Dead Air Kills

I was around twenty. I was in my first year of University. I was sitting alone in the crowded and horrible cafeteria in the Student Union Building listening to CFSM. God, that was fifteen years ago. In addition to my regular degree courses I was taking a course in basic programming language, just for fun. I think there was only telnet then. The world has really changed. I think I was musically retro then, too. I’m ultra retro now. I’m stone age.

The CFSM transmitter didn’t really get past the cafeteria, pool room, or student residences. I think Bob Marley was playing over the speakers. In the nineties all the music people played was seventies rock.  Maybe that’s because the music took a break in the eighties. Who wants to admit to listening to Flock of Seagulls or Devo? But I liked what I heard over the speakers.  After a terrible lunch I went up to the top floor.

You could smell the radio station as soon as you got off the elevator. The rather officious “suit and tie” student union members, even though the radio station was technically under their control, wanted to “get rid of that smell,” if you understand me. I followed that smell to the CFSM sign on the door down the hall. It was open a crack. I went inside.

There were two desks and a window looking in on the library/DJ booth. A fellow named Andrew, who everyone called Syd after Syd Barrett, was the program director, and he was playing chess with Helen, a gorgeous blonde, who was the current station manager. Andrew and Helen stopped their game and looked up and me, waiting.

“Hi. I, um, know a bit about jazz and was wondering if you have a program for jazz… or wanted one… I could… um…”

Andrew put the bishop down and stood up. “Sure, c’mon,” he said, and I followed him inside the booth.

“This is the mixing board.  These are the records… Are you ok with this?  When can you start?”

“Um, tomorrow?”

“Great!”

He got the program list and made a slot for me… and that’s where it started.

Me. I keep mentioning the same musicians. It’s not that I’m limited; it’s just that I listen to everything and can’t hold anything in my head. If I was in my twenties and listening to all the new stuff that gets programmed into our Ipods and then our brains so we listen to and buy the stuff we are supposed to, to maintain this wonderful and stable economy and culture which has been designed for us, life would be so much simpler. But in the nineties I was in a radio station that the student union was trying to shut down, so we were stuck with seventies vinyl, and we all idolized and were trying to be like Doctor Johnny Fever on WKRP.

And we all hung out in the DJ lounge. There was a fridge. I was in heaven for four years.

In my early twenties, I was learning all this incredible seventies soul and funk jazz, and that sticks with you. And I was filling in for everybody ALWAYS. I had a show called “The Mundane and Horror Show” with a fellow named Peter Hoar. I would spin solid rock and jazz and play the fool while he played the straight man and spun chipmunk and Disney music. On Christmas, Santa’s Elves went on strike and took over the radio station. But after four years and four station managers we finally landed a station manager who would play stooge for the student union. He was a young kid, a bright kid, who came in, at first, very new wave and Devo with cool hair and a quiet attitude, but when he took over it was all “suit and tie” and he took away our fridge and the DJ lounge for his office. And every DJ had to sign in before they even touched the record collection.

And the station died… because suits and ties can’t control people who want to be Doctor Fever. Only guys nicknamed Syd and gorgeous blondes can keep people like that under control.

But it was fun while it lasted.