Genre=Fiction

Once upon a time I was ahead of the times.  

Up until college I did fine academically coasting strong test-taking skills.  I'm not sure where they came from or why, but I always did well on tests, particularly multiple choice tests because I could usually eliminate the no-chance answers and guess between the plausible ones.  

Engineering school was a different matter.  First year calculus was something they used to weed people out and I found out I was a weed.  To be fare I spent a fair amount of time exploring the neighborhood my school was in rather than spending it in class or studying.  Having been a cultural prisoner for almost the first two decades of my life the escape into mid-1980's urban life was an irresistible attraction.  

After I was weeded, I festered at a local community college for a semester, got my bearings back with a slate of courses that actually interested me resulting in a perfect GPA and advanced back into the city to go to business school per my father's mandate that a college education be a ticket to a real job.  

He probably wasn't banking on me finding a radio station at this institution, but I did. 

I wanted to do a show, (elevator pitch time) that was a combination of the honest comedy of Howard Stern (yeah, that's where he was at in those days, well, that and the porny stuff but it was always the brutally honest family stuff that resonated the most with me) and the musical eclecticism and literacy of Vin Scelsa who had resurfaced on the same K-Rock Stern was on.  Vin would read long passages from novels on the air in between records nobody else on commercial radio played and it amazed me that such a thing could exist on commercial radio.  It doesn't anymore. 

I was told I couldn't do the show.  The philosophy of the radio station was "block format", not "free-form" and every show had to have a defined format and stick to it or the program director would suspend it. 

So initially I went under the vague format of "rock” and snagged a second show by volunteering to do a classical show since nobody else would.

I solved my format problem by becoming program director. So my show stretched the boundaries by becoming block format within block format and playing one genre...at a time.  I checked with myself as the program director and approved. 

There were cassettes of these shows, but they were lost in a weather disaster.  Frankly I'm glad because who the hell wants any record of their 21-year-old self banging on about whatever was on their mind at the time?  Thanks for the erasure, climate change.  I remember the music I played, that's what matters.

What label did it fall under?  Who gives a fuck. What am I, Sam Goody?