Skipping Prog Rock LPs, Hot Coffee on My Pants, and Lies I told the Program Director

[By Ted Stern ’76]

Yes, there actually was one summer where I spent my vacation doing the 6AM morning show. It seemed like a cushy enough job, and no one else wanted to do It. I soon found out why. With only a skeleton crew of students around, and most of them here because they partied too much during the semester, some late nights sort of tended to develop. Soon I was dragging myself out of bed just to make it to the station in time to play the opening cart with all those fascinating statistics (how far does 17,000 watts go anyway), never mind shove a cup of coffee down me first. But then I developed a system: There were a few eclectic German bands in the rabbits [aka vinyl stacks] with some twenty-two minute tracks—boring avante-garde gibberish, but just long enough to Iet me make it to the deli just off of the main drag, grab a doughnut, and scoot back.

Then one morning “it” happened. The man at the deli had been a little slow, so I raced back to the studio. I return, sticky-handed, coffee spilling onto the side of the brown paper bag and dripping to my pants. I glance quickly at the Magma LP I had put on the turntabIe. What a relief, no dead air; only half-way through. But l’d been gone for twenty minutes.

“What the heck? I think this thing is skipping!”

Then I notice that the phone is ringing off the hook.

“Think fast, Ted.”

I eIegantly knock the turntable arm with my hip as I answer the phone.

“What the heck is going on there!” Oh, no, the Program Director! I did the only thing I could in this situation. I lied.

“Um… I was in the bathroom, and there’s nobody here to cover.”

Click. Hummm.

I sit back with my bag of goodies and turn up the monitors. The quiet isolation and warm dry smell of electronics gives the impression of being some lone DJ out in a remote desert outpost. I glance at the spinning Magma album. With this music, it’d have to be a lone desert output on Mars. Good, I got four minutes of this crap left. Bon Apetit!

WATCH: Magma perform De Futura… for 20 minutes.

https://youtu.be/a73XLkf43-s?list=PL5QT4Q2XqdO3wE9rJfSFXxqQDGmIvvTUl