I think our show only lasted about seven to eight weeks before I bailed on José to finish up the semester. I’m guessing I quit for a couple reasons, one being the desire to sleep in on Sunday mornings and the other involving the other people running the station, namely an uptight Program Director named Craig Mauerman (sic). Can’t recall the why exactly nor does it matter anymore, let’s scratch it up to my 20-year-old ego. Still, the two of us operated a pretty good three-hour block…except nobody gives a crap to listen from 9 AM to noon on a Sunday, especially if the “radio station” is on AM via carrier current that can only be heard in seven of the eight dorms. Marquette is available through streaming now.
Despite the two of us pulling in different directions at times, me trying to recreate the lighting in a bottle I had with Sheila and José learning the ropes, I’m proud about how we only talked on the air when we either had to (public service announcements, station ID) or we tried a joke/skit we scripted out. The latter could be uneven because we didn’t always share the same sense of humor, timing or technique. Better than most blocks since there’s often an asshole who loves the sound of their own voice and/or unimaginative types who played the same crap every week. My musical snobbery remains. If I had my way, in order to be a DJ, one must demonstrate a great love of music AND variety, to shake it up. Having to pass a written exam about various Jazz figures, as per WGLT, is overboard. Maybe, I would have candidates turn in mix tapes.
Another strong suit we had was through the music we played. Let me explain. We stayed within the station’s goal of an Alternative Format (nowadays I think it would’ve been called “Early” College Radio), we just didn’t follow the piechart. To me, the chart was for the people with little clue and/or those jerks I mentioned before. Through my internship at WQFM, I learned their technique with the AOR format and tweaked it to what we would do at WMUR; play something from the piechart which encompassed about 40 songs that were prerecorded on special tapes called CARTs and follow with something we felt like hearing, often an older song; repeat. Not necessarily a genius plan yet it was less boring and/or formulaic given how often a “hit” song was played on WMUR. I think our strategy could’ve been derived from the mental notes I brought back with me from listening to San Diego’s 91-X for a month too. We did receive guff from the Craig fellow for playing Gipsy Kings and another time I was in a mischievous mood, spun up John Sex’s “Hustle with my Muscle,” hey, this meant one person got up to listen! (Holy crap! The song is available on iTunes!)
Oh yeah, we had a slight advantage to our show. I landed another internship at WQFM but with the Promotions Department and it had more reasonable afternoons (weekday afternoons, no more 5 AM crap with a terrible morning show). During the station’s slow hours, I took advantage of using their production studio to make a promo/ad plugging our show. Thanks to WQFM having a VCR hooked into their audio board, I pulled sound bites from movies and SNL to make something pretty bitchin’, how I wish I had a digitized copy! I also made a couple sound gags for when we made a mistake or before reading a PSA, the latter used Blazing Saddles‘ “Excuse me while I whip this out!” For those of you who’ve grown up with computers doing the editing, trust me, having access to such analog gear was a godsend if you were a DJ.
If given a chance, would I jump at being a DJ on say KUTX? Sure. I wouldn’t hold my breath though. This is Texas, nepotism trumps everything else and it seems they give spots to local commercial DJs who were fired from KGSR.
I do want to close with a joke we spontaneously came did through José reading a PSA. I wonder if he remembers the incident. It entailed this event called The Last Lecture Series. Your alma maters may have something similar. A professor or dean was given carte blanche to discuss whatever they wanted, as if it were their last day. In theory there weren’t supposed to be any negative repercussions since Marquette is a relatively conservative university. As José was reading the PSA, he saw one of his past Philosophy teachers on the list, mentioned him and jokingly said he’d might attend. I smugly added, “Going to ask him why you got such a lousy grade?” We laughed. Then, 20-year-old me wouldn’t stop at that, “Hey, (our) dean, Dean Murphy will be at this too. Maybe I should ask her who blew the smoke up her butt?” The lecture I got from Craig on the phone. Personally, given what a useless, uptight bureaucrat Dean Murphy was, I’ve never regretted making such a criticism of her. Turns out I wasn’t alone. When I visited Marquette in 2000, I ran into Dr. Havice and he expressed relief at her departure.
Thanks for reading this and entertaining my nostalgia. I too enjoy having the power of choice via my iPod and MacBook but good FM radio really did help influence tastes in a good way. It made certain artists stars which would’ve never happened given what followed by the late Eighties. As my friend Mark M and I have discussed, the problem has never been Technology, it’s Content which explained the brief rise of NPR, why broadcast networks are down yet but not out and why tape decks/CD players didn’t make a dent.