London Calling

I never talk about this. Mostly because I’m off social media. I have good reasons for that. It’s a way to think you’re working when you’re actually not. It’s no longer a great way to get jobs. It makes you overrate the importance of ephemeral topics, which makes it harder to talk to people in real life. Try explaining any Twitter joke to a real person and watch the light in their eyes die. But even there, this is something I still wouldn’t talk about.

I grew up on radio. My grandparents always had it on. I learned about transmitters and border blasters and how the business actually worked. I could probably make one if I had to. My uncle is a talk radio host and he’s been doing it for something close to 30 years. I also grew up in a car and always looked forward to listening to local shows. It’s how I developed relationships with whatever town I was rolling through, and it gave me a sense of where I was.

Had one by my bed and listened to it every morning and every night. Hearing news breaks was how I woke up. Hearing Art Bell was how I fell asleep. I saw Dr. Demento in a diner and was hopelessly starstruck. I saw Rodney Bingenheimer in a different diner and was hopelessly starstruck. I saw Sean Hannity in front of me in line at a sandwich place and wanted him to leave. It’s in my blood.

Radio was my dream job, to be frank. Just sitting in a little room in a little town, running my mouth, doing ad reads, talking about local fundraisers and making little private jokes to myself. Creating fanciful thought-pictures of where I was or what I was talking about even though I imagined my view, if the room was anywhere near windows, would be of some blinking lights and a cup of coffee and maybe a parking lot. The idea of radio was like a blank canvas. I could say I was on the moon. It didn’t matter.

I called into shows all the time and even have recordings of some; I’d hold a tape recorder next to a radio in another room. I still have fond memories of calling into a Sacramento morning show and talking to “Grandpa” Al Lewis, of The Munsters, who was low-key advertising some real estate scam and for some reason lying about his age. He claimed to be in his 90s. Called into a show in Los Angeles to talk up Arrested Development when it became clear it was in danger of cancellation.

That feeling in my stomach is something I’ve chased ever since. Talking to the screener, then hearing the broadcast, waiting for my name, waiting to go live. I didn’t want to get famous or anything, I just wanted to be part of radio, make the radio acknowledge me. I got drunk off that feeling. Words would come out of my mouth before I had time to think of them, and it was like improvising a song on a stage. Once the song started it could only stop when the call was over. Something about it was voodoo. It’s why I did a podcast, which isn’t the same but it’s all there is, for all those years, and why I still have the recording equipment to do it again if I can find balance in my life (hi, Big Jim, email me sometime). 

It’s funny how often radio keeps coming back to my life. My uncle still has his show. I always listened because I knew my grandparents were listening too, and it helped me feel literally tuned in to family news. Sometimes I’d go on it and we’d talk about it later. It felt very grown up, that I was trusted to say things out loud and adults had to listen. I still listen today because as everybody gets older and family spreads to the winds, it’s kind of an anchor. A grounding ritual. It’s like going home.

Radio’s mostly dead now. My dreams of being in radio are shipwrecked way back in 1997 and my Lewinsky and Dole material is useless anyway. But radio always finds a way to keep coming back into my life. The latest instance is baffling.

For reasons totally mysterious, at some point I got put on a list of American music writers available for commentary on British news radio. Not talk shows, but the actual news. I never really tell people because radio is such a personal thing for me and I enjoy having this imaginary secret life.

I don’t get paid or anything, and I don’t get exposure. It never comes back to me. But every few months some British lady will call me and say “would it be a bother for you to deliver some comments on this music story?” and then she’ll say “it would be at half past four American western time, half past twenty three forty her majesty the Queen Mum’s time” or whatever it is they say. Then I’ll say I need to gather my thoughts before committing. But that’s always bullshit. I just spend five minutes thinking of material. Then I call back and say yes. I always say yes.

It’s a really interesting exercise. I always take the prompt seriously and try to fill their air time as best I can. I know they’re just killing minutes before an ad break or whatever, but I don’t prank them. I’ve talked about Fleetwood Mac, Coachella, the Grammys, the murder of Tupac, whatever they need. It’s usually pretty good. I took an alarming amount of pride at making a serious newscaster with an affected (I can still tell, we have British people here too) posh accent actually, earnestly break up laughing when I described Jerry Lee Lewis’ criminal past on the occasion of his death.

Today, I was on the edge of falling asleep. Just filling out job applications on a cold gray day. Got the call. Twenty minutes later I was live on air in England. I stand by everything I said, even though it already doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t enjoy doing these calls if I was just doing schtick. I take broadcasting seriously because it’s a trade I respect. It’s been ruined for decades but I respect it.

We live in a time of total connectivity. I have friends in Australia and New Zealand I talk to pretty regularly. Canada. Ireland. That’s not special. But there’s something uniquely powerful about knowing that in the afternoon in a Los Angeles apartment, I can start talking into my phone and with the absent turn of a dial, some security guard in Bristol or a cab driver in London might actually hear my voice. A transmission from some place he’ll never go. And it’s statistically unlikely I’ll ever set foot in England, but somehow every few months my voice winds up in buildings and cars out there. A human voice, traveling 5,000 miles to a specific place, making real sound waves. I dunno what that feeling is. I guess there’s poetry to it.