The WHRB Orgy: A 12-Hour Marathon

ANY PERSON WHO WOULD sign up to do a ten and a half hour radio show in the middle of reading period is a complete idiot. I was an idiot.

Somehow, back in November when it was sign-up time for the semi-annual orgy period at WHRB, I remembered reading period as the time that I caught up on all of my missed sleep. The avalanche of papers that I usually do then was forgotten along with the exams that I take. Consequently, the idea of doing an orgy from 9:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. didn't appear insane, but instead seemed novel and fun.

"The hell with novelty and fun!" I decided later as I researched an impossible economics paper, conveniently due on the day after my orgy. However, by then it was too late. Thousands of orgy schedules had been distributed and, hopefully, a sizeable number of people were eagerly looking forward to a journey into Loveland, my orgy program. What could I do? I had nightmares: I had the horrible fear that I would forget to turn on the power switch-transmitter--resulting in ten-and-a-half hours of silence, or I would say something absurdly obscene and the FCC would throw me into jail for the next five years.

AND ITS NOT AS IF my fears had no basis. There's a lot more to being a d.j. than simply chattering appropriately while throwing on records. Though, believe me, that alone is hard enough.

Loaded down with records and backed by promises of late hour coffee, Kathy, my co-announcer, and I arrived at the station just in time to hear the final score of the hockey game that was being broadcast.

"You're on! Where's your first cut?" barked the outgoing controlman. And with that leisurely beginning the show started.

"You are beginning a walk into Loveland. Loveland is wherever you want it to be and tonight, Kathleen Hawkins, 'The Hawke', and I, Louise Reid, are taking you to our Loveland via WHRB FM in Cambridge. You'll hear ten-and-a-half hours of the best in r'n'b and jazz. And we're dedicating it to all the brothers out there...Anything you want to hear? Brother, just give us a call...

"And if you don't have a woman, you've got two tonight.

"And if you are feeling bad, we want to make you feel all right.

"If you're down, we want to bring you up.

"Because

"We want to

"We WANT to

"We want to take you higher." (Fade in Sly and the Family Stone singing "We Want to Take You Higher.")

THAT DIALOGUE SOUNDED SILLY to me when I wrote it, inane to me when I said it, and it was not made any less ridiculous by the fact that one of my friends was laughing at me while I crooned it to all of Loveland. However, nobody called and complained so I guess it came out all right. While no one called in with complaints, people called in with requests as if their examination grades depended on it.

Things were not made easier by the layout of the station. The record library is at one end of the hall, and other records are kept in a footlocker at the other end of the hall. (The footlocker is euphemistically called the coffin. It's where records that are too good to be ripped off are kept.) When we received a request we would have to run to the record library, run to the coffin, and check the records we had brought. But after finding the record I couldn't just throw it on. Instead, the record had to be pre-checked for scratches and the volume it should be played so that it wouldn't distort. The volume, or level, is checked by playing the record on a sound system separate from the one that is doing the broadcasting. Unfortunately I could hear both systems at the same time and things became very confusing--at times they were chaotic.

AND EVEN AFTER ALL THAT, I couldn't play the record; it had to be cued-up. Cueing-up is done to avoid the five or six seconds of silence that would occur if the record needle was placed at the beginning of the record. Cueing-up is accomplished by starting the record and letting it spin until the first note of the song. The record player is then turned off and the record is spun back a quarter turn. Now all I had to do was to remember to switch the record from the studio system to the broadcast system.

But some things were hard to remember. Take the log for example. On it were typed the programs and the commercials that had to be run that day and my job was to list on it when I started and ended the show and when I did the commercials and station identifications. Throughout the night it was perpetually misplaced, and I started my program by swearing at the fool who left it lying on the floor in the other studio. By the end of the night I was swearing at myself for sticking it into a record jacket and several other equally inappropriate places.

At one point I forgot to set the level on myself. An irate listener eventually called to say that he couldn't hear me during the record breaks and I suddenly realized that I was the only person who had been able to hear those witty comments I'd been making over the past two hours. The temptation to kick the transmitter was overwhelming.

There were other tasks that made my work equally as onerous. I had to remember to take meter readings every half hour to make sure that the station was operating within legal limits. At the same time, I had to prattle the station identification on the half hour, another legal requirement. There were so many things to do that sometimes I would forget what record I was announcing and would have to pause a minute while on the air, to check the record jacket.

"The next cut you'll hear is...uh...an old favorite by...the Jackson Five." There are no words that can possibly describe how stupid I felt in a situation like that. I just hoped that nobody out there noticed. After all, who can possibly be alert at 2 a.m.?

FRIENDS DROPPED BY with advice and coffee. The coffee was appreciated; the advice was not. "Don't play all of your slow cuts now. Wait until you get tired." Wait until we got tired? Our bedtime was two hours ago.

Then, around 4 a.m., things began to change. We stopped the constant scudding and scurrying about in the search for records. This was due both to our finally adjusting to the rhythm of things and the fact that we were so tired that the moment that we went to get a record, we forgot what had been requested. However, since we had not forgotten what records we liked, we played them. As we sifted through the piles of records, calls sporadically came in, a response to our often repeated plea: "Keep your announcer awake. Call 495-4818."

A flood of calls would follow that announcement, so for the next few minutes, Kathy and I easily avoided the problem of falling asleep while a record played in end-grooves. It's amazing how friendly people can be in the pre-dawn hours. Some even called so frequently that we began to recognize their voices. And the questions they asked!

"Sister, are you fine? You sound fine."

Those conversations really helped to pull us through because if we had ever really looked at each other and seen the drowsy faces, red eyes, and tired slumps, we would have felt so bad that we would have had to simply pack up and leave.

TIME MOVED ON; suddenly it was 7 a.m. Only one hour remained of Loveland. Even the most faithful listeners presumably had decided to tuck in for the morning as the phone had ceased ringing, so we finally had a chance to sit down and relax. A depressing sight met my eyes. The control room was strewn with half empty Pepsi bottles and coffee cups interspersed with teetering piles of records and after one look at Kathy's heavy eye lids, I had no desire to hunt a mirror. Slowly we got up and began the routine of returning the records to the library, to the coffin, and to the bookbags.

7:55 a.m. With the Loveland theme as background we each said our separate good-byes.

"Brothers, I want to thank you for letting me spend the night with you." A sister has to be tired to make that statement in Boston. I said it and never noticed the implications until after eight hours of sleep.

Later, at dinner, my nod was interrupted by a faithful listener. "Really good orgy last night. But, you're not going to do another one, are you?" he asked while observing my disheveled appearance and bag-ridden eyes.

"Uh-uh, Never. Well...at least not until spring."