As we have discussed in the past, I worked as a DJ for a number of years. Beginning with the second day I was on the R.I.T. campus I did at least one radio show a week for all four years. Most of the time i did two a week.
I began doing the midnight to 3:00 am shift Friday/Saturday and Saturday/Sunday. I L-O-V-E-D these shifts. I was alone at the station...you could smoke inside in those days and I took advantage of it in many ways (wink wink)...I could experiment with my music and play anything that caught my eye.
WITR had a music collection that rivaled most of the major FM stations of the day. There were over 15,000 albums in our collection and it spanned from big band to rock to blues to jazz to funky stuff (in those days that meant Captain Beefheart, the GTOs and the like, music that would never make mainstream radio because of its lyrics - YES, even then).
It was all vinyl and it was incredible to walk into the music room and just start picking. In all honesty, I tended to stick with the same type of music I love now...rock, southern rock, the San Francisco sound. BUT...I also began to advance my knowledge with "tutelage games". I would walk into the room and just grab things off the shelf, no matter what it was.
Then I would find ways to slip them into my show. When I first began I would get phone calls from listeners asking what the hell I was doing playing Dean Martin right after the Grateful Dead. Well, if I could make the songs 'flow' I did it.
There were some mixes I probably liked too much and used too often, but hey...
Rochester also got a lot of concerts then (and I would bet still today), because of the number of colleges within an hour and a half.
That meant we got the opportunity to get some of those touring on the air. As a junior I also began working for the local concert promoter, normally working security (Yeah me too Angell!) and that got me even more access to meeting some of the acts.
Unfortunately, unlike my friend Bud, I did not think ahead and keep copies of many of those tapes. I do have a few reel to reels somewhere and one is the interview with Rick Wakeman that I described here on The Couch.
But I loved doing the radio and even did a morning shift my sophomore year in full-tilt top 40 "stacks of wax on my wheels of steel, I am woman, Helen's Ready, Eli's Coming, Three Dog Night" kind of stuff and playing the top 40 of 1973 which included such memorable hits as:
- Angie
- Basketball Jones
- D'yer Mak'er
- Delta Dawn
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- Half-Breed
- Killing Me Softly..
- My Maria
That same year I took on the 9:00pm - Midnight shift on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. A more "civil" hour to do radio, but with more restrictions because there were still people milling about in the station and in the college union building where we were located, so the shows began to get a tad more normal. Also that year we increased our power and were broadcasting to most of the city and surrounding areas of Rochester.
But I always loved mixing it up...not sure how this got to where it ended up, let me know if you like it.
Oh and if you did not know all of yesterday it was Eric Clapton "Running On Faith"; Grateful Dead "Big River" (live RFK Stadium 06/10/1973); and Sting "Heavy Cloud, No Rain".
