had started to rain again. We both froze as the man stepped forward and pulled out a flashlight. Its light shone on both Cody’s and my face and from that circle of light we could just make out his face, too. Although it was partially hidden by his hat, the man was middle-aged with huge, owl-eyed spectacles. His mouth was twisted into a frown and he nastily asked what the two of us were doing out here, where we were going, and why.

Cody was a bit more quick-witted than I was, plus he also had a bit of temper (and neither of us appreciated the threatening stance or meddlesome questions). When the man had stopped barking his questions at us, Cody irritably let fly with a response. “Listen, we’re trying out for the cross-country team so we thought we’d take a run. Is that all right with you? We were tryin’ to get over to th’ dorm but you showed up an’ all...”

Owl Eyes ran the flashlight up and down to check out what we were wearing. He then causally turned the light on the nearby University Police Department call box situated between Old Administration and the Communication Building. Cody held his ground. “Look, we’re not doing anything wrong,” Cody said crossly. “We aren’t drinkin’ or anything. An... and we could even ask you the same the question. What are you doing out here? Snoopin’ around in the dark? ”

The man’s face dropped and his attitude changed in an instant. Gone was the threatening groundskeeper he pretended to be; now Owl Eyes seemed embarrassed by his outburst and more so for being caught. He hem-hawed an apology and muttered something about running into a group of toughs during his previous research. After that encounter he said he was always defensive and edgy when confronted.

The two of us exchanged glances as if to say it was time to go. The strange, lonely owl-eyed man began pleading for us to stay, as if this would qualify as penitence for his earlier actions. We had taken but a few steps toward Bowman Hall when the man popped the question: "Don't you want to know what I was doing?" I must admit, Cody was more inquisitive than I was at the time. He turned around. "Yeah, you're casin' the joint and are goin' to end up being arrested for breakin' and enterin', that's what!"

Neither of us was prepared for what Owl Eyes said next. "Did you know this university’s first president was found dead somewhere in this area?" This was new to me and Cody, too. I knew nothing about the first president and sadly not much more about the man currently holding the position.

Cody and I stopped and listened as Owl Eyes began the brief story of Theodore Conall. He had been hired from somewhere out east – "Birmingham, Biloxi, Bedford, I don’t remember where" – where his extensive background in teaching had earned him the nickname "Magic Tad." These experiences impressed the local board of directors who saw fit to hire him for work in Grandville. Conall arrived in the early summer of 1873 (his wife and family wouldn’t arrive until late-September) and spent his first month conferring with community leaders and helping further shape the curriculum of Grandville Normal that opened that October. But over the next few months Conall changed. While he seemed as dedicated to the role of president as ever, he avoided excess attention and shied away from interviews. Once boisterous meetings with the faculty were mostly muted affairs, or so said occasional items in the Examiner-Press. Conall led opening day ceremonies on October 5 with what went down as the longest and wettest investiture speech in school history. Ten days later his body was found in the tree-lined acreage behind the red-brick Grandville Building. "Somewhere out in this area," Owl Eyes said wearily, waving a limp arm out toward the quadrangle.

Neither of us said a word but Owl Eyes knew what we were thinking. "He succumbed to Typhoid fever...or small pox. Some disease"

A disease? Well, that sort of sucked the air out of any potential mystery. We were tired. We were drenched. By this time Cody and I knew we needed to be getting back to the dorm. The rain had slowed down to a light drizzle again and Owl Eyes said a few more words and thanked us for bearing with him. With a down-turned head, he galloped toward where we had come, to the other side of the quadrangle and a parking lot just on the other side. Cody and I watched until his raincoat melted into the colors of the night. We then both agreed the best word to describe the evening – and Owl Eyes – was "weird."

We got back to Bowman Hall close to nine o’clock and immediately washed up and went to bed. It was had been a long day preparing for the rapidly approaching fall semester and now, for it to be capped off with some strange story from campus lore…well, the mind wondered about who the owl-eyed man really was and what he was doing. But those questions would have to wait for another day.

We weren’t even college students, yet.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Man of Mystery
(Michael Carr)
Fathoms
From the album Evening in Nivram: Music of Shadows
1997

the one about a man wearing bird shit

An ode this week to Bowman-Oates Hall and the big-talking, horn-blowing, glad-handing show-off that will be forever known to me as Bird Shit.

Bowman-Oates Hall was a four-story dormitory and where I lived my four undergrad years. It was perfect and pristine in exactly no way at all, perhaps aware that it was not long for this world. At one time it had been one of the more popular on-campus dorms, partly because it was squared away in the center of campus but also because it was coed, had its own cafeteria, and parking was a breeze (out back, in fact). I chose it for those reasons but also because it was across the street from the Communication Building, though “across the street” is a slightly misleading term; one end of the “street” had been sealed off decades before and it the narrow strip of broken blacktop served mostly as parking for Communication Building faculty and staff.

My first encounter with Bowman Hall was probably during one of the university’s “Meet and Greet” sessions held once each long semester – once in March, the other in October – to allow potential students the opportunity the chance to walk the campus, meet with instructors, and peek inside academic buildings and dormitories to see what this college thing was all about.

Whatever my first impressions of Bowman Hall were are long forgotten. My memory of this "Meet and Greet" Saturday is still fresh on my mind.

Everyone met at the coliseum by 8 AM and following the welcoming ceremonies we broke into groups of about 10 students to tour the campus with our guide. What made these tours interesting were the people – students, of course – culled to act as tour guides. My guide was most certainly a member of a fraternity and more than likely had partied the night before all the while forgetting of his commitment the following morning. He didn’t reek or slur his speech or anything immediately noticeable but he didn’t react kindly to sunlight or repeated questions.

For reasons I’ve never understood, but that still resonate clearly in my mind, my guide somehow misunderstood my name as “Greg” when we were introduced and not Martin or Marty or something along those lines (or even, as I’ve been to some, Mark). Then he thought my brother, who was tagging along with my parents and me, was the soon-to-be freshman and started asking about his major.

After the tour I dubbed the guide “Mark” – possibly in retaliation for not being able to retain my name. Mark did little more than waddle around the quadrangle and point out buildings and their contents though it was not as convincing a show as you’d expect because Mark relied heavily on reading verbatim from the signs out front the buildings.

However the real gem in our tour was the guy near the front of the crowd dressed in black. Black shirt. Black pants. Black bucks, and probably black socks but no one checked. Black hair; oily, swimming in a swamp of Wildroot or shoe polish or some other God-awful concoction. His face looked like a catcher’s mitt, wrinkled and tan. My mom said his dentures were slipping every time he smiled. He didn’t smile a lot because he talked excessively about his daughter. The girl was the smartest student to ever come out of the Montezuma school system, or so claimed the man in black. He proudly rattled off a list of her high school highlights: cheerleader, volleyball squad, wrote for the school newspaper, and was crowned Homecoming Queen, Prom Queen, and Miss Chi Chi (whatever the hell that was...) all in the same school year. I have no idea if that record has ever been beaten.

