A DJ's Duty

Seeing friends in the East Coast digging out from their winter storm put me in mind of the Nor'easter of 1995 when I did an 18 hour stint DJing on WHRB in the basement of Memorial Hall. A duty of care, I didn't want to shut the radio station down.

It all started so innocently, I was set to do the Street Beat hip hop show from 4 to 6 pm on Saturday. I showed up 90 minutes early, having paid no attention to the weather forecast. Albeit I did notice a few flakes of snow as I exited the shuttle bus with my crate of records. Who knew?

Almost immediately, I got the sense that something was up. As I poked my head in the studio, the DJ who was on air signaled to me and pointedly asked me if I wanted to go on early. I didn't know any better and so said "Sure, why not" and ran to pick out a few more records from our stacks.

The Street Beat credo, if there was one, was simply that we didn't play commercial stuff. If you did play a club banger, it had to be a rare white label remix. The founders of The Source magazine were Street Beat alums. We had standards. We did vinyl. We mixed. We were underground.

I had my work cut out because I hadn't been keeping up with the latest releases so I was half expecting some irate caller from Roxbury complaining about the lack of Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs. Anyway, I started my set off with Dip Dip Divin' by Justin Warfield and got more esoteric from there.

At 5 pm, I got a call that the next DJ wasn't going to be able to make it for the 6 pm show. Hey, I thought, more airtime and, well, I wanted to play some soul. The Boston hip hop audience is unusually demanding whereas the soul crew are far more forgiving. I threw on Rainbow by Shinehead.

Anyway 6 pm came and I switched to spinning club classics. Grooving really, everything was beat-matched; not a bad mix. I was feeling it and getting lots of requests. Callers did mention that the snow was really coming down but my music was giving them soul comfort.

I suddenly realized that I was getting hungry. Ah right, I'd missed dinner. But, well, I could pass by the Hong Kong at 8 pm and grab something. The red leather furniture of the restaurant, the ambiance of disrepute and the strangely comforting food. Salivating. Bruce Lee would approve

Of course, I'd forgotten Francis Bacon's adage:

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

7:45 pm came and the next DJ hadn't shown up. I went to the front door and saw a pile of snow. It was coming down hard. Blizzard conditions really. I checked the schedule but didn't see a phone number or who to call for backup. Ooooh trouble.

I decided to not just put on a cd, it's a point of pride to always be mixing vinyl. So I dug more records from the vault and I mixed, blended and matched beats.

8 pm came.

For You To Love was our quiet storm show. DJ Zik had heavy boots to fill but I thought I'd be up to the task for the next two hours. Where his signature was the titular Luther Vandross song, I went with Crying Overtime by Alexander O'Neal, the king of ad libs.

10 pm came. I now had to read a Public Service Announcement, something about a storm advisory, how you should avoid leaving home if at all possible. As I read the script, the penny dropped. Stay off the roads. No wonder no one was coming to give me relief.

Midnight came. No replacement. I continued with a set of torch songs. Again it would have been easy to throw on an Isaac Hayes half hour lament but that would feel too much like cheating. I dug deep: Luther Ingram, The O'Jays, Eddie Kendricks etc.

2 am. Despair set in.

Burning Spear came to my rescue (Mi gi dem was the joint). I turned to roots reggae. Then decided to explore the falsetto singers in reggae. The phone calls to the studio blew up at this point. I must have struck a nerve.

Also: scavenging around the studios, I managed to find a Twix bar. I didn't query its vintage, I just ate it up. Where there's a snack gap...

4 am. This was getting ridiculous. UK soul then - I put on Loose Ends, Omar, Mica Paris and some acid jazz, Young Disciples, Galliano, Jamiroquai. Also I started to think of drastic measures...

When you comped, you had to learn how to turn the station on and off. FCC regulations or something. But no one really paid attention to that part of the training. I certainly couldn't remember how to turn the station on if I came in cold in the morning. Whoever heard of shutting it down?

I grew up in newsrooms and the BBC World Service formed the backdrop of my teenage years. Dead air was anathema to me. I wasn't going to be the one to let the side down. So I kept spinning, running back and forth to pull more records. Mixing on the turntable decks always, I refused to play cds.

At 6 am the woman who normally did the Sunday gospel show called apologetically to say that she couldn't make it, commiserating about the snow drifts, danger and all that jazz. Sigh...

I threw on some divas. Aretha, Brenda, Mavis, Chaka and Rachelle Ferrell. Know what I mean?

8 am came, and it seemed as if relief beckoned. Some poor soul called and said that he hoped to be there soon to do the folk show. The storm had abated somewhat. I started playing songs that mentioned Heaven. Bebe and CeCe Winans, Miles Jaye and so forth.

9 am and the guy hadn't showed up. I was tempted to Shut 'em down c/o Public Enemy - the Pete Rock Remix of course (still the best remix of all time).

I cheated and decided to throw on Freedom Suite by The Young Disciples. A good 15 minutes of respite. Isaac Hayes's By the time I get to Phoenix was another option considered (18:45 minutes for those in the know) but I couldn't find Hot Buttered Soul in the stacks.

10:15 am. He arrived. Another human being in the flesh. He said it was rough outside. Of course he needed some time to pull some records together for his set but by this stage I didn't care anymore, blending and beat matching almost like an automaton.

I couldn't find Keep the Beat by Eric B & Rakim so I closed my set out with And the beat goes on by The Whispers. I committed to the task.

The studio was an almighty mess when I handed over and I started reshelving the hundreds of records I'd pulled and deliberated over. 18 hours worth. It was tough going.

I walked back to the dorm through the 14 inches of snow with my crate of records. No shuttle bus obviously. I didn't have boots on, no gloves and, well, I wasn't appropriately dressed. It was a long, treacherous walk but, at length, I made it to the Quad. The Cabot House dining room was just opening for brunch.

...

There's no moral to the story, just the abiding memory of holding down the fort in that basement, at one with the music and the radio audience.

DJs may be a strange breed but we have a keen sense of duty.

- The basement entrance to the old WHRB studios

A DJ's Duty, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Some of what I played that weekend (spotify version)

• The Basement by Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
• Dip Dip Divin' by Justin Warfield
• Rainbow by Shinehead
• Got To Keep On by The Cookie Crew
• Last Night a DJ saved my Life by Indeep
• Mi gi dem by Burning Spear
• Burrup by Nardo Ranks
• Shut em down (Pete Rock mix) by Public Enemy
• Can't Stop a Man by Beres Hammond
• Crying overtime by Alexander O'Neal
• I get the job done by Big Daddy Kane
• And the beat goes on by The Whispers

Bonus beats: a tape of a Club Classics set I did circa 1993 that I digitized when I found time during the early covidious lockdowns


File under: music, obsession, memory, humour, life, youth, culture, observation, perception, WHRB, whimsy, Social Living, toli

Writing log: January 5, 2022