Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The Radio Stress Dream

I really sympathized with a radio vet who told this story in today's Tom Taylor column. It's about the "radio stress" dream, and it's common dream to just about everyone who has ever worked as a radio disc jockey...

"They are always a variation of being suddenly placed in a new and unfamiliar control room and a record (always vinyl) is nearing an end or the stylus is scratching the label and I can find nothing to play. Either there are no records at all, or the ones I find are scratched beyond use or else they are covered with sticky gunk of some kind. One variation is that the records I find are all stiffs or things totally outside the format that shouldn't be played."

I still have that dream occasionally. It's almost exactly the same as that guy's dream. And I haven't been on the air as a disc jockey since 1993, and haven't played a vinyl record on the air since 1985. I'm sure there's a psychological reason for it, but I don't think I want to know what it is.