Listening to the father boast of past accomplishments wasn’t irritating enough. Her father seemingly knew that her name would be on the lips of every student within the first few weeks of her first school year. She was destined for popularity! Every time our guide mentioned something about a building – “this one houses the campus television station” or “this is the English building” – her father man would loudly announce some ridiculous claim like “you’re gonna see my baby on that television channel” or “my girl has a book of published poetry.” The girl, walking nearby as she balanced her family tree on the end of her nose, smirked and feigned interest in the tour.

Of course, the tour was thirty minutes and after ten minutes we were more than ready to jettison this man in black. And that’s about when some of us noticed the man’s shirt wasn’t really as black as the man thought.

Somewhere between the quadrangle and mall area, maybe somewhere around the Old Administration Building or Bowman Hall, the man in black walked underneath a bird. That’s when the bird let loose with its opinion on his daughter’s achievements. It was, as far as we could tell, a very large bird. Sadly, the man had neither seen nor heard the bird’s recent activity. Most everyone else in the tour did see what happened. And most everyone laughed.

It made for a memorable Saturday morning.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Bird Shit Magnet
(unknown)
Debris
From the album Errata
1997

Newsbreak: Reach Around Rodeo Clowns

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

Senator Phil Gramm said Sunday he would file this week as a Republican candidate in the 1996 Presidential election. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gramm said he would file papers with the Federal Election Committee this week to “put the legal structure in place,” although he does not expect to announce his candidacy until March.

OJ Simpson’s lead attorney Robert Shapiro is looking for ways to personally cash in on the media frenzy over Simpson. NewsWeek reported in its November 21 edition that Shapiro obtained a powerful Hollywood agent to field book and television offers. It later quoted the agent Ed Hookstratten as saying he sounding out writers to ghost write a book for Shapiro.

The English Channel tunnel – Chunnel – is open for trains now. Hundreds of people left Paris, London, and Brussels today in high speed trains that ride the rails of Chunnel. Round trip prices range from 152-to-311 dollars. The Paris to London trip is about three hours.

Cloudy this morning with scattered thunderstorms later today, highs in the upper 70s; the rain continues into the night with lows in the 50s. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 66 degrees.

---

After the Tuesday and Thursday morning newscasts there was just enough time to eat a cereal bar for breakfast, find the latest edition of the Screed, and head upstairs for 90 minutes of Dr. Propel’s class. Unlike M-days when my mornings were stacked with classes, T-days consisted of only two classes that were hours apart from each other.

Something called College Mathematics was my only other T-day class, held from 2-3:30 in one of the many similarly-named Academic Classroom Buildings (this one being dubbed ACB4). The instructor was the stereotypical college “prof,” an older, heavyset man with wispy gray hair and glasses who wore sports coats and vests but never ties. He went by the handle Dr. Cornelius Kirk – and yes, the pretentious phrase “by the handle” was very much the way he talked. But due to Dr. Kirk’s maturity and seniority, many students perpetuated a nickname they had been passed down from previous years: Captain. Therefore I had Captain Kirk for college math.

(I was actually surprised that midway through the semester that some of the smart alecs in class, two of whom I eventually likened to beavers, actually started calling Kirk “Captain.” This was a no-no. First off, throughout the semester Kirk corrected any student addressing him with a title other than “doctor.” He wasn’t Mr. Kirk, he was Dr. Kirk and had the degrees, the dissertations, and the domineering personality to back it up [he only used the first two examples in his clarification]. Secondly, it didn’t take much to irritate Kirk and after the third or fourth “Captain,” and the laughter and giggles that naturally followed, he peered over his glasses and pointed a pudgy finger toward the back corner. In no certain terms he told them to knock it off.)

Kirk’s class was essentially a cheaper, no-thrills version of the two algebra classes I had taken in high school. Most of the topics Kirk touched upon were familiar, though we had not gone into the same level of detail in high school; however many of the students had apparently not had a math class in a number of years and were constantly asking questions, often time about some of the simplest concepts. Like graphing a line. If anything stands out all these years later about Kirk’s class it’s that no one seemed to know how to graph a line. I won’t pretend to be an expert about algebraic equations – neither now, in Kirk’s class, or even in high school – but I thought this was one of the fundamental basics that everyone could muster. I was wrong.

The only other thing that stands out is Kirk’s penchant for ridiculous phrases (such as “by the handle”); hands down the one he used the most was “workhorse equation.” About midway through the semester we began a long, strung-out unit on matrices after, I assumed, Kirk gave up on everyone’s inability to graph lines. I forget the details but there was some basic expression that we all needed to know that would help us out later down the line. Weeks later, after we had flown by the easy lessons and were dealing with matrix addition, multiplication, transposition, or something, Kirk reminded us of this “workhorse equation” as the one that would solve all our problems. This “workhorse equation” was referenced frequently, with Kirk’s unabashed enthusiasm for it another target for the beavers.

I must have given the two class clowns the nickname “the beavers” when I failed to think of another animal to degrade. They were older than most other students, probably in their late-20s, and not at all a fan of Captain Kirk. One reminded me at the time as a possible beatnik: slicked-back black hair, pointy facial features like a jutted chin and sharp nose, and very outside-the-norm dress. Both lived for aggravating Kirk to no end, either by mocking his mannerisms, cracking jokes, or making him repeat something that he’d already discussed repeatedly. After going on about the rules of matrix multiplication for twenty minutes, one beaver would casually ask, “So you can't multiply a 2x3 and a 4x1 matrix?” An infuriated Kirk glared in their direction and barked back that “For the nth time – no! – I've said you can't do it!”

Even though the beavers irritated him Kirk was generally well-disposed with all the students and would go to great lengths to help them understand the topic at hand. While commendable, this generally led to extensive and drawn-out discussions that more often than not made Kirk forget what his original point was.

Besides the beavers, the only other student I remember all these years later was one I dubbed the Waddler. He waddled through the door and then waddled to the far side of the room, all the while that song by Dion played in mind with the lyric “he waddles around an’ around an’ around....”

Thankfully, this was the only math class I had in college and after this semester I never saw either the beavers or Captain Kirk again. However in my later years as an undergrad I did sort of miss courses like this – those with non-Communication majors. After seeing the same people day-in and day-out it was a nice change to see a bunch of students with different majors all taking a core class.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beaver
(Quentin Jones/Wendell Jones)
Reach Around Rodeo Clowns
From the album Whip It Out
1997

Newsbreak: Television Dork

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

The Muslim militant group Hamas said Monday it will launch a terrorist attack this week during President Clinton’s visit to the Middle East. The leaders of Hamas say the attack will be in revenge for Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reported orders to assassinate Hamas leaders on sight. Clinton arrives in the Middle East Wednesday for the signing of the Israel/Jordon Accord ending forty-six years of war between the two countries.

U.S. Special Forces teams are tracking two small bands of anti-government gunmen through southwestern Haiti but after weeks of searching only 64 weapons and one man were found. In a raid a couple weeks ago, Green Berets seized 33 weapons and took one man into custody. In another raid 31 weapons were found.

Highs in the mid-70s with early showers and scattered thunderstorms later; tonight more showers and cool with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 69 degrees.

---

Must have been a slow news day. Anyway...

