By Matt Appleby
Matt Appleby - WNCO around 1982 It s National DJ day! It s an annual celebration that, somehow, Hallmark and American Greetings has yet to latch on to. It could be because there are so few of us left. Plenty of radio announcers and on-air personalities we just aren t really called Disc Jockeys any more. Truth of the matter is we don t handle discs , haven t for years. Every thing is digital and played back through the computer. I m sure there are a handful of stations and event DJ s out there that work with vinyl, LP s, 45 s, platters, or stacks of wax. But that studio shown above is from nearly 40 years ago when we played albums and singles on turntables. Hey kids look over my left shoulder, that s a telephone with a rotary dial and multiple push buttons to switch lines. We would regularly talk to listeners and take requests. Those headphones aren t wireless, there s a cord to connect them to the control board. Earbuds had not even been dreamed of.
Michael Rock Honors His Favorite DJ on National DJ Day
To be honest, I ve never heard of National Disc Jockey Day until a year or two ago. I m not really convinced that it s an occupation that s worthy of a national day, but after seeing a number of my colleagues participate, I felt like I might as well jump in.
However, I d like to recognize a DJ that deserves to be honored.
My radio career began with a high school internship at a radio station in Boston. The way a priest is called to the priesthood, I heard my calling from an early age. I d say I was roughly 10 years old when I would listen to radio DJs, record their shows, and play them back, studying their delivery and the way they presented stories and entertainment. I was absolutely obsessed with the fact that someone could speak into a microphone in a studio in Boston and have their voice be heard by me in my second-floor bedroom in Tewksbury.
He might be a “bear of very little brain,” but Winnie the Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Woods have delighted children and adults alike for nearly a