I took a trip up to my alma mater, Susquehanna University, last weekend, and it of course brought back a lot of memories. These days, I tend to think back about the old days at 88.9 WQSU (anybody notice the column number?), when radio was just about having fun and not quite the all-consuming J-O-B it is today. Ah yes, college radio, where your capacity for creativity is only limited by your ability to get away with it. Especially as a freshman, which me and a couple friends were in the spring of 1997 when these friends of mine decided to turn their privileged nighttime air shift into a two times a week exercise in spontaneous entertainment.
It was Jason Croley and Chris Lesperance (a.k.a "Psycho") who had the shift; actually, Jason had Tuesday 10pm-Midnight and Chris had Thursday at the same time, they just joined forces in order to have two shows a week. By the way, no, I don't know how Chris got the nickname "Psycho", but considering he was quite the mild-mannered Canadian, it did kinda make you wonder. I had the show before theirs on Thursday nights, 8-10pm, so I guess I warmed up the audience for them, then I stuck around and hung out with them. Eventually I also got the shift before them on Tuesdays, but before that I would drop by anyway.
They called themselves the "Susquehanna Shock Jocks"; mind you, these were the days when Howard Stern was on the way up and suddenly a whole generation of radio newbies suddenly wanted to be like him (waste of a generation there). The focus of the show was Jason and Chris, and in order to make it that way, they intentionally broke format in the worst possible way: they played mostly the worst of 80s hair metal. Dokken, Dio, Jackyl, you name it, they went there. The purpose, of course, was to make sure that you were listening for them, cuz you certainly weren't listening for the music. There was one particular girl who did, but she enters the story a little later on.
Now, any good "shock jock" surrounds himself with a cast of characters, and Jason and Chris did so as well. Stern has "Stuttering John"; the Susquehanna Shock Jocks had Steve, nicknamed "Steve the Swimming Guy" because he was on the swim team. Now would be the point in the story where I should mention that these guys all lived in a section of campus then referred to as "the mods". They were temporary housing, very cheaply made, paper-thin walls and so on. They didn't have an RA, technically one of the RA's down the hill in West Hall was supposed to check on them, but usually he/she didn't want to have to make the walk, so they were left on their own. Therefore, as you can probably imagine, all manner of boozing and stoning took place there. Steve was no exception to this. He usually showed up stoned to do the show, so naturally, Jason and Chris made it his job to read the commercials. One night, after doing his thing, the guys put on some music and I left Steve in the news booth and went into the main studio. 3 or 4 songs later, it was time to do another break, and we looked in the news booth to see that Steve had drifted off to sleep. Suffice to say, he was pretty much the main butt of a lot of the jokes on the show, many of which I cannot print here, because heck, my mom reads this.
"Stuttering Steve the Stoned Swimming Guy" aside, most of the show was about what we could and could not get away with on the air. The guys had their own "Shock Jock" liners, and besides the blue humor, we pretty much just came up with an idea and did it without thinking. Oh to be 18 or 19 again and be able to do everything without a consicence. We devoted one segment to going into the old vinyl record library at the station and playing The Doors and Ozzy backwards to try to find Satanic messages. One night, Jason wondered aloud on the air if he was related to Alistair Crowley, one of the founders of modern Satanism. When the phone started ringing off the hook, we thought, "Oh, no, we've pissed off some bible thumpers in the audience." Instead, it was our listeners actually CORRECTING us on some of the things Jason said. Then again, considering that a sizable portion of the audience (and the callers) was in prison, perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised about this.
We did get caught once. The guys used to hide their carts (radio term: 8-track like cartridges that had our music on them) in the newsroom, figuring nobody would look. Well, one day a curious news person saw them and Dr. Burns, our advisor, found out, and that was all she wrote. For about two weeks. Then, we figured the coast was clear again, and we were right. Management didn't listen to the station, faculty or student; hell, the student management was probably getting drunk while we were on.
"Psycho" had his own segment on the show called "Psycho's Corner", which was usually a mix of ska and offbeat stuff like They Might Be Giants. He asked the station for his own ska, punk, and hardcore show, and after enough begging, he was rewarded... with the midnight-3am shift on Monday mornings.
The last night they did the show, they went out in style. It was the last week of classes, and they decided to invite their most devoted fan to the station for a very Stern-like stunt. This young woman liked to request "Dirty Little Mind" by Jackyl (see, I told you I'd get her in this story eventually), mostly because of the female moaning sounds during the instrumental break (probably the reason the guys played it in the first place). Anyway, she came down to the station and told the audience they were going to have her take her clothes off on the air. Now, whether or not this actually happened, I cannot tell you (dumbass that I am, I decided that Free Games Night at the Encore Cafe was more important than making college radio history). The version I was told (accept it as truth if you'd like) is that they pre-recorded the segment in the production room (which didn't have windows like the air studio did), so she actually did get naked, but only Jason and Chris bore witness. Then again, maybe she didn't, or maybe they did do it live in the studio, I wasn't there, make up your own urban legends.
Well, all good things must come to an end, and I was on my way back to Syracuse for a year of community college, and by the time I got back to Susquehanna, the "Shock Jocks" were gone. Jason moved to Florida, Chris either flunked out or got arrested, I'm not sure. I did run into Jason the weekend of graduation; he was back to see an old girlfriend in my class. Wherever they are now, I hope they are doing all right, and they're cool with me revealing all this inside behind-the-scenes info for the online viewing public. Besides, since it's been five years, I'm sure the statute of limitations is up on most of the stuff we pulled anyway, right?