Shortly after the school year began in September – and not too long after the semester kick-off meeting for the radio staff – signs began to appear throughout the Communication Building reminding us students that we could try out to become an anchor for Community Channel 7. The cable-only television station was run by students and featured programs created by students, who in turn had hopes that more than just students watched. There was, however, little doubt that students, let alone anyone, watched the programs with any regularity.

The newscasts had, for years, aired under assorted titles all based on “Channel 7 News” (i.e. “Community News 7” or “Community Channel 7 News”) though this semester, and apparently for one or two years before my freshman year, the program had been dubbed “Cable 7 News” in a presumed effort to point out the obvious. Anchor try-outs were held early each long semester (non-Summer session) to pick two teams of four that would host the thirty minute program on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The cast was the usual stock characters: a male and female news reader, a third person to read sports scores, and a fourth person to point at maps.

Interested parties were to show up a week or so later, dressed as how they would present themselves on the air. This meant neckties, Sunday-best dresses, perfectly coifed hair, and a lot of alcohol-based perfumes and colognes that didn’t work well together. One by one each student was given a script and seated behind the anchor desk (or semi-circular table, as it was in those days) to face the music, or camera, as it were. Try-outs were held in Studio 1, which was the largest therefore most important studio the School of Communication had. There was a little bit of everything in the studio, including the news desk, two interview sets, a blue chroma key wall, a black wall, and then piles of junk stashed in corners or propping up set walls.

Did I go through with try-outs? Not at all. I didn’t feel 100% at ease behind the microphone on the radio yet and didn’t feel the need to allow people to see what I looked like on television. I did however ask Troy Meadows, the radio News Director my freshman year, if I could watch from the studio. It turned out that Troy had been a reporter for Channel 7 the previous year and now, as a senior member of the staff, would be helping with the try-outs. Troy said I could come in for a few minutes to see a working studio but that visitors were mostly frowned upon. This wasn’t show-and-tell after all, it was the news.

Well, sort of. A few weeks later I watched one of the first Cable 7 News programs of the school year and wasn’t that impressed. I recognized a few people on the broadcast: Troy had a story relating to students coming back to campus and Mike, the guy I knew from Thursday morning radio, showed up with another in his series called “Open Mike” where he interviewed people around campus on various topics (apparently Mike was just as familiar with television as he was with radio). I suppose what made me disinterested though was the “attitude” of the program with its anchors promoting stories with false urgency and reading scripts with bland energy. None of us were a professional in any of our roles in that Communication Building – we were all there to learn and some of us had more to learn than others – but it was clear we all needed practice in our craft.

Sadly, the one aspect of Cable 7 News that did not require practice was the promotions staff that turned out some of the most pretentious stuff I’d ever seen. Less than a week after the anchor teams had been decided upon, the new ads began to appear on other Community Channel 7 programs. There were probably a half dozen or so different spots but all on the same theme: shots of the anchors and reporters working at their “desk,” receiving a phone call, and then heading out to campus or somewhere in town to “cover” the story. What made the ads showy? First off, the “desk” the “news team” used belonged to the instructors; these scenes were taped after hours to give the illusion that each student had a room-sized office to his-or-herself. Intercut with shots of students receiving phone calls were shots of students grabbing an aspect of clothing (i.e. suite coat) and running with a photographer down the “news room hall” (the same hall everyone used during the day; now virtually empty because it was taped at 9 p.m.) toward the door. This was followed by shots of the student arriving at the story and preparing to go “live” (really live-to-tape) with what they’ve learned.

At the end of the 30-second spots the scene faded to a shot of the news team talking with each other as they walked down a hall in the Communication Building. The students had that air of crisp seniority or mock forcefulness in their walk, as if they were seasoned authorities on whatever it was they were doing; you know, sort of like in the opening credits of Law and Order. But there were various shots used to make different promos: one scene was of the four-person Tuesday night broadcast team, one scene was of the four-person Thursday night broadcast team; there was one of the four news anchors from both nights, one of the two weather anchors, and one of the two sports anchors. All permutations ended with someone trying to sound like Bill Kurtis or Gary Owens announcing “Cable 7 News.”

Community Channel 7 was almost the polar opposite of the radio station in numerous characteristics. Where the radio station staff had set directors with a chain of command of both students and faculty, the television staff was a jumbled mess of students vying for command amongst each and with the department head. There were, as the saying goes, too many chiefs. There was also a flawed sense of importance that I noticed in my four years as a student: a lot of communication majors looked down in disgust at the radio station. Radio, it seemed, was the bane of the department. I never really understood this attitude. Even though our broadcasts were far more immediate – we were on five days a week with numerous newscasts compared to Channel 7’s one thirty minute program twice a week – television on the other hand was supposedly a more creative medium. It’s also the medium where people got to be seen and always figured a lot of people got into this field to boost their ego after being bashed down in high school.

Needless to say, I found radio far more rewarding but it didn’t take long my freshman year to realize that television would be in my future as a student.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Television
(Dork)
Dork
From the album Other White Meat
1997

What's wrong with me? I think you're crazy.

On the evening of Sunday, March 24, 1996, I sat in a room on the third floor of Oates Hall watching television. Two things were happening simultaneously: I was eating some sort of pizza from Neriola's and The Simpsons was about to start.

Let's toss in a few words about the manhole cover-inspired pizzas down at Neriola's, shall we? To be curt, Neriola's existed as long as it did because it was the closest eatery to campus within walking distance that was open Sunday nights. All those campus-owned cafeterias and food courts were closed Sunday evenings and if you were stuck on campus without a vehicle then you either found a friend who was going elsewhere, you ate from a vending machine, you scrounged under your bed for a leftover packet of Ramen noodle and a packet of green sauce from Señor Taco, or – and this list is presented in the order it should have been attempted – you walked down the hill on the southwest side of campus to Neriola's. If you were smart you ordered ahead and didn't have to wait around inside. While Neriola's had not been in business but a few years before my freshmen year, the squalid building it oozed out of along Central Street, the main drag, had obviously been there far too long. It's one thing to give your restaurant that old-timey feel and have old liquor posters and signs on the outside of your building (even if the restaurant tries to be pseudo-Italian); it's another to thing to have those be original signs that someone hasn't gotten around to moving yet. In short, their pizzas were the stuff of ridicule and justifiably should be mentioned in this April Fools post.

I usually got the medium thin crust with only green peppers and mushrooms.

On the evening of Sunday, March 24, 1996, Bobby – or some delivery guy from Neriola's – had just left and I was preparing myself for a hot meal and a little television before I called it a day. Make that a lukewarm meal, as Bobby ran into a Frat brother in the lobby and chatted a bit before he called me down. I mean, I assume something like that happened....

Tonight’s episode of The Simpsons focused on the washed-up life of actor Troy McClure and what happened when his career seemed to start on the rebound. How The Planet of the Apes made sense as a musical is beyond me but it works, especially for someone of McClure's mentality. As soon as McClure (as the astronaut Taylor) speaks, a synthesizer kicks in and the apes, lost at the thought of something as ludicrous as a talking human, begin requesting help from Dr. Zaius.

