Here is a true story: my elementary school had a student-operated radio station. No, seriously. Right here in West Podunk, Maine, in the early 1980s, all three of the K-5 schools the town had at that time had their own tiny AM transmitters and small broadcast studios. We didn't have call letters or anything, and the audible range on the transmitters was maybe 100 yards; I don't know if there was a special FCC licensing arrangement there, or if the transmitters were just too puny for the government to care about.

In the fourth grade, I had an afternoon show on the station at Katahdin Avenue School (where I went for grades 2 through 5). I played what would now probably be labeled a mix of Oldies and Classic Rock (although in 1982, Classic Rock only reached about as far as Boston's first album), with the occasional foray into AOR and juuust a hint of smooth jazz to keep everybody guessing. It was a pretty popular show, and operating the tiny station was good times - you had to be your own engineer, as there was only room for one person to work in there, and the equipment was old, probably donated, and quirky in a way that made learning how to work it effectively provide a satisfactory sensation of competence.

Until, one day, I closed the show with the B-side of the original 7-inch single of "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" by Napoleon XIV.

If you didn't know, the B-side of "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" is a track called "!AAAH-AH ،YAWA ƎM ƎʞAT OT ʚИIMOƆ ƎЯ'YƎHT", which is... well, exactly what you're thinking, I should expect.

That was my last show; first I was banned from the station on the assumption that I had somehow tampered with the turntable to play the record backward, and then, once I'd shown Principal Sanders the evidence that I hadn't, the grounds were changed to just favoring content that was obnoxious and unsuitable for elementary-school broadcasting. :)

>Russia ain't going to invade itself, Josephine....

Strangely enough, for certain values of "Russia" it's looking increasingly like it kind of is.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.