The Best Phone Calls

Any person who's spent more than four hours on the radio - especially if those four hours are at night - will tell you that you get some interesting phone calls when you do a radio show. I can only speak as someone who's done non-commercial radio - I'm certain that there are screeners for commercial radio call-in shows who have great stories to tell, too - but the types of listener feedback one gets ranges from the sweet to the scary.

I will share one that happened this week during Sugar Substitute. If you've heard my shows - & I wouldn't expect you to have, especially if you like good radio - you may note that I do take requests. I like phone calls. I like to know someone's listening. So Tuesday morning - this would have been very early, before 4am, I get a call. It goes something like this:

"Hey, I'm sitting here trying to make love to my lady & she wants to hear something by the Magnetic Fields."

I ask if it's anything specific - mainly because I really don't think of the Magnetic Fields as "sexy." "Sad" & "romantic" do come to mind...

"I know," he says, "some of their songs are sarcastic but if there's anything you can play that will help my seal the deal..."

I promise to do what I can. I have the first disc of "69 Love Songs" & am thinking about playing something sad but lovely like "All My Little Words" when the title of the ninth track just leapt out at me. So, when I could, which was about two songs later, I played "Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits."

He didn't call back. I assumed it did the trick.