I was only half-listening to a radio station this morning, but I'm pretty sure I heard an alleged expert say, "If you start to feel uncomfortable in the cold outside, go inside."
If only I knew the speaker's credentials...Then, I could decide for myself whether to brave frigid temperatures stoically or use common sense and stay inside where it's warm.
I guess I just have to take some admonitions on faith.
Sometimes, it just takes one phone call from a listener to remind you that when you're on the air, you are the voice of the radio station.
At WEW in 1996, a listener called and asked me, "Is this the man on the mic?"
Yes, that was me--and I liked being perceived as the pilot of the station during the hours I worked. It was a pleasure to be viewed as a radio personality at age 25--and good to be reminded that I wasn't just in a room talking to myself.
As a bleak, cold month, January is an appropriate time for listening to songs with turbulent undercurrents. The Who's "Eminence Front" works on that front. So does Milo Greene's "Move." There's a Marianne Faithfull, song, however, that's also appropriately unnerving.
No, it isn't from her '60s, "As Tears Go By" folk days. It's from 1980 and had somehow escaped my notice until recently. While watching Faithfull perform "Broken English" on "Saturday Night Live," I thought, "If I hadn't already heard who the musical guest was, I would never have guessed this was her. Her voice has a considerable rasp, which is appropriate for the song, but sounds nothing like her pure, clear style from 15 years earlier."
And yet, the breaks in her voice and the uneasiness of the groove underneath kept me tuned in. I find the tune strangely compelling and will likely segue it with "Move" on my next pairs-of-segues CD.
After being told I'd been accepted into broadcasting school after college, one of the school's higher-ups asked me, "Are you excited that you've joined us?"
"Yes, I suppose so," I told her.
Maybe I should have shown more enthusiasm. I'm glad I didn't, though. I would have sounded stilted and contrived. After all, there's a reason why smooth jazz, Classical, and new age formats were more in my wheelhouse as a DJ.
A late '70s memory: A few days after hearing Simon & Garfunkel's "The 59th Street Bridge Song" on the radio, I asked a grade school classmate if she'd ever heard it.
"I have," she replied. "Some friends and I sang it for our parents at a talent show. I felt like an idiot afterwards."
Idiot is too harsh of a term, but I understand why anyone, especially kids, might feel self-conscious about performing that song in public. Lyrics that idealistic require a mixture of carefree abandon and confidence that's difficult to pull off--especially when you have to sing that you're "feelin' groovy," and that expression is no longer in vogue.
Yesterday, I heard a tweeting sound. I thought, "Is Collette playing with one of her bird cat toys?" Then, I thought, "No, I don't think that's it. Did I leave music playing that has bird sounds in it?" That wasn't the case, either. Only then did I realize, "There's an actual bird tweeting outside the window."
Apparently, I've gotten out of the habit of recognizing legitimate birdsong.
Sunday and Monday standouts:
KDHX 88.1 FM
WSIE 88.7 FM
KWMU 90.7 FM
KSHE 94.7 FM
K297BI 107.3 FM, a.k.a. WFUN-HD2