Everything up to this point was amusing but the song was the icing on the cake, especially once I realized I was already familiar with the "Help me, Dr. Zaius" melody thanks to years of Falco. Neriola's pizza went by the wayside as I began laughing too loud for my own good. I seem to recall nearly rolling out of the chair laughing so hard and missing all subsequent action. It would only be on second and third viewings that I was able to suppress these fits and see the singing apes were actually break dancing.
The next day at the radio station I found the usual group of regulars in the station office chatting away aimlessly. Shortly after I arrived someone brought up the Simpsons' episode from the night before and I was surprised at how many people had not just seen it but were able to break into the inane, repetitive chorus of, " Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius."

Going into the episode you knew it was going to be good because it focused on one of the program’s greatest characters, “the fabulous” Troy McClure (who you may remember from such films as The President’s Neck is Missing and Gladys the Groovy Mule, among others). McClure was always good for a laugh and while it could be debated whether he had talent (...well, I suppose he did have talent, as it was what made the water in his swimming pool possible), there was no question that the actor behind the voice did. Phil Hartman made his name on Saturday Night Live and later on primetime fare such as The Simpsons and Newsradio showcasing endearing and enthusiastic characters that all shared that unmistakable voice.

That voice has since been silenced but thankfully immortalized on an album of collected Simpsons music -- which means those of us sitting around the music library would now be able to sing the praises of Dr. Zaius along with Troy!

"It's the part I was born to play, baby!"

- - - - - - - - - - - -
A Fish Called Selma [Medley]: Dr Zaius and Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z
(Jack Barth/Alf Clausen)
The Simpsons
From the album Songs in the Key of Springfield
1997

(Spoken) Help the human's about to excape
Get Your Paws Off Me You Dirty Ape
(Gasp)
He Can Talk
He Can Talk
He Can Talk
He Can Talk
He Can Talk
He Can Talk
He Can Talk
I Can Sing!!!
Ooo Help Me Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Oh, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!

What's wrong with me?
I think you're crazy
I want a second opinion.
You're also lazy.

Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Oh, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!

Can I play the piano anymore?
Of course you can.
Well I couldn't before.

Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Oh, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!

Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!
Oh, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!


I hate every ape I see,
From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z.
No you'll never make a monkey out of me!
Oh my god, I was wrong.
It was Earth all along.
You finally made a monkey
Yes, we finally made a monkey
Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me!
I love you Dr. Zaius.!

I like to dream...about flying around in a space machine

I've mentioned the playlists that we were supposed to (more or less) follow for each music shift. There were always slight deviations to the list when it came to substituting a requested song or the chance that a CD was missing. This practice generally wasn't frowned upon, unless the DJ took it upon himself to revamp the entire three hours of music.

So it was with some delight that I was allowed to deviate from the playlist on a night in October. It was Halloween night and the idea was that the "regular" three hours of music would "dress up" as a Halloween-themed hour – though it quickly expanded from sixty minutes to a rogue three-hours of God-only knows what and, more so, why.

It started innocently enough with the Springsteen track, Brilliant Disguise. I thought that this might clue listeners that we were going off on a different tangent – especially since we didn't play a lot of Springsteen during the modern rock shifts, let alone classic rock shifts (we would have done more, but all we had was that insufficient "Greatest Hits" album). From there it went downhill slowly: R.E.M.'s Strange, Devil's Haircut by Beck, "Hell-o" by Poe, Seven Mary Three, surely a Halloween-inspired parody by Weird Al, maybe the Prodigy, and, of course, close to midnight was the obligatory title track from Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Leading up to this moment of debatable "scary" music I had noticed a rather odd track arrive on our weekly preview discs. The song was Magic Comet Ride, a parody of Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride, with new lyrics by Bob Rivers. The music director hadn't added the track into rotation for a few reasons, among them being the staid-and-true excuse that it didn't fit the sound of the station. Of course, the subject matter might have left a bad taste in someone's mouth, seeing how the subject matter dealt with the recently deceased Heaven's Gate group and the Hale-Bopp comet.

But it was Halloween and I figured it might fly under the radar (heh-heh) so I gave it a spin. As soon as it was over I got the first calls asking just what the hell that was – "that was funny – play it again." No, we're not going to play that again tonight, but we might again in a few days so (I said chirpily), "thanks for listening...stay tuned!"

In the interest of keeping this short, no, we didn't play it again anytime soon. The song didn't appear on my official playlist and because no one cataloged it in the computer system, it would have been mildly difficult to locate without going through all the CDs in the control room. It wasn't until the next April that I remembered it existed and snuck it into someone's playlist.

It didn't seem to have the impact then that it did during Halloween but still garnered some strange looks and laughs. Though they might have been geared more toward the DJ on duty than the music he was playing – I don't remember.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Magic Comet Ride
(Dennis Amero/Bryant, Joe/Ben Karlstrom/O'Neill, Spike/Bob Rivers)
Bob Rivers
From the album The Best of Twisted Tunes, Vol. 1
1997

I like to dream
Yes, yes
About flying around in a space machine
When a big blue ball appears in the night
Our leader says that the time is right
Hale Bopp draws near
Clean the house and pack that gear

Well UFO is right behind
Why don't you come with me boys and girls
On a magic comet ride
Well UFO's got a extra seat
Why don't you take a trek with me?
Beam us up we'll visit ET

Grab a ride girl
Say good bye world
Let Hale Bopp take you away

Last night I packed a travel sack
And said goodbye on video tape
Before the ship could come for me
Some witch doctor had to take my nuts away
I donned a gown
Brand new shoes from Niketown

Well you won't know if you stay behind
Why don't you come with me cyber geek
On a magic comet ride
Well follow Doe and you will see
Why don't you go to sleep with me?
This plastic bag will set you free

Say goodbye world
Log your last girl
Let the ship take you away

Well UFO is right behind
Why don't you come with me boys and girls
On a magic comet ride
Well UFO's got an extra seat
Why don't you take a trek with me?
Beam us up we'll visit ET

Right there and then I knew that something was gonna happen, but I couldn’t say what

As a radio format, the term "world music" brings to mind the concept of a radio station mixing together various forms of popular music from a multitude of ethnic groups. If I were in charge of a North American "rock" based world music program, I might try and find what was popular in Norway, Japan, India, maybe Sudan, and perhaps Peru, too.

And that's the sort of thing I thought the "world beat" format would be during graduate school. The station boasted its two-hour weekend program of world music, and I started checking out the music soon after assuming my role as station manger. It wasn't an impressive collection but then most weekend programs didn't have much in the way of programmable music. That's why it was a weekend show: "world beat" probably received scant airtime in an effort to give the community some sort of variety. That, or the station's faculty advisor, Grace Mittendorf, thought it made the station sound more adventurous.

Whatever the reason, it took little effort to realize that this station's definition of "world beat" was reggae music and not much else. I remember making the mistake of asking why we just didn't call the two hours on Saturday night "the Reggae show." Because, I was told, there was more than just reggae played. There was some mbaqanga music from Africa and someone found a Taiko/rap album in the giveaway closet and put it in rotation, too. I then made a second mistake by asking, since there was some non-reggae music, why we didn't make an effort of expanding the non-reggae selections, getting some more sounds from around the world. Because, I was told, that the reggae was what was most popular with listeners and it was the most familiar with the students programming the two hours of music – so what good was it to bring in other discs? I apparently had not learned from my mistakes and asked the first question a second time. It was a cycle, not necessarily vicious, but one I didn't want to pretend to be interested in anymore and so I quickly let the matter drop.

