Mastering & Restoration
My first job out of college was on the air at 89.7FM WGBH in Boston. Overnights and sometimes on weekends, I played jazz records, read weather reports, station promos and legal IDs, pressed buttons, slid faders, cued satellite feeds, CDs and DATs. I fundraised, urging listeners to do your part, become a member, join the community of listeners who are also supporters of the quality programming you only hear on WGBH by calling 1-888.... Including my time at WESU when in college and the handful of shows I DJ-ed on WFMU (I could not hack the 3am - 6am shift), I was on the air regularly from about 1994 to 2003.
Seven years later, I still have the occasional radio anxiety dream. It's a recurrent nightmare, albeit a mild one. I'm on the air and: I'm locked out of the music library; I can't find my on-air copy to read; I'm stammering, speechless; there's a party in the studio and people won't be quiet when I go on the air.
Last night I dreamed there was a hamburger on the turntable, the needle digging deeper into the sesame seed bun with each rotation, and I was worried the listeners wouldn't be able to hear the records I wanted to play. Every DJ's subconscious anxiety: hamburger on the turntable.
It turns out I don't know the (correct) lyrics to very many songs. When it's time to put the baby to bed, I try to think of a sweet little song to sing to him. A lullaby. I can usually get the first line out, the hook or the chorus, and then I draw a blank. This scenario plays out three ways: 1) I make up my own lyrics:
So he sailed... under the... sea... with an octopus and a shark / and a squid and a jellyfish / and a skeleton and a clam... / and a sea urchin and sea cucumbers / and an orca and a tuna fish.... We all live in a yellow submarine!
Or:
Who loves the sun? Who cares if it is shining? / Who cares what it does since you broke my heart? / Who loves my son? Who care if he is crying? / Who cares what he does since you broke my heart? / Ba ba ba baaaa! Who loves my son?
2) I resort to the songs I do know the lyrics to, which means songs I sang in junior high choir, Christmas songs, and random indelible folk songs. Thus my boy has been lulled to sleep many times by poorly harmonized renditions of the state song of Kansas:
Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam / where the deer and the antelope play! Where seldom is heard a discouraging word / and the skies are not cloudy all day. / Home! Home on the range!
3) I google lyrics on my iPhone and use it as a cheat sheet. Unfortunately for the baby, this can send me awry. When searching for the lyrics to a song Doc Watson sang about Little Omie, Google suggested that perhaps I was looking for 2Pac'sLittle Homie. An honest mistake.