We’ve all had the “nightmare” – it’s the day of your college final, you never went to class, your life depends on this grade, etc. Every profession has its own custom version of that dream. As a broadcaster Ken experienced several of these nightmares that actually came true. Terrifying then, hilarious now. Enjoy his pain.
I haven't done a radio air shift in years, but I still occasionally wake up in a cold sweat from the DJ's nightmare: on the air live and everything you touch on the board either doesn't work at all or isn't what you thought it was; you reach for copy and it isn't there; you hit the music and it doesn't play; etc. Every DJ I've ever known has had that nightmare. It's the radio equivalent of dreaming you're naked in class.
ReplyDeleteHey speaking of nightmares… I’ve been trying to come up with a name for this time we are going through. What do you think of The Age of Arrogant Ignorance?
ReplyDeleteI still have work nightmares including the dreaded "dead air" dreams. And even though it has been over forty years since I've been in high school I occasionally have the, "Did I forget to clean out my locker?" dream.
ReplyDeleteSlightly off topic: When I was a kid I used to have great, FLYING dreams. As I got older my skills improved and I could really soar. But, when I became an adult the flying dreams became fewer and farther between. Now, in fact, I can't even remember the Last time I "flew." The weight of the world has clipped my wings.
I really miss those dreams.
M.B.
I remember the WKRP episode where Johnny Fever had stage fright and was advised by Bailey Quarters to broadcast as if he were speaking to one individual, whereupon he told Bailey "I'd like to kiss you in the dark at night."
ReplyDeleteChristmas is the worst holiday for broadcasting and print media- because nobody reads papers or watches TV. There's a reason why newspapers print that "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" column and TV stations air the Yule Log loop.
ReplyDeleteEven though I did message you about the podcast, I did listen and enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteKen, we’re locked-down a continent and an ocean apart (I’m based in London), but you’re frequently touching on areas where Rich Turkey Hours on the AM sister station), and drafty old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto!
ReplyDeleteIn the 1960s and 1970s my (American-UK origin) family lived on the outskirts of Toronto, and I visited the multi-purpose Exhibition Stadium on countless occasions.... for kids-oriented pop concerts (hosted by the local powerhouse Top 40 station CHUM during the annual Canadian National Exhibition), hot rod demolition derbies, CFL pro football games, and even a few of very earliest Blue Jays home games in the spring of their 1977 inaugural season. (I had seen the Syracuse Chiefs in action on several occasions, a decade and a half earlier, when they visited Toronto’s previous AAA team at the archaic old waterfront Maple Leaf Stadium.)
My own most memorable Exhibition Stadium “drama” was in June 1970, when it was the Toronto venue of the trans-Canada “Festival Express” rock tour featuring artists like Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Band, New Riders, Flying Burrito Bros, Buddy Guy etc (see entertaining 2003 film rockumentary).
By that time, I was attending college in Washington, DC, but I had returned to Toronto (in the frenetic times immediately after the Kent State shootings) after my freshman year to spend the summer with family, and my Baltimore-based college roommate had driven all the way up to Canada to attend the Festival Express concert with me. The two of us entered Exhibition Stadium by about 1pm, just as the music was getting under way. But, within an hour my friend decided he had to return to his car in the parking lot (emblazoned with a prominent Orioles bumper sticker, naturally), to pick up something important he’d inadvertently forgotten (i.e. some tabs of mescaline). He departed back to the parking lot, and that was the last I saw of him during the remaining 13 hours I spent at the concert, and I was all alone throughout the entire show! Once he got outside, he had belatedly discovered there was “no re-entry” to the Stadium and the heavy-handed security guys simply refused to let him, along with a throng of Yippie gatecrashers, in.
Anyway, I was reunited with my friend in the parking lot at about 2am, and fortunately the Dead had put on a free concert in a nearby park, for the benefit of the failed gatecrashers, so he’d managed to derive some chemically-enhanced musical pleasure from his long trip north from Baltimore. We remain very close friends to this day, and he’s comfortably retired (and still getting high, and loving music) after a very successful career as a family doctor in a beach town in Florida. Myself, after discovering on that day that being alone at a concert isn’t too bad, I fearlessly head off solo to concerts even now, as a 68-year-old, since my indie-rock and electronica musical tastes remain moored far outside my current age demographic!
That’s my little “tangential tale” for this week. Keep ‘em coming! Hope we see some MLB real soon!!
A few lines were somehow dropped from my opening para, disrupting the flow, but my comment is already super-long so I won’t attempt a correction. :)
ReplyDeleteI remember my 1st hangover. It was the morning of June 9, 1976. Mixing drinking did me in. That afternoon, I went horseback riding. THE WORST...
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