My first air shift on WOWI radio, Rensselaer, Indiana, Monday, October 9, 1972, at 6 am, was a disaster. I used my BIG RADIO VOICE because I didn’t know any better and said, “Hey, Pumas! [We were the Pumas] Wowee radio’s on the air! We got the Rocket Man to kick off your Monday! at which point my hand hit mic boom causing the microphone to smash into my face causing a deafening feedback causing the board op in the other room to laugh so hard he dropped his joint, totally missing his cue to pay the Elton John record. This turned out to be of no consequence because nobody was listening. In fact, we’d have had a bigger audience shouting out of the window. Anyway, I learned a thing or two. One is, unless you’re Howard Stern, you can’t make any money in radio and, two, record companies will send you hundreds of records even if you’re a shitty station in the middle of an Indiana corn field. Some of that music stayed with me over the decades, however. Here are two examples.
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