FM Read Online Free Page B

once meant charming but is now a code word for “hopelessly outdated.”
    In the early seventies, though, I couldn’t think of a more exhilarating profession. Imagine having a job that paid you handsomely for toiling but four hours a day. You got to meet every rock star in creation, usually while dining for free at sumptuous restaurants. You had primo tickets to every major concert or sporting event, paid for by others. Celebrities in all walks of life were
your
fans: Politicians curried your favor and athletes were thrilled to be in your presence. You got to work side by side with radio veterans that you grew up idolizing. Every new music release was shipped to your home address, free of charge. And if your conscience allowed, you could have a personal cadre of record promotion men slavishly devoted to your every whim.
    In your daily four hours,
you
were the show. The music was entirely of your own selection. You never had to play anything you didn’t love. If your mood was quiet and contemplative, you could play long sets of Joni Mitchell or Gordon Lightfoot. If you were ready to party, the entire Rolling Stones collection was at your fingertips. If you didn’t like the limits of the world’s largest music library, you were free to bring in tunes from your personal cache. Or if you had something to get off your chest, you could vent for as long as you liked. An amusing story? Fire away. Take phone calls. Play Monty Python routines. It truly was a license to thrill.
    And the ratings didn’t matter because we barely knew what they were. When the quarterly Arbitron reports were issued, we occasionally got a memo suggesting we play more familiar music. The word “familiar” was never defined, leaving it to our wide-ranging and subjective opinions—from playing the Beatles once an hour to merely avoiding the fifth-best track on the Lothar and the Hand People album. Management philosophy seemed to be simple: Hire good people and leave them alone. We had two- or three-year contracts, at yearly increases of 20 percent. Life was good.
    And then there were the other fringe benefits. Whereas it would be presumptuous to suggest that any individual had the power to make or break an artist’s career, one disc jockey could champion a favored performer and dramatically increase his or her record sales. There were almost a dozen major record labels plus a host of minor ones, each represented by two or three promotion men with credit cards. Competition for a DJ’s ear could be fierce. Legally, the inducements were simple: a lavish dinner or lunch, a show, a few drinks. Company policy set a limit on the value of personal gifts, but each Christmas, there was fine wine in wooden crates, buttery leather jackets, luggage . . . whatever was hip that year. That was usually enough to get a record at least
some
attention.
    Illegal inducements were readily available—drugs, prostitutes, you name it. As music director, I had the power to add a record to the studio library, which would hugely increase its airplay. I suggested individual tracks for the jocks, and if my judgment was sound, I could help push singles up the charts. My first day in the library at WNEW-FM saw a steady stream of visitors from the labels setting up lunch dates. One younger guy hung in the background until the others had left, and then surreptitiously closed the heavy steel door to the music library. From under his trench coat, he extracted a bulky package wrapped in brown craft paper and clumsily tied with cotton twine. As he unveiled his prize, I recoiled physically at the sight of a lump of marijuana large enough to intoxicate several counties. Was this guy a cop, setting me up? As I chased him away, he sheepishly apologized for not knowing that I didn’t use the stuff and maybe I should keep it anyway, for friends, or perhaps to sell.
    I was appalled. Was this the way it worked? You get to your dream job and you find it’s as corrupt as the business world we