Features
Tours de Farce: Radio Waves
“Yes, sir.”
“Amanda’s told me a lot about you. I understand you’re a disk jockey.”
“That’s right.”
“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a disk jockey. Have you ever met 2 Live Crew?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll bet your job’s a lot of fun. Do you ever play Chris LeDoux, Deadbolt and Wang Chung?”
“Uh, no. They’re not in the format.”
“Not in the format? What about The Ataris and Allison Moorer?
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, suppose I called you and requested The Righteous Brothers. Would you play it?”
“Can’t. Because it’s not…”
“Let me guess, it’s not in the format. But, it’s a request.”
“We don’t take requests.”
“You’re kidding. I was listening to your station the other day, and I heard the announcer say he was going to play a request.”
“He just made that up. It’s not important to play requests. It’s important to sound like we play requests.”
“Oh. What about the jokes?”
“Uh?”
“You know, the jokes. The DJ patter. I’ll bet you say a lot of clever things on the air.”
“Uh, no. I just read whatever is in front of me. Like, ‘That’s Vanilla Ice on Super 98. It’s 71 degrees under partly cloudy skies and we’ll hear Eve 6 right after this.'”
“That’s it? You don’t pick your music, you don’t play requests and you only say what’s printed in front of you?”
“That’s about it.”
“Then why did you get into radio in the first place?”
“I really don’t know.”