Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a DJ. In the fifth grade I used to bring my 45s to class every Friday and play them during the last hour of class. I’d make a little poster of the week’s ‘Top 10’ hits that I’d hang on the blackboard. Then I would spin the countdown, in sequential order, on the school-issued box turntable. Our ‘Top 10’ had nothing to do with the billboard charts as my classmates and I would determine the week’s favorite tunes by what we were listening to instead of using actual sales figures. For about three months our number one was “Calling Dr. Love” by Kiss. 

It’s hard for me to believe but I’ve been an actual radio DJ for five years now. When I started my show, I was giddy with excitement. I was also a nervous wreck and afraid of messing up on another man’s dollar. I had done some college radio and spun tunes at clubs and parties, but this gig was different. People were paying for advertisements (which I had to secure by myself) and I had to do them and the music justice. When I listen back to those early shows all I can hear is the fear of failure in my voice.

Thankfully, I let the music do the majority of the talking.

I had no idea how blasphemous my presentation of music was to radio professionals. The mere idea of playing Nina Simone, Run DMC, Dale Watson and others locked off the nation’s commercial airwaves made the management at WVNZ (1320 AM) cringe. They would look at me in horror as I cued up “Angel of Death” by Slayer and suggest that I opt for songs that fit the station’s big band format. When I introduced the song as the perfect way to weed out people holding us all back in the collective conscious, the engineer assigned to keep me in line held his face in his hands like I had just let loose a stream of on-air obscenities. I just smiled and turned up the stereo as loud as it would go.

“You’ll never have a career in radio playing music like that,” he said, imploring me to turn it down. I was too busy playing air guitar to pay attention. When the phone lines lit up, he was sure they were going to be angry complaints. To his stunned amazement, the 20 or so calls I got that day were all positive. At one point he started answering the phones to see if I was lying about listener’s responses. After taking a couple of calls, he was befuddled. “That’s the most calls I’ve ever seen come in during a show here,” he later confessed, “You may be on to something.”

When the station switched its format to Latin programming, I moved to WCLM 1450 AM where I currently reside. Station owner Preston Brown has never said a word about my musical presentation. It’s the only station on the commercial radio dial in Richmond that gives its DJs autonomous reign. The deal is simple: as long as the money comes in, you can do whatever you want. This is a revolutionary concept in an era of dwindling play lists and media consolidation. Personality driven music programs of yesteryear are a thing of the past. I appreciate every second I am on the station as I am keenly aware that a show such as mine would fail to exist if Mr. Brown didn’t embrace programming diversity on his station.

I’ll probably forever be relegated to the fringes of the radio dial. Though I would love to do my thing on a larger bandwidth, my show or anything remotely like it will never be on a powerful commercial signal. I’m fine with that. I have no interest in being the voice over guy introducing “Hotel California.” What still motivates me after five years is using a format without fences to turn people on to music they might not hear otherwise. To this day, when I get a recording that moves me, I can’t wait to get on the radio and share it. My show is based solely on the love of music. And as long as I can financially justify its existence, I will gladly fill the airwaves with music till my dying day.

LISTEN HERE:
http://www.wclmradio.com/pages/bopst.html