The Last D.J.

It’s truly the end of an era for me as the land man standing was forced to sit down. Brad Company-aka Brad Dennison-aka Blake Davis-aka Solitary Seven-was unceremoniously released from his job at the local classic rot radio station, presumably before he was scheduled to converse with Heaven & Hell about their new album. I don’t know what would be worse: losing your job or not being able to talk to Ronnie James Dio.
I met Brad at a different station, one for which I wasn’t employed at. I was supposed to meet the Program Director at the station on a Sunday afternoon and Brad was the first one to open the door. He looked at me with suspicious eyes-the kind that led me to believe he was applying for the same gig. Later on after I got the gig, we realized a mutual love of rock music, even though his collection had a few more Keel cassettes than mine. It would be so easy to rail on about his taste in music-particularly around this time period-but his expertise grew and we’ve both grown to appreciate that to get to the good shit, sometimes you have to go through a few Warrant albums. Nobody reading this can claim to have perfect taste in music and there’s nobody cooler than a music fan who can stand up for what they like, regardless of what others think about it.
Unless that band is Saliva.
Brad was always up for a practical joke while on the air. One of the funniest things-and this is something that will make no sense to anyone who’s had no radio experience-was the time in which I dared him to start his airshift off with Fleetwood Mac’s “Over My Head.” To most of you, this doesn’t sound like anything. “Over My Head” is a perfectly fine song I suppose and there’s nothing about it that’s even remotely offensive. But in radio, dead air is one of the worst things possible and, given that fact, “Over My Head” may be one of the worst songs ever that a radio station can play. The reason is because “Over My Head” starts with an incredibly long fade in, so unless you start the song while another one is still playing, it sounds like someone has screwed up and isn’t manning the controls because of the few LONG seconds of dead air this song provides.
My girlfriend and I were getting ready to go out of town, and for some reason I thought it would be funny to have Brad start his hour with “Over My Head.” The hour started with the news, some commercials, the weather, and then a bright, upbeat station sweeper that identified the call letters. Brad agreed to do the joke and we were in the car anxiously listening for the dead air. Right after the call letters were announced by some namely choir of singers came….nothing. At least twenty seconds of silence while “Over My Head” began to be audibly heard over the airwaves. There is only three people laughing about this right now, because it’s such an inside joke that nobody else would consider it to be funny. My girlfriend and I laughed about it in the car, but what made it funnier was coming home to a blinking answering machine message. When we played it, we heard Brad. “Are you listening now? It’s ‘Over My Head.’ I started the hour with ‘Over My Head.’"
Even if that story isn’t funny to you, you should appreciate the fact that the motivation behind it was a sense of pride about every hour of your airshift. You wanted everything to sound tight, to give listeners no reason at all to change the station. Every aspect of your shift, even the music rotation, needed to sound perfect. We would continually make sure that “train wrecks” didn’t occur-those moments when songs that didn’t sound right together weren’t played next to each other. The playlist may have told you to play Michael Bolton next to AC/DC-and if you were stupid, you’d play them together just like your music log told you-but anyone with half a brain and a sense of pride would make sure that something else was moved next to AC/DC to prevent the dreaded “train wreck.” Or you could be like me and Brad and not play Michael Bolton at all, regardless of what the music log said.
There’s none of that anymore, and with people like Brad out of the business there will be one less person who took an active role in making sure their airshift sounded good. He will be replaced with someone who doesn’t consider this, or even care about what they’re playing, saying, or who their audience even is.
I’m sure that a lot of Brad’s enthusiasm over the finer things concerning his airshift diminished over the years as his station became more homogenized and less local, but I’m even more sure that he still cared about maintaining every listener that he had. I’m fairly confident that he’ll be replaced with someone cheaper and with no concern whatsoever about who is listening.
In other words, he’ll be replaced with someone who lets the dead air right before “Over My Head” play on without getting the joke.

Photo of Brad Company courtesy of My Motherfucking MySpace.