W-E-R-E

“Welcome, all. Jack Knox here, the Knight of the Night on Dubya-Ee-Are-Ee. Maine’s best FM radio for those who like the music of the night. We’re kicking off at one minute past the witching hour with Mick and Keef’s ‘Midnight Rambler’. Lock your doors and play air harmonica, like I’ll be doin’ here in W-E-R-E’s studios for the next eight minutes”.

Jack Knox, born Herbert Kumpel, switches off the mic and lights a doobie, before holding it aloft, roach end away, offering it up to the producer/engineer/station owner on the other side of the glass. Deana shakes her head. Deana hasn’t taken anything stronger than Aspro since they left college, where Deana was still Dean. Jack takes another draw and puts the joint down on the edge of the console, alongside all the burn marks made in the last twenty-five years. He cues up the next record, best to do that when you’ve got a long track on the air, sometimes it even prevents some of those burn marks. It’s Tom Waits’ ‘Big Joe and the Phantom 309’, you can play what you like on any radio station’s graveyard shift, after all… And Jack does.

It all started here, in Maine. Some old money became Deana’s money after her dad died. Deana told Jack he’d died before changing the will. He’d been going to though. ‘72: Vietnam, Jane Fonda on the gun, Fischer beats Spassky and it’s as though the Cold War is fought on a chessboard. Dean spent his inheritance on becoming Deana in Copenhagen and opening a radio-station in her home town. Jack’s first job in radio. ‘That frat boy nonsense gotta be worth something, right?’ Deana had said over the phone. Jack left his job as a very junior copywriter at an advertising agency with six toothpaste accounts and no cigarette company on their books.

Jack’s headset is on the console, Keef’s guitar sounds tinny, even though it’s the live version on that live album from ‘69 with the crappy cover. Deana’s headphones are on. She points a finger at the studio clock and then rotates the same finger. There’s plenty of time, he’s a pro, after all. 25 years experience in radio. AFN came calling in ‘75, Deana said go, natch, the job was Berlin, not Saigon. Said he’d always have a job at W-E-R-E. Jack did three years before the uniforms got to him, even on the night shift.

But he got a syndicated show. Drive time, a station out of Dallas, the producer insisted on the show’s name, ‘...And the Big Beat’ though the playlist didn’t include any Doors music at all. Then he got a call from LA. Two years there, then New York: CBGB’s best days were over, their worst bands already mainstream, the station’s owners believed Blondie and David Byrne’s band were cutting edge. Jack kept playing records that were out of time. From Tommy James and the Standells to the New York Dolls. The shows kept getting later and later. Drive time was a long way in the rear view mirror by the time MTV had kicked radio’s ass.

Jack fades The ‘Stones just before the last Jagger squawk, then drops the needle on Tom, who starts singing about a train and a ghost, or a ghost train, you can never tell with the Bar-room Bard. That’s what Jack likes about his music, anyway. He finishes the joint, mimes eating through the window at Deana. She holds up a hot-dog, Jack makes a face. Deana shrugs, which means ‘take it or leave it’.

Jack cues up an eight-track cartridge in the console, it’s a recording from one of his first shows at W-E-R-E. He waits for Tom to finish clearing his throat, as some Rolling Stone hack described his singing. He presses play on the cartridge player. The old jingle plays, his younger self introduces Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the Crypt Kickers’ ‘Monster Mash’. Then he commits the cardinal sin. The one that’s worse than all those ever committed in rooms with ‘on air’ lit up outside with whatever Radio Jock groupies are called. He opens the door and Deana passes the cold hot dog in and shakes her head.

He breaks off eating half-way through the dog, gulps down a bolus the size of a plum and segues from monsters doing the mash potato straight into some quite new music from some Australian guy called Cave. It’s an old song though, ‘Stagger Lee’. It’s one of Jack’s own records. Had to get the vinyl from a mail-order company.

Jack had phoned Deana. Straight into it. Said he needed a job. Playing vinyl records.

‘That’s all we’ve got, Jack. I can’t afford to buy 200,000 compact discs never mind some equipment to play them on.’

‘Think it’ll ever come back, Deana?’

‘Everything comes back, if you wait long enough.’

And everyone, Jack thinks.