We’ll meet again
Don’t know where
Don’t know when…
I hope you’ll join me this Sunday morning on WPRB for my final show of the spring season. It’s Memorial Day weekend, of course, so there are several ways I could go with this. Last year I played music by and about musician casualties of war. Another possibility would be to share music about memory and contemplation. I could also focus on the great outdoors, since Monday marks the unofficial beginning of the summer season. Or I could go for the low-hanging fruit and simply kick back and cruise with an all-American program. Any way you look at it, you know there will be plenty of music that will be worth your while.
After a lot of hand-wringing, I am still conflicted about not submitting an application for the summer. I love doing the show at WPRB. I find the freedom to do my own thing to be highly rewarding, and I know many listeners respond to the creative themes and unusual discoveries. I have also had the satisfaction of interviewing dozens of visiting musicians and representatives of the local arts community. But I find in doing the early morning shift I frequently do not get a decent night’s sleep. This has had a ripple effect in my life. When I did the show on Thursdays, I’d break for lunch and then head over to my day job, where the law of diminishing returns meant that I often couldn’t finish my production work until after dark. On Sundays, I drift around in a fog and often wake up the next day with a headache. I am drinking more and more coffee in an attempt to overcome the perpetual fatigue.
The recent change from five-hour classical music shifts to three has reduced my ability to secure interview subjects – as, probably, has my voluntary move from Thursdays to Sundays – and quite frankly I can’t explore the themes in a three-hour format to the depth I once could in five. A lot of the fun for me was in the challenge of coming up with five hours worth of circus music, or music inspired by Joan of Arc or the Olympics or arctic exploration, or exhaustive tributes to Einojuhani Rautavaara, Charles Koechlin, and Richard Arnell. It turns out I am a marathon runner, not a sprinter. Who knew?
Without the interviews and without the long-form format, and without a good night’s sleep, the only things keeping me going are my unspoken pact with the audience and the friendships and relationships I have formed at and through the station. These I do not mean to undersell. Everything I have done at WPRB has been done for love and for personal satisfaction. It is a volunteer position, remember. I am simply getting too old and have been too busy to keep putting myself through the grind if it doesn’t bring the satisfaction a five-hour Thursday shift once did.
Also, I suspect the listenership is a little more sluggish early on Sundays, something I had not anticipated when experimenting with a move to the weekend. The phone and internet activity doesn’t build until I am practically off the air. I guess when people have to work, they have to be up and they are listening.
At any rate, I thank WPRB for the opportunities I have enjoyed over the past three years. Who knows, I may apply again in the fall, if they’ll have me. Or in a pinch I could step up as a substitute. I hope you will continue to support Marvin, Bob, Toby, and the rest, as they continue to provide the kind of fascinating and off-beat programming made possible only at a place like WPRB. It’s radio the way it used to be, before it was spoiled by The Man.
Start stockpiling your rotten tomatoes. I sing my last, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I’ll listen for your dispassionate “slow clap” as I take my final bow, on Classic Ross Amico.
