I Am the DJ

When I was 3 or 4 and listened to the radio, I thought each song was played by a live band that set up right there in a big warehouse-type building. "And now--Creedence Clearwater Revival!" And in my mind, each band was full of neatly-coiffed, well-dressed young men who did perfect renditions of the songs on cue.

***

I always wanted to be a DJ, and still do I guess. Unfortunately, the reality of the profession was far different from the ideal I had in my head.

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I researched "audio engineer" for a Career Day project in high school. I looked up articles on the income ranges from these decades-old microfiche records. I remember that the salary range tended to be about $12,000. I wasn't impressed.

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But I was that kid, the one who tinkered with recorders and songs all the time. My father gave me a cassette recorder when I was about 10, and I loved recording everything, pretending I was a DJ on my own radio station, KAKL.

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And if you know me at all, you know I do almost nothing in silence. Hell, I made an iTunes playlist even just now, so I could hear something while typing. Currently it's playing "I'd Rather Go Blind" by Marcia Ball.

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I was always the guy making mix tapes for people, handing them out like Halloween candy. And if you do this, you learn that maybe one tape in ten gets any response, let alone a positive one. I made some blues compilations for folks that seemed to be popular.

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If I drive from one end of the mall parking lot to the other, I put on music. If I load the dishwasher, music. Music music music.

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My undergrad degree is in Radio-TV-Film. I took the "audio track," which meant I took as many radio and sound classes as I could. I learned to multitrack, to speak into a microphone without my natural accent, and to edit quarter-inch tape with a razor blade.

***

I worked as a party DJ right out of college for a while, though at that point I didn't care for it. I wasn't yet social enough to enjoy the attention of all those people. I was in the throes of serious tinnitus, having been just diagnosed, and was determined that I'd be the DJ who played songs at a reasonable volume. It didn't make me any friends, and nearly got me into a fist fight once.

And hell, even when I drank I didn't like being around drunks. Or at least the ones who acted drunk, as so many party patrons do.

I worked wedding receptions mostly. I look back fondly on one held at a synagogue, where I swear every man older than 30 talked like Jackie Mason.

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I did a little work as a voice talent for a while, recording a few radio spots and TV promos. It's awfully strange to walk past a TV and hear yourself saying, "Sesame Street was brought to you by..."

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I didn't get to do enough of it. My voice is a little deeper now than it was then. Back then I was mostly asked to do goofy voices, but I wanted more serious work.

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In 1986 I went with my mother to her 20th high school reunion. It was held in the Freeport Community Center, I believe. It was a pretty nice affair, and they'd hired an actual radio DJ, whom I'll call JG, to come down from Houston and spin records.

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They weren't records though, as I soon learned. They were carts, which look like 8-track tapes. I learned this because, budding DJ/audio tech that I was, I sought out JG that night, hanging around, picking his brain about his industry and his gizmos. He was really nice, really accommodating.

Break time came, and he asked if I wanted to go downstairs with him. Seems he had a mobile phone in his van, and needed to make a call.

So JG sat in the driver's seat and I sat in the passenger seat. For a couple moments neither of us moved or said anything. The conversation stopped for the first time, and there was a distinctly awkward feeling that I couldn't put my finger on. I thought he was going to say something, but I blurted out, "So why didn't you ever get married?"

He said something generic about how his job was a busy one, and how radio folks move around a lot. JG made his phone call (keep in mind that this was 1986; the phone was the size of a can of Pringles), the break was over, and we went back upstairs.

On his radio shift that following Monday I tuned in and heard him dedicate a song to me: "Long As I Can See the Light" by CCR.

***

Flash forward almost 20 years, and I'm at BACS, talking to Hood one day. I tell him this story, and he stops me. "What'd you say the DJ's name was?"

I repeated it.

"Briscoe, he's gay. I worked with him. I know him. He's full-blown out of the closet. He's gay."

Oh. Oh.

Well. Whaddya know?

***

Eventually, I did see the light, I guess.

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Taken from an older post.

An Austin “worldbeat” DJ was doing his show from a studio at a TV station where I once worked. No one was there, and the atmosphere was dead. He’d talk to me in a regular Joe voice, telling me I didn’t have the house sound loud enough. I told him that when we had some bodies in there I’d turn it up.

When we were live, though, he’d take the microphone and suddenly sound Jamaican: “We’re hahvin’ a dahnce pah-tay!!”

It was embarrassing, and it got worse when a roomful of barefoot white people came in and started actually shaking their Caucasian groove things to the DJ’s tired blend of generic worldbeat stuff.

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I leave you with a video clip of David Bowie's "DJ," which I believe contains the first footage I'd ever seen of men kissing each other.

[I'm on dialup at home and won't take the time to let this load, so I'm going on memory.]



It just seemed appropriate.