You're On The Air

Originally published at This Is This. You can comment here or there.

THIS IS THIS....... (CHOEW!! PI-CHEOW!!!!)
Type it in - (Jhhhevvvvvvv)
... and rip out your keyboard. (BYOWVVVVV!!!!)

...From the USB thing. If you have one.
Unless you're wireless. Then, I don't know - rip THAT out.

This is why my radio career was shortlived.

The first song I played on radio, working the graveyard shift for Warrington Festival FM, was Me In Honey by REM. It's a song that feels like the start of something.

That's a part, that's a part of meeeee.

The programme manager, a guy with the dubious mantle of being my first editor, was called Phil. He was in the next room listening to the song which kicked in within fifteen seconds of him shouting: "I don't hear anything..."

Me, Ken and Matt - all Joneses and yet unrelated - we were young and we were on the air, eager to stick it to The Man. We had power without responsibility and it was payback time.

The point that we had taken way more from life that we had put in made little difference as we dropped the needle on Radio Asskiss by The Wonder Stuff as the last song on our first show.

So bold! So full of life and energy and rebellion! We were on the air.

Phil wasn't going to be outdone by our upstartly insolence, and took the handover to his breakfast slot by defiantly backannouncing the record as "Radio Arse".

He looked at us like we were all sticking to The Man.

We looked at him like he was The Man. Except so not the man.