So my exciting exploration in new music focused mostly on reggae. That's hardly a bad thing because there is a lot of good reggae music out there in as many varied forms as there is R&B, folk, and rock forms of music in the United States. Some names are quite prominent and are considered icons of the genre (Bob Marley, for the example), while other bands bring a reggae hybrid to their pop sounds (UB40, maybe).

Jamaican based Freddie McGregor was someone I was not previously aware of but had one of the newer albums in rotation when I showed up. McGregor has been involved with music for decades, having joined his first band (the Clarendonians) at age seven and later scored a series of popular solo albums in the 1980s. McGregor continues to record and produce music; his latest album in 2005’s Comin' in Tough.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
I Wish There Was a Way
(Noel Browne/Freddie McGregor)
Freddie McGregor
From the album Masterpiece
1997

Oh, the sisters crying out for a brother’s help
Give a hand if you can, yeah

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice
Oh, Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice, oh, Lord

I looked and I behold and saw her peeping through the window
I saw true lovin’ in her eyes, yeah
Right there and then I knew that something was gonna happen
But I couldn’t say what, and I keep thinkin’

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice
Oh, Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice

Could not be an ordinary feelin’, no, no
It’s coming from deep within, yeah, yeah
Your eyes it shows me so much meanin’
It makes me wonder where it begins, and I keep thinkin’

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice
Oh, Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice, oh, Lord

Nah-nah-nah-nah, yeah
Oh, the sisters calling out for a brother’s help
Oh, Lord

I looked and I behold and saw her peeping through the window
I saw true lovin’ in her eyes, yeah
Right there and then I knew that something was gonna happen
But I couldn’t say what, and I keep thinkin’

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice
Oh, Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice, oh, Lord

I looked and I behold and saw her peeping through the window
I saw true loving in her eyes, yeah
Right there and then I knew that something was gonna happen
But I couldn’t say what, and I keep thinkin’

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice
Oh, Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice, oh, Lord

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know just the way to make that sacrifice
Oh, Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind
And I know, I know the way to make that sacrifice

Lord, I wish, I wish there was a way that I could read your mind, sister
And I know, I know the way to make that sacrifice

You have to believe you can do it if you wanna just do what you please

It's sort of hard to believe that ten years ago I first heard of Ray Wilson.

When I got back from summer vacation – back when I was a senior – I met up with some of the cronies who had put in time over the summer at the radio station. I don't think there was ever anyone to work exclusively at the station, but there were always a few who liked to pull a few extra shifts closer to the start of the fall semester.

I stopped in to announce my return and visit with whomever I found, as well as to take a peek at the weekly preview discs that we had received over the summer months. One thing caught my eye: Genesis. I was keenly aware of the group, after hearing Invisible Touch-era music for years on the radio, and after playing the only non-scratched cut off their 1983 album during our classic rock programming (sigh - Illegal Alien). But this was something new – Congo – and should sound vastly different since Phil Collins was no longer part of the band, having been replaced by...and then there was who? Ah, the aforementioned Ray Wilson.

I remember someone made the comment that the album was doomed because it didn't have that "P-Sound." It took me a second for that to sink in (when did Genesis ever sound like George Clinton?) until I realized "Ray" didn't start with the letter "P" the way "Phil" and "Peter" did. Therefore the puzzle piqued my interest: who was Ray Wilson? Where did Mike and Tony find this guy?

Well, I suppose if I knew more about 90's rock in the UK, then I would have heard of Stiltskin and Wilson's association with that outfit. But I hadn't. And I don't think many people at the radio station were too eager to seek out Stiltskin's 1994 album, either. If anything, Ray made me want to seek out some of the Peter-era music and see what was going on before I was born. It also made me want to hear more of the Collins-era that I thought I knew something about (based solely on his last three studio albums). Calling All Stations – or as we quipped, "Calling Any Station" – apparently did not make the impact it thought it would.

But I think that's a bit unfair. As I said, it's hard to believe ten years have passed since I first heard Congo and in that time, the song's grown on me. So has the album, which I found secondhand a few years ago and have turned on more than a few times. Having heard the entire Genesis studio output from their...well...literal Genesis forward, I must confess to finding Wilson's album a welcome change. With no ill will to Collins, Calling All Stations is somewhat refreshing in places, without those flourishes that made later day Genesis albums and solo-Collins output indistinguishable. Many reviews have noted an attempted return to the band's progressive roots and those comments are not arguable. Pockets of uncertainty bubble up in places – a couple tracks sound like one extended lament for a better life somewhere else – but on the whole the album isn’t bad and could have been the third stage of the band - had the thoughts and gestures of the band’s remaining core not crawled off into obscurity.

The Genesis of today is out on tour and again fronted by Collins. Wilson has continued his musical endeavors, too, with the 1999 album Millionairhead and a second Stiltskin album in 2006.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Congo
(Tony Banks/Mike Rutherford)
Genesis
From the album Calling All Stations
1997

You say that I put chains on you
But I don't think that's really true
But if you want to be free from me
You gotta lose me in another world

Send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Send me to the Congo you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please

Like a soldier ant
I will wait for the signal to act
To take a walk right through the door
If you don't want me here any more

Send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Send me to the Congo you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please

Into my heart you came
And gave a whole new meaning to my life
Into my world you brought a light
I thought it never would go out

Send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Send me to the Congo you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please

You can send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Yes you can send me to the Congo, you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please

I would never be the one to say you had no reason
To want me somewhere else far far away
But someday you may understand, someday you will see
That someone who would die for you is all I've ever been

Congo the Congo, if that's how it's got to be
Congo the Congo, if that's what you want from me

I would never be the one to say you had no reason
To want me somewhere else far far away
Someday you may understand someday you will see...

Give me something I can rely on

Here’s another of those songs that apparently came out of nowhere. I always assumed Monaco was popular somewhere – why else would it have been included on a weekly preview disc? Maybe we made it popular after our continuous airings? Well, at least popular to the campus listening audience. It certainly was somewhat popular with station staff, as I recall it found its way onto many 1997-era playlists, including mine on those occasions I filled in on the rock shifts.

While I liked the song I didn’t immediately understand its importance. Then down the road a bit I discovered that Monaco was a side project of Peter Hook. This tidbit meant precious little to me, until it was explained to me that Hook was a one-time member of New Order. This, then, surely explained why the overall affect of Monaco was lost on me. I knew very little about New Order. Those people on staff who had grown up with New Order and Joy Division were ecstatic about playing the bouncy pop tune. Some people, like myself, didn’t necessarily hate the song but found it didn’t have much of an effect on us - except for the galloping “Sha-la la la la-la la” chorus, easily the most memorable part of the song.

