A comment from a friend on a previous post has reminded me of my early ambition; to be a DJ. And I used to make tapes. These were no ordinary tapes of a few favourites all jammed onto a cassette, no, these were carefully constructed 44 minute programmes of music. Some of them had spoken introductions, others didn't. Most of them were themed. One 'special' I made was a show all based on 'track 6'. I spent hours making sure that the tape was lined up just so, and that the next track came in carefully on the beat, and oh, I was good!
Do you have any idea (yes, probably) how hard it is on one of this little portable tape recorders and a stereo that had a lid that you had to close before it would play? In the end, of course, I found out how to by-pass that little trick, but at the beginning it added a layer of complexity that I didn't need, for it was hard enough on the old steam driven equipment to be found in my bedroom.
I got really clever at rewinding the tape to the best place I could, then popping out the cassette and using a pencil to rewind it just the right extra amount so the tracks blended. Most of the recording was done by 5-din plug connection, but sometimes when I wanted to talk over a track I had to use the little in-built mike on the tape recorder. I can remember taking a lot of pride in talking just the right amount so I didn't crash the vocals. As I recall Deep Purple's Speed King gave me a lot of problems talking over the rather quiet intro, which then explodes into heavy rock life. It took about seven goes to get it right.
Oh the joys of those hours. I should have been revising I expect. But as I KNEW this was my career: a DJ focusing on album tracks of popular recording artistes of the 1970's, revising seemed immaterial. After all, no DJ needed exams, did they? Sadly, this one did.
The fundamental flaw in my career as the ultimate rock album DJ was never sending a tape in to a radio station, or applying for a job in radio or indeed expressing any interest in the field at all, outside my bedroom.
By heck there were some great radio shows made then though. And that John Peel wasn't bad either.
Stand easy.
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