I went to a high school that had a radio station (in fact; the oldest high school radio station in the United States- there's even a Wikipedia page about it- Go WHHS!) and I signed up to take the class for my second semester of 10th grade; I've always had an un-natural attachment to music so I figured what better way to annoy hundreds (more like tens) of listeners with my music tastes? Back in those days (1992 to be exact) it was an actual credit class, now it's an extracurricular club run by the students (with a faculty advisor that doesn't have to do a whole lot). Anyway; you needed an actual FCC license to broadcast on the air ($35 back then was a lot of money) so I never got my license. But I was put on the air, and I got in a shitload of trouble.
The story goes: the teacher of the class was an on-air personality for the soft-rock radio station (I'm not going to name any names here) and she usually didn't come in until around 11:00 most days, she was the morning drive-time personality on that un-named station that operated near the Granite Run Mall. Anyway, the student director thought I was hilarious and wanted to give me ten minutes on the air. I went over to the racks of records, pulled two out (they were Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and a 7" single of Superchunk's Cool). I had been learning things like how to load the PSA cartridges (basically see-thru 8-track tapes that had various anti-drug messages or anti-suicide slogans and whatnot with typed-out labels on them), get proper distance from the microphone and enunciate my syllables, and segue from one track to the next- all that radio shit.
So I did my ten-minute bit, played Bring The Noise and Cool, talked in between, told jokes, did impressions of teachers I hated, etc. When I was done (much to our surprise) the faculty advisor was standing outside the on-air booth door with the most livid expression on her face. She went into a tirade about "losing our station license, illegal broadcasting, yadda yadda, whatever..." I was laughing pretty hard. I was sent to the principal's office, got a day of in-school suspension and had to drop the class.
This story has a happy ending, but you'll have to stay tuned to a later blog entry to get the rest. At any rate, this Superchunk record does not have the aforementioned song on it, but it's my favorite of theirs. I'll probably do a massive 'chunk post one of these days, they always epitomized what "indie rock" is all about, and will forever remind me of my first attempt at being a disc jockey...