We didn't play any other Monaco songs because as far as we knew no others existed. As usual, it wasn't until writing this I discovered that Hook and band mate David Potts had released a second Monaco album in 2000. I was also previously unaware that Hook and Potts had worked together in Hook’s other project, Revenge, a few years prior to their Monaco years.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
What Do You Want from Me
( Peter Hook/David Potts)
Monaco
From the album Music for Pleasure
1997

Sha-la la la la-la la
Sha-la la la la-la la
Sha-la la la la-la la
Sha-la la la la-la la

There is one thing that I would die for
It's when you say: "My life is in your hands"
'Cause when you're near me your love is all I need
Now I can't imagine

What do you want from me
It's not how it used to be
You've taken my life away
Ruining everything

What do you want from me (sha-la la la la-la la)
It's not how it used to be (sha-la la la la-la la)
You've taken my life away (sha-la la la la-la la)
Ruining everything (sha-la la la la-la la)

Give me something I can rely on
Far away from the life that I once knew
What does it matter, that's all I have to say
And I can't imagine

What do you want from me
It's not how it used to be
You've taken my life away
Ruining everything

What do you want from me
It's not how it used to be
You've taken my life away
Ruining everything

Sha-la la la la-la la
Sha-la la la la-la la
Sha-la la la la-la la
Sha-la la la la-la la

(BREAK)

What do you want from me (sha-la la la la-la la)
It's not how it used to be (sha-la la la la-la la)
You've taken my life away (sha-la la la la-la la)
Ruining everything (sha-la la la la-la la)
(REPEAT TO FADE)

Cause it's home, the only life I've ever known

I’ve sort of mentioned the fun involved with students picking their music shift at my undergraduate station (see Let's flip the track, bring the old school back); at the station in my post-graduate days, they did it differently – and by a method that made more sense that anything we did when we were sophomores or seniors. Seniority – what a concept. There were x number of shifts (music, news, and sports) that had to be filled and y number of students in class. Each student was to pick one shift at a time, and those first to pick were those that had gone through this routine the longest. Paulie Zizzo, even in this mixed-up, muddled, shook-up world, managed to be one of the two or three students who had seniority (see We never got it off on that revolution stuff, what a drag too many snags).

When it came time for the students to pick their shifts, everyone knew what Paulie was going to choose (except me, but I was new and hadn’t heard him in action yet). I soon discovered that his usual shift was weekend Classic Hits. I inadvertently identified the shift as “Classic Rock” a few times that day and was steadily corrected by Paulie as to the true nature of the music. Was there really a difference? We played the same decades-old junk when I was an undergrad and we called it “Classic Rock.” The difference, I suppose, turned out to be the amount of music this other station had. As an undergrad, our weekend Classic Rock shifts were somewhat limited because we didn’t have a very large library of music. As station manager working on post-graduate work, I listened in amazement at the number of CDs and LPs available to fill the eight hours of Classic Hits, with music ranging anywhere from the crush-stomping sounds of Kashmir to the lightweight Cyndi Lauper, something called Girlschool, Gary Numan’s Cars, and some Creedence.

As on weekdays, the station didn’t sign-on until 10AM and students were regulated to two-hour shifts. In the end, Paulie’s air shift picks resulted in him being on the air from 10AM to 4PM, which was later explained to me to be the same schedule he’d had in past semesters.

Now the term “Classic Hits” tends to imply the music was popular on some sort of grand scale. As such, during this format you’re not going to be playing music from those local guys who won the Battle of the Bands contest four years ago. Paulie really dug the “classic” music, but it was usually regulated to pre-1974 and then the stuff he liked – not so much what the audience wanted, or expected, to hear. Numerous times that first fall semester I listened to his “Nuggets Weekend,” where he played and discussed the pop garage-rock tunes from Nuggets – “Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968.” This compilation was right up his alley – he knew the songs inside and out and had scoured the liner notes and Internet for information on the bands to give him something to talk about on the air. Talk about show prep (see Boy, you can't play me that way)....

Here lie the problem – nothing on the compilation was a “hit” by the weak definition of the format “Classic Hits.” Sure, some of these songs had hit the Top 40 thirty years prior and probably deserved the additional recognition and airplay, but I always questioned why six solid hours were devoted to music college students had never heard before. As station manager I tried a few times to drop subtle hints that while I enjoyed learning about music I wasn’t familiar with – such as the Blues Magoos performing a cover of the classic John Loudermilk tune, Tobacco Road – that maybe he could drop in some better known non-Nuggets material to sort of balance his playlist. Especially since someone else had to come in for two hours afterwards (4 to 6PM) and who would most certainly shift the style drastically – like going for two bloody hours of 1980s New Wave.

His answer was classic: he didn’t know the music. His mind set in 1974, Paulie claimed to know nothing about contemporary music, much less the rest of the 1970s. Sadly, I never thought he was kidding. And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Still, when I mentioned to the faculty advisor (my boss) about some of the comments I had heard badgering his weekly air shifts, I was simply told “but he plays such good music.”

Tobacco Road was originally written by Loudermilk in the early 1960s and has long since been covered by numerous artists across multiple genres. Besides the Blue Magoos, notable cover versions have included Lou Rawls (1963), Jefferson Airplane (1966), and David Lee Roth (1986), as well as a version by Bruce Springsteen (!), Toto (?), and by the Rodney Crowell one-off side-project, the Cicadas.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tobacco Road
( John D. Loudermilk)
The Cicadas
From the album The Cicadas
1997

I was born in a bunk
Mother died and my daddy got drunk
Left me here to die or grow
In the middle of Tobacco Road

Grew up in a dusty shack
And all I had was a'hangin' on my back
Only you know how I loathe
This place called Tobacco Road

But it's home
The only life I've ever known
Only you know how I loathe
Tobacco Road

I'm gonna leave and get a job
With the help and the grace from above
Save some money, get rich I know
Bring it back to Tobacco Road

Bring Dynamite and a crane
Blow you up, start all over again
Build a town be proud to show
Give the name Tobacco Road

Cause it's home
The only life I've ever known
Oh I despise and disapprove you
But I love ya, 'cause it's home

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

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

It's a party in a cahn!

Shortly after school was out for the summer (probably in 1997) I received a package in the mail. It turned out to be from one of my cohorts at the (undergraduate) station who had sent along a videocassette. Most noticeable was how light the tape was – turned out to be one of those short five-minute-maximum jobs that the college television station used to get with public service announcements or the like. A brief note indicated that what was on the tape was something I would probably find right up my alley.

Turns out the videotape contained only a 30-second commercial for something called Jooky that, I have to admit, I found pretty darn funny. Jooky was apparently some sort of festive carbonated beverage (possibly purple in color) that was being consumed in mass quantities on a beach. Its music was set to a pseudo-Caribbean/calypso beat with lyrics sung in an annoying wannabe Jamaican accent. In short, the advertisement set off to do what most beverage commercials do and that is prove that consumers would have better lives with a beverage (e.g. Jooky) than without. The ad featured the sort of riff-raff you'd expect to find inhabiting a beach: body builders, volleyball players, hula dancers at a luau, and people on surfboards – all showing off just how damned great their life was since being prescribed Jooky.

