I'm amazed that a whole generation or two of young people have grown up without radio. I know most radio is terrible (probably including my dumb show), but I have such happy memories of growing up with radio. & when I discovered community radio, it was the gateway into the world of music I love now, most of which doesn't get (& has never gotten) played on commercial radio.
But I'll tell you one story about radio being important to me. It was probably when I was in eighth grade, so I was twelve or thirteen or maybe fourteen. My mother had given to me & my little brother two radio/tape recorder units that weren't quite boomboxes, but very handy, because I was taping music from the radio by holding a little cassette recorder up to a speaker. I would record television shows the same way before VCRs. The sound quality was awful.
We got these sorta-boomboxes for Christmas, & it wasn't long after we got them that, because it was retractable & we didn't remember to do retract it, the antenna bent & broke off. Which meant it could be used as a kind of dueling implement. Which meant the other antenna was promptly broken off so it could be used to duel the other dueling antenna thing.
During the summer I would sleep on the sofa so I could watch television late into the night, & I would often have my radio/tape recorder right next to me. One of Dallas's two classic rock stations at the time - I believe they were Q102 & KZEW "the Zoo" - would, at eleven o'clock each night, play an entire album all the way through. If I were smart enough to catch it on time, I could get a record I couldn't afford to buy & get it on my own tape.
I was obsessed then with the Beatles. I had taken from my older brothers the Beatles records they had - Sgt. Pepper, the Blue + Red Greatest Hits releases, Let It Be - but of course I knew I hadn't heard all their songs yet. I would tape Ringo's Starr's show Ringo's Yellow Submarine on Sundays & I was amazed there were songs I didn't even know existed. My friend Russell had told me that his favorite record was called The White Album. I so wanted to hear it in its entirety.
One night, they played it all the way through on that eleven o'clock spot! I had my tape ready. But there was one snag: because the antenna had been torn off, I had to put my finger on the space where the base of the antenna had been in order to hear the station without static. This meant that for as long as the record played - & the station played commercials in-between sides - I had to leave my finger on that spot.
It was worth it. That record blew my mind. I didn't know you could do such a thing as that record, & of course nothing had prepared me for "Revolution No. 9." I listened to the tape constantly, & for years, after I had bought the record myself, & then the CD, I would expect to hear the static from when, because my arm was tired, I shifted my finger. I also never got the hear the entire ending of "Long, Long, Long" because the deejay put an ad in way before it finished (it has a long, long, long fade).
Later on, I would discover KNON in Dallas, & then a late-night show on KUT in Austin which, in the mid- to late-1980s, played college radio type music. KTSB, the precursor to KVRX, started around that time, but they only broadcast on cable FM, & of course no one knew what that was. I did my first show on KVRX on cable FM & I still don't know what that is.
But as much as I loved the radio up until the end of high school, when I discovered music that was never played on commercial radio, it wasn't inevitable that I would actually one day become a deejay. I sort of daydreamed about it, like one does, but even when I went to KVRX in the summer of 1994, I wasn't thinking about going on the air. I was thinking about finding new music, & I left there with a handful of CDs to review.
Hmm - I guess I didn't say what my favorite radio show was, did I? Well, rest assured, it's not Self Help Radio!
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