THE SPIRIT OF RADIO
Dec. 12th, 2012 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogYou know that question you get as a kid: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Somewhere in junior high school, I knew the answer: I wanted to be a radio DJ.
And this Donald Fagen album cover pretty much explains why.
I honestly thought radio would be a lot like that – me sitting in a booth late at night, smoking and drinking, playing my favorite records and talking about whatever I liked.
And of course, eventually I got my wish and got into the business, and I was a regular DJ on the graveyard shift.
And it was pretty much nothing like what Donald Fagen promised me.
Which is why I write about telephones now. That and the pay was crap.
To be fair, college radio is a lot closer to that album cover (apart from the cigarettes – no smoking allowed, which is okay since I never took up smoking anyway), and I put in a lot of hours doing that. It was fun for me, if not for the listeners.
Anyway, point being, it's a great album cover.
CLARIFICATION: The album cover itself didn't inspire me to get into radio. The Nightfly came out in 1986 – I wanted to get into radio well before that, just from listening to it enough. Radio was a lifeline for me at the time, feeding me music that was helping me get through every single day of my not-so-fun childhood. I wanted to be part of that.
How was I to know it wasn’t nearly as spontaneous as it sounded?
BONUS TRACK: While we’re at it, here’s my favorite track from that album.
Gonna have a wingding,
This is dF
Somewhere in junior high school, I knew the answer: I wanted to be a radio DJ.
And this Donald Fagen album cover pretty much explains why.
I honestly thought radio would be a lot like that – me sitting in a booth late at night, smoking and drinking, playing my favorite records and talking about whatever I liked.
And of course, eventually I got my wish and got into the business, and I was a regular DJ on the graveyard shift.
And it was pretty much nothing like what Donald Fagen promised me.
Which is why I write about telephones now. That and the pay was crap.
To be fair, college radio is a lot closer to that album cover (apart from the cigarettes – no smoking allowed, which is okay since I never took up smoking anyway), and I put in a lot of hours doing that. It was fun for me, if not for the listeners.
Anyway, point being, it's a great album cover.
CLARIFICATION: The album cover itself didn't inspire me to get into radio. The Nightfly came out in 1986 – I wanted to get into radio well before that, just from listening to it enough. Radio was a lifeline for me at the time, feeding me music that was helping me get through every single day of my not-so-fun childhood. I wanted to be part of that.
How was I to know it wasn’t nearly as spontaneous as it sounded?
BONUS TRACK: While we’re at it, here’s my favorite track from that album.
Gonna have a wingding,
This is dF