Ah, but wait – something is amiss. A slight distortion of the screen reveals the commercial is actually being watched by two gangly youths who look like stunt doubles for Wayne’s World III. It turns out they want in on that Jooky action, too, but alas not everything is as it seems and whatever hope they have fizzles away like the carbonation in a…well…open can of soda. Also, this commercial is a mildly ingenuous hoax by the Coca-Cola Company and Sprite, who is reminding whatever consumer base there is that looks are truly unimportant, it’s what is inside the product that really makes it special - just by being its own self. Sort of sounds like a homily from Fred Rogers, doesn’t it?

The original Jooky commercial garnered enough recognition to justify a sequel of sorts, this one selling “Jooky Junk” –meaningless trinkets you can order by sending in Jooky cans. You know, crucial items like a Jooky caulking gun, a Jooky hernia belt, and a Jooky Sea Captain.

Jooky went on to be on a number of people’s radar back at the radio station but disappeared as the years went by. I’m somewhat surprised Jooky didn’t make another appearance, officially or otherwise.

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Jooky Theme
(unknown)
Produced for the Coca-Cola Co./Sprite Brand by Lowe & Partners/SMS
1997

Just open up a Jooky
It's a party in a cahn
Jooky is so fun and fruity
You'll be dancing in the sand

Jooky make you really kooky
Jooky make you manly, mahn!

Jooky! Jooky!
It's a party in a cahn
Jooky! Jooky!
Ah, the fun's right in the your hand....

We're making moves and starting grooves before they knew we were gone

From somewhere in left-field one day came OMC. What is that: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Car? I actually asked that once on the air but I don't think anyone got it.

I suppose it doesn't matter at this point anymore. As I've said, it amazed me the sort of music we played at the undergrad station – most of it bordered generic near-top 40 pop, so I guess in retrospect, playing this song wasn’t really that bizarre. I think most popular radio stations across the country were playing it, maybe trying to "branch out" with some pseudo-world music beats. What was truly bizarre was how little anybody knew about the band going in. I mean, coming out of nowhere and no one thought to look toward New Zealand for an answer. Who was OMC? Pauly Fuemana was the guy you saw singing and dancing around in the video but another guy - Alan Jansson –co-wrote the music and produced the album. What was OMC? The Otara Millionaires Club, Otara being one of the poorest sections of Fuemana and Jansson's native Auckland.

I assume it entered up on our playlist because someone saw the video on the MTV and once we ended up with a copy we had to play it as well. True, it sort of fit our format – but barely. While not a bad song, and is somewhat catchy, I remember more than a few people (myself included) getting annoyed after about the second verse kicks in and you almost want to shut it off.

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How Bizarre
(Pauly Fuemana/Alan Jansson)
OMC
From the album How Bizarre
1997

Brother Pele's in the back, sweet Zina's in the front
Cruisin' down the freeway in the hot, hot sun
Suddenly red-blue lights flash us from behind
Loud voice booming, "Please step out onto the line"
Pele preaches words of comfort, Zina just hides her eyes
Policeman taps his shades, "Is that a Chevy '69?"

How bizarre
How bizarre, how bizarre

Destination unknown, as we pull in for some gas
Freshly pasted poster reveals a smile from the past
Elephants and acrobats, lions snakes monkey
Pele speaks "righteous," Sister Zina says "funky"

How bizarre
How bizarre, how bizarre

Ooh, baby (Ooh, baby)
It's making me crazy (It's making me crazy)
Everytime I look around
Everytime I look around (Everytime I look around)
Everytime I look around
It's in my face

Ring master steps out and says "the elephants left town"
People jump and jive, but the clowns have stuck around
TV news and camera, there's choppers in the sky
Marines, police, reporters ask where, for and why
Pele yells, "We're outta here," Zina says, "Right on"
We're making moves and starting grooves before they knew we were gone
Jumped into the Chevy and headed for big lights
Wanna know the rest? Hey, buy the rights...

How bizarre
How bizarre, how bizarre

Ooh, baby (Ooh, baby)
It's making me crazy (It's making me crazy)
Everytime I look around
Everytime I look around (Everytime I look around)
Everytime I look around
It's in my face

So anxious for your look of joy and delight

Christmas was usually a rather subdued celebration at both student-radio stations I worked at since, as you can well imagine, the students that operated the operations were off for the winter break. If we wanted to celebrate we had to have something in the works before Thanksgiving and then put it into action as soon as we got back. No one liked wrestling with last-minute programming ideas and focusing on passing final exams at the same time. I recall one year as an undergrad we were on the ball enough to switch out our regular liners and replace them with some holiday ones. I thought it was cool and made us sound like we were ahead of the trend, rather than usually following suite. Of course, we had to work overtime in January to get the normal liners reinstated. Along with starting another semester, the extra work wasn't worth it, especially when we couldn’t find some of the liners. Oh, well.

Musically we usually didn't change much, except for trying to enter some holiday-themed tunes into rotation, which, for the rock format could be trying. We didn't have much in the way of Christmas albums so we had to rely on Christmas editions of the weekly preview discs (or the even rarer gifts from record labels) and hope there was something we could find salvageable...because stuff like Seven Mary Three Wise Men, A Van Halen Holiday and Kiss Saves Christmas wasn't going to cut it.

So when we stumbled upon the Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan's Christmastime we thought we in pretty good shape. I actually recall a number people commenting on it and enjoying it, noting that it was the sort of thing you'd expect the Pumpkins to sound like as well as having a Christmassy message attached.

And that was all that mattered.

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Christmastime
(Billy Corgan)
The Smashing Pumpkins
From the album A Very Special Christmas, Vol. 3
1997

We watch the children playing
Beside the christmas tree
The presents are wrapped up
It's beautiful and secretly the gifts still hide
The fun awaits for you inside

Christmastime has come
There'll be toys for everyone
Cause christmastime has come for you

I remember dreaming
Wishing hoping praying for this day
Now i sit and watch them
The little ones i love so excited by the wait

Christmastime has come
There'll be toys for everyone
Cause christmastime has come for you

And now the word is given
It's time to peek inside
It's time to let the toys out
So anxious for your look of joy and delight
Waiting for just your surprise

Christmastime has come
There'll be toys for everyone
Cause christmastime has come for you

Pass the gravy, pass the buck

Between the years I first heard Secrets and Lies at the undergraduate radio station and when I finally found a copy of the song, I always remembered it as a Thanksgiving song. Yes, gravy can do that sort of thing to a person.

The song appeared on one of our weekly preview discs and was played a few times before it probably got lost in the on-going shuffle of music choices. Regulated only to the first three hours (the Triple-A vs. pop fare) of our nine hours of modern rock music, looking back I sort of wish I caught it and included it on our weekend morning folk program where it would have been book-ended by similar-sounding music. Perhaps if our entire broadcast day was given over to this format of music – rather than splintered between classical, modern rock, jazz, hip-hop and so on – the song might have had a better chance and been more memorable. It may not have been that memorable to others during the rock format, hence why it was probably all but forgotten, but I distinctly recall taking immediate notice – there was something catchy and hook-laden about that chorus. At the time I didn't pay close enough attention. It wasn't until I had graduated and thinking of songs that the strange holiday-themed lyric pestered me. What was it? Finally, years later the truth was revealed: Jonatha Brooke.

