|
 |
|
|
|
|
"Let's just say he's on the border between something and nothing." -- Bono, on Edge's nickname |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Let's just say he's on the border between something and nothing." -- Bono, on Edge's nickname |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
My Fan Year - #37
@U2,
October 08, 2005
December 5, 2000. U2 in New York at Irving Plaza to perform a club gig in front of one thousand people. Free tickets distributed by a radio station contest -- so coveted some soon appear on eBay with four-figure asking prices. But I don't live in New York and I have no way of getting up there. Being a Midwesterner means being full of envy in the buildup to that show. I keep reading posts on Wire from frantic New York fans hoping against hope to hit an open phone line to the radio station. The chances are so, so slim of any one person getting through, and the DJs seem to be toying with the desperate. At least you've got a chance, I think, and chalk this one up as one of those magical U2 history moments I'll have no part of. Then, the day of the concert, everything changes. I should explain that this was all happening in the days I was host of a radio show on our local community radio station, KDHX. And now I should explain community radio, because so few stations of that type exist any longer. I think I've ranted in this space before about commercial radio, or, as I like to call it, The Place Where Good Music Goes to Die and Mediocre and/or Ear-Meltingly Annoying Music Lives Forever and Ever. (I talked to a programmer for a hit radio station once who told me, without the slightest trace of remorse, how he killed songs. The trick was to find a track that could be hot, play it before anyone else, and then play it way too many times a day. That way, by the time a competing station picked up on it, the listeners would already be sick of it. He didn't seem to realize what he did for a living was reprehensible.) Community radio is nothing like its commercial cousin. On a station like KDHX, the DJs are all volunteers, and the DJs choose all the songs -- what a bizarre idea, eh? The listener gets to hear tracks they'd never hear anywhere else; music junkies like me get to share the songs they're most passionate about with everyone within range of the frequency. I hosted a show every Tuesday called The Eclectic Mix. I did my best to live up to the name. One week I remember vividly because it was the week someone was critiquing the different shows. That was the week I played weird orchestral pieces and such fare as a string quartet rendition of "Enter Sandman" and bits of a spoken-word opera based on Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. (Why? Because I could.) My show was dismissed in the critique with three words: "Too many violins." For weeks afterward I took to signing myself Angela "Too Many Violins" Pancella. But I digress. My point is that it was an oddball show. I tried stunts like The Sinatra and Punk Rock Hour where I played one Sinatra number, then one by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, then another by Sinatra. Can't imagine why that didn't work...! In general, I was trying to make the show as varied and variable as I could, so no one could predict what songs I'd be playing or what format I'd be following week from week. I didn't play U2 very often. I figured they were popular enough; they didn't need my help. When I did play them, I played cuts I never heard any place else -- anything from the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack; anything from Passengers. Tony, the station's music director, figured out I was, you know, something of a fan. So now we can go back to the story, because it's Tony who, the morning of the Irving Plaza show -- my dream U2 concert, a concert that just happens to be taking place on a Tuesday -- tells me I can play it on The Eclectic Mix that night. It seems the concert is available on satellite to radio stations across the country. The band are supposed to hit the stage at nine St. Louis time and perform for an hour; that's during the time slot of the jam band show which airs right before mine. The Eclectic Mix is on from 10 until midnight -- we can tape the satellite broadcast and air it after the live applause has all died down. Except, of course, the band doesn't hit the stage at nine. There's a taped interview first. I sit in the auxiliary studio and wait. I'm all tense. I'm worried the satellite feed will cut out, I'm worried something will happen to the DAT (digital audio tape) we're recording this onto. And then...roar of the crowd. "Let's have a warm welcome for...the amazing! The one! The only!! U!!! 2!!!!" And I'm right there. I'm in a dark studio with the blue digital readouts and the glow of the board's square buttons the only light, and I'm also in this thousand-max-capacity club. I've got my ear pressed up against a St. Louis wall and on its other side is New York City, and U2 are playing tonight. I leave the studio and my boys reluctantly, but I have to go on air. I have to start my show while U2 are in the middle of theirs. I tell my listeners the concert is coming. Another DJ who's been hanging around keeps ducking into the recording studio to find out for me whether it's over yet. U2 are, not too surprisingly, going past their allotted time. What's this -- "All I Want Is You"? And then "Bad"?! The other DJ is getting giddy with the historic import of it all. He needs my help identifying "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" ("sounds like something from real early in their career!"). Surely this is the end, right? After pulling that out of their collective hat, U2 couldn't have any surprises left. Moments later my DJ friend comes back to the air studio shaking his head and laughing. "Would you believe -- 'Won't Get Fooled Again'?" I put on the Strung Out on U2 string quartet version of "Where the Streets Have No Name" as intro music while the precious DAT is borne into the air studio. I fast forward past the interview -- the concert alone will make my show cut into the next time slot. And then I raise the faders like movie theater curtains and broadcast U2 as they sounded at Irving Plaza in New York City just an hour before. © @U2/Pancella, 2005.
|
|
|
||||||
|
||||||||
