Living A Radio Disk Jockey’s Nightmare

Last week I wrote about “that dream” that most DJs have occasionally. In that dream I am about to go on the air but I have nothing queued up, nothing planned to say. What’s worse is that nothing works like it should. Beads of sweat pop out on my brow, as my heart skips beat and I take a deep breath and wade in.

The good thing about that dream is that it never happened to me in real life. At least it never happened until last Monday!

I know what you are thinking; “Just how did this come about?” I tell you it took some doing. It all happened because of my laptop. Since my playlist is unique to the station my music is not available in the normal music library. So I load it to a laptop equipped with a music player and play it through the audio console onto the air. My show’s production elements; jingles, liners and artist drops are also on that same computer. On Sunday afternoons I take the computer out in my home studio to load the songs I’m adding to the playlist that week. Last week was no exception.

So last Monday, I started unloading my computer bag at the station. First out of the bag was my headphones and mouse. Then the power supply for the computer and the cables to connect the computer to the audio board. Next came my show notes (birthdays and “on this day in history” events) and the notes for the interview I was going to do with Chris Nunley from the Royal Guardsmen. I’m sure you remember the Snoopy vs the Red Baron songs. Finally I reached in to grab the computer itself. Rut Roh! The computer was not in the bag. In my mind’s eye I could see it sitting on the desk next to my home audio board.

A cold sweat broke out on my brow as I realized that I didn’t have time to get home, pick up the computer and get back to the station in the 15 minutes before the show started. Right at that moment Harrison, who was going to co-host with me showed up and I told him that I couldn’t do a show without music. Just after he left, one of the student DJs showed up to take some “B-Roll” videos of me doing a show for an interview I did last week. “Yikes,” I thought, “this keeps getting better and better.” Fortunately she can come back this week. But I still was stuck with the 64 thousand dollar question; how was I going to do a music show with no music?

At first I thought of pulling some blues CDs from the music library and muddling through. I’m frantically running thought the collection but nothing is popping out as appropriate for and oldies show. Just then bless her heart, I mean that in a good way, another student DJ showed up with a tray of baked goods for the bake sale the station was running during my show. She told me there was a group of 50’s and ‘60s albums in the vinyl section of the library. Boom! A solution was beginning for form in my feverish brain.

I located the “oldies” section of the library and it contained around 30 LPs. I can make this work! I didn’t bother picking and sorting in the library but grabbed the entire collection and lugged it into the studio just in time for the previous show to end. But fate wasn’t quite done with me yet. I loaded an LP on both turntables and when I reached for the tone arm of the turntable closest to me, I realized that there was no needle cartridge on that turntable. I had forgotten that it had been damaged and the replacement has not arrived yet.

Now doing a show with only one turntable was not exactly new to me. Back at WCOS in the old studios on the second floor of the Cornell Arms Building, we basically used only one turntable. Almost there, but, I had no production elements during which I could cue up the next song. Well, there are a lot of short PSAs in the automation, they would have to do. The last challenge was that the one working turntable sat 3 feet behind the DJ position when talking on the microphone, not only that, but there was no remote start which meant that I had to hold the edge of the record with my fingertips until the end of the PSA and then release it to play. At that point I would jump back to the announce position and do the song intro if the song had enough music at the beginning before the singer(s) started singing.

I can’t say that the show was a great one, but it was interesting. I promoted it as an “all vinyl” show explaining that my regular music and all the other stuff was in my home studio. The most heartbreaking part of it was that because of the extremely limited selection of albums available, I could not take requests. Somehow we got her done. The best part of the show for me was the interview with Chris Nunley. We had a good time talking about the old music and the radio stations in Northern Florida that we both listened to while growing up. We also talked about the physicality of doing a vinyl based show and how that too brought back old memories.

The other thing that was different about this show was that I did it standing, rather than sitting on the high stool that I normally use. I had to do that in order to be mobile enough to reach the back turntable. That worked well for the music but it made operating the mouse on the automation computer more difficult than normal. It is harder to click a mouse without moving it standing than sitting. When you try to fire off a PSA on the automation if there is any motion on the mouse itself relative to the table, it will just sit there laughing at you.

Finally as the show was ending, the DJ that followed me on the schedule entered the studio and spotted the stacks of records sitting all around all he could say was WOW! Then he asked “What is that smell?” I told him “That, my friend, is the smell of old radio; lots of vinyl spinning on turntables! It is caused by the needle dragging through the grooves on the record.” He thought that was pretty cool!

So, now that I’ve experienced the DJ’s nightmare in real life, I’m wondering if the dream will finally go away or will it come back on steroids? Only time will tell. Oh MY!