On-Air With Brian: DJs Aren’t The Only Ones Who Use Their Mouths

Credit: afortmadeofbooks.blogspot.com

I got into radio because I didn’t really know what else to do with my life. I worked at restaurants, movie theaters, gas stations, and retail stores. I was, at one point or another, a mechanic, a manager, and a security guard. None of them felt like a “career” to me, and I had spent way too much time fucking around in high school to have a clue what I should do for a living.

So when my buddy Donut went to Hesser College for Radio and TV Broadcasting, I stopped by for a visit and decided that radio would be my future.

It was 1997… Bubba just got sworn in for his second term. Old Ironsides turned 200 years old and sailed for the first time in 116 years. Pride Fighting held their inaugural event at the Tokyo Dome. Princess Di… died. And this guy went to college to learn how to talk on the radio.

To be honest, I didn’t learn much beyond the basics of how to operate a board. I spent most of my time in the studio prank calling the dorm rooms at Hesser. The rest of the time I was getting into trouble with my buddy Bryan. Shit… I was even on academic probation by the time I graduated.

After interning at a couple of stations, I finally got hired to work part-time at B106 in my hometown of Nashua, NH. It was a pop station, playing Britney Spears, Tal Bachman, and other various garbage. The owner was laundering money through the company, the general sales manager took daily three-hour “liquid” lunches, and we had a sales chick named “Kegstand” Kinville. My PD (program director) at the time was “Baby” Guy. As in, “It’s all smoke and mirrors, baby”… or, “That’s why they pay us the big money, baby.”

It was heaven.

Somehow, I had fooled all these people into thinking that I knew what the fuck I was doing. After a few months of doing random Saturday and Sunday shifts, the overnight guy moved to mornings, and I moved into the overnight slot.

And then, college failed me.

They professors at Hesser College tried to teach me radio. There were numerous classes about Marconi and about how to stay properly hydrated so your voice is always crisp and clear. There was a lesson about the different types of microphones… we even learned how to actually cue up a record. In 1997. Yeah. A fucking record. The one thing they never taught me about was groupies.

All I really knew about groupies was that they doinked rock stars and athletes. There certainly weren’t any “dishwasher groupies” when I was working at Michael Timothy’s in Nashua. I didn’t get mad ass when I was folding T-shirts at the Mall of NH. But apparently, there are girls out there who bang radio DJs just because we’re on the radio. It’s like radio kavorka. And after I took the overnight shift, I had my first experience with this particular genre of female.

She called one night to request a song. A voice, crying out in the dark. A shadowy figure, yearning for acceptance. (Sorry… those last two were strictly for me.) A few nights later, she called again. After a couple of weeks, we were on a first-name basis and spent most of my nights chatting away. Innocent talk… nothing serious. It was nice to have someone to shoot the shit with during the long, boring overnights at B106. I literally fell asleep at the board when she didn’t call in.

Eventually, she asked if we were ever going to meet up. I got kinda freaked out, ‘cause I had never seen this girl. Facebook didn’t exist, and if it did, we didn’t even have a computer with Internet access. I told her that we could meet up at some point… and we settled on a date. She was going to come over to my house on a Monday night for a visit.

Anxiously I waited… wondering what she would look like. Go ahead and guess. I’ll give you a minute.

(Pause for dramatic effect)

Did you say Butterbean with hair? Then you win.

I finally knew why this girl was calling me every night…. did it stop me from getting mouth-love from the young lass? Of course not. But luckily, after a week of avoiding her phone calls, she finally left me a tearful voice mail wondering why I wasn’t talking to her. She lamented our blissful night and expressed her surprise that we hadn’t formed a more permanent bond. It gave me the perfect opportunity to use the old “I’m not looking for a relationship” line.

Brian – 1. Groupies – 0.

Brian Simpson is a DJ at the active rock radio station 95.7 The Rock in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He’s also a hardcore Metallica fan (having been to 50-odd concerts) and a hard-riding scooter biker (his scooter is fashioned after the Green Goblin).