I Was A Regular Radio Call-In Winner

“Wait. Was that a bowling score?!”

It was not a bowling score.

It was the final score of my 8th grade dunkball team’s game the previous night: 225-48 (we were the 225 or I would not have been talking about it).

I had called into my local classic rock radio station Z93’s morning show—Jon & Dan—after they’d solicited (crowdsourced is what we call it today) some “sports news” on an otherwise slow sports day. They were laughing, so it was a successful first foray into the world of call-in radio. If I’d been less nervous, maybe I could’ve come up with a witty follow-up comment. But the sheer audacity of the final score would have to do. Jon & Dan moved on to the next caller and I basked in my 30 seconds of Z93 KLZX morning show fame, hoping some of my friends had been listening (they hadn’t).

A thing I didn’t know before I had actually gotten through the phone lines and onto the air: the station vets the on-air callers first. There’s somebody at the station answering the phones, screening you for what you might say if they put you on-air. So I told that guy my story; he liked it enough to put me on hold, which I assume gave him time to run it by Jon & Dan, see if they thought it could work. He got back on, told me to hold tight and to be sure to turn my radio down (it causes feedback and echo stuff) before they put me on.

I told my story. Jon used his bowling score line. I hung up, convinced that I was their favorite caller of the week. But also blooming with the inevitable “Oh, I Should’ve Said This” ideas that always arrive too late.

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My call-in relationship with radio started long before that, though, around third or fourth grade. I’d phone in requests to DJs.

See, in the old days, people would listen to the radio a lot. As a society, we liked the idea of what felt like randomness. Not unlike listening to someone else’s playlist, hoping either for something familiar or for something pleasantly surprising.

Back then, the radio wasn’t just the computer-programmed playlists that some mega-conglomerate had focus-grouped, double-tested, and then imposed upon all the radio stations in all the markets they’d swallowed, like it is now.

There were real life DJs. At one point and on some rare stations, these DJs could play whatever they wanted¹. That changed, for the most part, when I was fairly young. Most DJs pulled songs from a list of approved songs and then sprinkled in the occasional personal touch. It’s how you hear stories about some DJ on KROQ in LA breaking The Ramones or Blondie; or WBCN in Boston breaking The Cars or Aerosmith². Sometimes a DJ would have an opinion or hunch strong enough about some band or song, and it would catch on. Other times, the zeitgeist refused to budge despite a DJ’s best, most impassioned efforts.

Bands started to see how this worked. They saw the power of an advocate and would make sure to send specific DJs their new albums/singles.

These DJs were radio “personalities.” They brought their own flair to their shifts, whether it was the try-hard funny morning shows or the devil-may-care graveyard shifts or workmanlike drive time or whatever. In Salt Lake, for me, it was people like Jon & Dan, Todd Nuke ‘Em, Jimmy Chunga, Dom Casual, Biff Riff, and a bunch of other people clearly not using their real names.

I’d call these people from my parents’ landline.

At first it was just with song requests—probably the latest Howard Jones song or some other pop earworm—which I earnestly believed would be honored but were probably more humored than anything. It was an attempt to scratch the itch, to hear songs I liked but wasn’t willing to spring the cash for the full album.

Sometimes it was just the minor thrill of hearing something you asked for played. The idea that the machine was listening to you, that you could “affect” the airwaves. A very, very microscopic feeling of power, maybe.

I remember one guy on X96 telling me that, yeah, he’d play the song but to stop calling. Another DJ told me, semi-kindly, there was no way the station was ever gonna play my requested song and to just buy the CD. (I bought the tape, but that’s another story.)

Later, I got the taste of another thing: giveaways. Specifically, I got a taste for winning giveaways.

You know, when they say, “Caller #7 gets two tickets to see Vein Meltter at the IcePick Arena….call now!”

I started winning. I was Caller #7. More than a few times.

I won a 5-pack of CDs from X96. None of them were memorable except 311’s creatively-titled Music, which as a fan of Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine and reggae….I fell for automatically. In my defense, this was way before they had determined the color of their energy³.

I won tickets to see Extreme⁴ from KBER 101. They were playing at The Salt Palace, I think. I say “I think” because ultimately I didn’t go to the concert. Our high school varsity coach had invited me and a few other JV players to suit up for our State Tournament game the same night and I didn’t think it would bode well for my basketball future to tell him I had plans that didn’t involve watching my team. So I never saw Nuno Bettencourt shred live. I did watch a very good, championship-contender-level East High⁵ Leopards team lose in a shocking upset to the American Fork Cavemen⁶, though.

I won another 5-pack of CDs from X96. This time, the receptionist at the station recognized me when I picked them up. And this time, there wasn’t even a 311 CD to make the stack memorable. No wonder they were giving them away.

I won a gift certificate to SoundOff (the local music store) from The Mountain 105.7. I bought American Music Club’s album San Francisco⁷ on the recommendation of a clerk who could tell, before I could, that I might traffic in depression.

I even got won tickets to the Twilight Concert Series from KRCL. I believe it was for Iron & Wine.

That feels like a lot, right? There were others too.

And then one day, winning and I grew apart. It happens.

1. Still can on KRCL 90.9. Shout out to the only station that regularly plays my songs.

2. Second Aerosmith appearance on The Wonder, The Wild!!! U2 and Amanda Petrusich better watch their backs.

3. amber

4. Yes. The “More Than Words” band. This was on the next album (III Sides To Every Story) which would ultimately be the second-best-selling album of their career while they slid back into metal’s middle class.

I think we’ve already been over my affection for the delay-driven guitar part on “Am I Ever Gonna Change.” That kinda echocore guitar playing has always been my jam. From Pink Floyd to The Police and U2 to the Freddy Jones Band. Echoes are one of my love languages, I guess.

5. Yes, that East High.

6. That’s the real mascot.

7. American Music Club’s songwriter Mark Eitzel is an underground writer’s writer, a gutter poet, a man who wrote from well inside the bottle, a walking self-destruct button for much of their career. They never broke through commercially, though they were critical darlings. They remind me of a darker, drunker, more indie Counting Crows, so if they weren’t gonna make the leap in the mid 90s, it wasn’t ever happening. Not that that means anything about quality. I love their song Fearless.