By the time I heard of Brooke, she'd been touring the music world for at least a decade, first as part of the duo the Stories and then heading out on her own. Her most recent album was released in 2004.

Gravy. Go figure.

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Secrets and Lies
(Brooke)
Jonatha Brooke
From the album 10 Cent Wings
1997

Every twenty seconds someone's pounding someone down
Every thirty more a liar's born
Every half an hour I get up and look around
And once or twice a day I ask for more

On a really good day there's something in the mail
Once a week I get a treat
Other times a month goes by
But I still mever miss a beat

Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck

Once a year the holidays come swinging at your head
Feast until you're full of pain again
It tightens in your chest and now it's written in your face
You're staring at your lover or your friend

Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck

Cuz it's hand to mouth, door to door, cradle to the grave
Asking for more, asking for more
Cuz it's hand to mouth, door to door, cradle to the grave
Asking for more, asking for more, I'm asking for more

Maybe if you're lucky you will have your sunny day
Once in a lifetime maybe twice
But even when you're dying you're still hungry for the choice
Was chance the only certainty in life?

Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck

Boy, you can't play me that way

Show-prep, as it was referred to at my undergraduate station, was research the DJ did before arriving for the three-hour shift and consisted of items that he or she could use to sound more interesting or knowledgeable during their stop sets. A lot of people were not the best at thinking off the top of their head and so we encouraged them to find something in the campus or local newspaper – or that fledging online vehicle called the Internet – to give them some sort of edge. We weren't asking for the DJ to talk twenty minutes on a subject - more like twenty seconds, a little chit-chat in between songs as opposed to the stodgy and bland, "I just played these songs, I will play these songs next, it's 8:20 and now here is a recorded public service announcement" type of breaks students tended to blanch their way through.

There was little celebration when the White Town song Your Woman showed up on a weekly preview disc one Tuesday afternoon. Nobody had heard of the group up to this point and the song probably snuck into our playlists because of our desire to add at least one track from each preview disc. No sooner did it waft over the transmitter did we realize that this was going to be one of those grandiose one-hit wonders. Why? Easy: not only did it come out of nowhere in the early months of 1997 but we never ever saw another track by White Town show up at the station. That is, another "new" track - at some point, the original track was supplemented by the less-interesting but not-as-annoying-sounding remix that appeared on a preview disc a month of so later. Oh, hooray: a remix.

It wasn't until years later I discovered that, besides fulfilling its destiny as a one-hit wonder as many on staff prognosticated, but White Town was a one-man band operation led by technophile Jyoti Mishra, a native of India living in England during the late 1990s. Also of interest is that the opening synthesized trumpet sounds are actually samples from the trumpet intro to the song My Woman by the popular British singer Al Bowlly. These tidbits would have been good candidates for any DJ in terms of show-prep. Don't I sound informative and like I know what I'm talking about...?

Boy, I'm finding out all these interesting facts about this song a decade later, when they are of no use to me. Also of no use to me is the fact Mishra released a follow-up album in 2000 and has been recording various singles since his late-90s chart debut.

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Your Woman
(Jyoti Mishra)
White Town
From the album Women in Technology
1997

Just tell me what you've got to say to me
I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth
It comes as no surprise at all you see
So cut the crap and tell me that we're through

Now I know your heart, I know your mind
You don't even know you're bein' unkind
So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways
Just use me up and then you walk away
Boy, you can't play me that way

Well I guess what you say is true
I could never be the right kind of girl for you

CHORUS:

I could never be your woman
I could never be your woman
I could never be your woman
I could never be your woman

When I saw my best friend yesterday
She said she never liked you from the start
Well me, I wish that I could claim the same
But you always knew you held my heart

And you're such a charming, handsome man
Now I think I finally understand
Is it in your genes? I don't know
But I'll soon find out, that's for sure
Why did you play me this way

Well I guess what you say is true
I could never be the right kind of girl for you

(CHORUS)


Well I guess what they say is true
I could never spend my life with a man like you

(CHORUS)

So much for the days...tribal life

One thing with this retrospective that I'm trying to do is not always dwell so much on those tried-and-true musicians that you'd expect to see as part of a list like this. I want there to be some lesser-known talent as well – stuff no one knows about except, apparently, for me.

With that in mind let's discuss Bitter Son. The only thing that comes to mind about this local band is that they were one of a few groups that came out of the woodwork when it was announced we were starting What's New Wednesday (WNW) at my undergraduate station (see I think it's worth it for you to stay awake).

Bitter Son stands out for two reasons, the first of which was that the band had given us a copy of either their album, or the "good" portion of it, on audio cassette. True, we had both analog and digital tape players in our midst and could have played it on the air more than we did – but that would have meant we would have had to listen to the song. There's the second reason, then: while the song wasn't terrible, the pops and clicks from the tape coupled with the lower-than-low-fi attempt of the musicians made it a waste of time to even bother to cue up and spin, so to speak, much less convert to some other format for easier playback.

The host of WNW, John Fletcher, was good to his word and played the song, but I think he was a bit dissatisfied with the tape as well; it soon found its way into the Music Library and probably would have been forgotten had it not been for an asinine idea of mine one Friday night the next year. I was Program Director then and had gotten stuck at the station for most of the day but called back that night when the 9pm host didn't show. I trudged back to the building, still mentally asleep and trying to awaken for something I hadn't planed to do. The Music Director stopped by about 10:30, surprised I was on the air and offered to stick around. Over the next twenty minutes, one thing led to another and we both decided to shed the 11pm playlist and do our own version of What's New Wednesday for no reason other than we could get by with it.

At the top of the hour, we ran the WNW intro and legal ID and started in on the music you normally heard on Wednesday. The two of us co-hosted the hour – dual shifts were frowned upon because they usual turned into mindless banter – but we made a point to not talk too much and played well off each other, each noting at every chance "you're listening to What's New Wednesday...on a Friday." The gimmick must have squeaked by all the right ears as no one called to point out it wasn't Wednesday and the faculty advisor didn't call to say we were breaking rules that we, as program and music director, had been known to call others out about.

The last thirty minutes of the hour I tried to get out of the same standard regional fare that usually got played, and remembering the Bitter Son tape, I ran into the office and recovered it from its certain doom. Neither the Music Director nor I had heard the song recently (if at all), something blatantly obvious over the air: the song opened with almost a minute of sparse drumbeats that we introduced the song over (we eventually faded out our clueless stuttering as the beats droned onward). It wasn't but a few seconds into the song we realized neither of us knew how it ended, either – just that we hoped soon. Minutes later, when the heavy guitar and shaky vocals came to a standstill, we got back on the microphone and started to explain what had just happened. Surprisingly we were caught off guard with even more faint drumbeats and bells that faded into obscurity. Did we care? No, we just cut 'em off.

That surely was the end of Bitter Son after that. And the tape, too.

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Tribal Life
(unknown)
Bitter Son
From their independently self-released cassette
1997