Something happens when you've got a new song to love and you want everyone to hear it. It's a DJ's job to share your fanaticism with the world. Sometimes I'll have a song I just have to play, and I will bend every rule to just hear that song flooding over the speakers.

Last night's shift was one of those nights. I'm a DJ at KMUK radio 83.3, and I came bursting into the studio with the newest Merry Blue CD in my hand. I'd been playing it at home, and I couldn't wait to hear it over the studio speakers. Jerry and Carla were hanging out on the big wood tables in the open space between the broadcasting studio and the manager's office, working on their department. All DJs at the station were volunteers, and to keep our shows, we had to put in an extra five hours a week helping label the CD collection or promote upcoming shows. My show was a specialty show. I concentrated on local music.

Anyway, so I had this CD and I was waving it in the air to catch the attention of Jerry, who headed up the promotions department. He wore his hair in a rockabilly, greased-up swirl, but his clothes were always a plain shirt and jeans. "This is their best effort yet. You've got to put this on heavy rotation."

He looked at the CD in my hand and frowned. A look I was getting used to at the station.

"What?"

He sighed. "Check out your mailbox for the memo." Jerry shared a glance with Carla, a morning DJ, and I wondered what new annoyance our station director had come up with.

I dashed over to the row of metal mailboxes. Mine was easy to spot, as it was overfilling with demo CDs, flyers and envelopes hopefully containing free tickets to shows I wanted to see. On the top of all this, in a horrible bright pink paper, was the familiar KMUK logo. I pulled it out.

To all KMUK staffers:

Despite my warning last week, some DJs have continued to play music that is harsh and abrasive during our peak listening hours. I have repeatedly stressed that we cannot afford to alienate our listenership. In order to make this clearer, I've developed a list of songs that cannot be played between 6am and 12midnight.

Ronald Payne

I quickly scanned the list and crumpled the paper as soon as I saw it. He wanted to ban Merry Blue's excellent groundbreaking music. Plus four or five others I liked to play. As far as I was concerned, no alternative music was bad enough to ban. I'd hardly been here more than five minutes and the angry feeling in my stomach was flaring up again. I whirled around. "This is censorship. Doesn't he know that?"

Jerry raised his hands. "He is serious about the station growth thing, Mona."

"Well, yeah. But why does he want to take everything that makes us special away to do that?" I tossed the memo into the garbage pail by Ronald Payne's closed office door. "He's asking for a mutiny at the next meeting if he enforces this."

Jerry sighed and went on sorting through his press releases. Some people up here weren't as bothered by the programming changes to our sound as I was.

I shook my head as I pulled my little vintage suitcase into the DJ booth at the end of the room, checking first that Benny, my friend and DJ, wasn't on the air. He spun around on the stool at the end of the tiny room and pulled the headphones over his spiky, white dyed hair. He looked a little like a Philippine Billy Idol, if you can imagine that.

I flopped my CDs down on the counter below our recorded station IDs.
"Did you see it?"

He snorted. "The memo? I had to entirely re-do my show tonight because of it."

I popped open my case and revealed a row of shiny CDs in candy colors. These were the ones I planned to play tonight. Of course the station had a grand library of music, but I liked to play my own stuff. I wasn't in the mood to substitute any of them.

I dug the Merry Blue CD back out of my coat. "Well, I plan to play this."

Benny looked and then grinned. "So you did get it."

"Yeah, an exclusive pre-release. Matt dropped it by work today."

"Ooh. Nice of Matt." We both thought Matt, the drummer, was cute.

Benny turned around to cue up the next CD, a Moby track that had been getting heavy rotation. It was good and had the advantage of being neither harsh nor abrasive, Payne's watchwords for unacceptable music. The studio fell silent as Benny leaned into the mike, his warm full voice announcing his last set.

Then he introduced me. "We've got Mona, MC Spinster, as she's known, in the studio. How're you doing tonight? Got a hot show planned for this chilly Friday night?"

I spoke up, so the mike would pick up my voice. "You know it. Expect a new release tonight and some band gossip, plus my review of all the live shows from last week."

"Is that a promise?" Benny was challenging me, just like he did when we were competing to down a shot of whiskey the fastest.

"Absolutely."

"And I expect we'll be hearing a Dean Chase song tonight?"

I frowned at him. I'd been warned against playing the same artist three shows in a row, but Dean Chase was the best vocalist of the decade, and I was only helping the world be a better place by playing his music. "Maybe."

He turned back to the mike. "Well, we'll have to see. Up next, Moby. This is Ben on KMUK. See you all next week, kids."

The CD started whirring, and we were off the air.

He was very tidy and didn't have anything to put away except the final CD. Even his handwriting in the logbook was small and easy to read. Benny spent a lot of time here on Friday. He had the day off from barista work at Tully's, and usually spent the day planning, playing, and doing his volunteer time at the station.

I checked the heavy rotation bin, the first of Payne's many ideas for the station, where CDs deemed popular enough were put.

Pulling out a Carrie Akre single to open the show, I got settled in. Benny came in the door behind me, but I raised my finger so he would know I was going on the air. As the last chords of the song faded out, I pressed the mike button and raised the gray plastic lever up a few levels so my voice would be clear over the music. "Hey everybody, you're listening to KMUK radio 83.3 on the radio dial, and you just heard Moby off his Play album."

I paused to start up my theme music. A great heavy pre-grunge classic by local legends, the U-men. After the first few chords, I turned it down and spoke again. "It's time for the local show hosted by me, the Spinster. Tonight, I've got some brand spanking new music picked out for you. Look for it in a few selections later on, but first, some Carrie Akre on KMUK."

I moved the levels up on CD machine two and turned off my mike. The little black gauge spiked into the red a bit so I adjusted the sound before recording my first song into the logbook.

Benny was still leaning on the doorway. "So you're going to ignore it?"

"What?"

"The memo."

"Oh, that. Yeah. He's wrong, especially about Merry Blue. If I wait, everyone will be playing them or writing about them and it won't matter that I got it first."

Benny shrugged and bumped his shoulder against the shelving. Space was tight in here and warm from the equipment. I thought of it like a black painted womb, complete with shiny band stickers on every free surface. "Be careful. He's been getting really ticked off lately."

I was busy grabbing the next CD to cue up. I wasn't going to do the Merry Blue in the first hour. I'd slip it in later. It was still a little early for the evening audience to start listening. I thought of my show as the pre-function music round-up, and I liked to think that people were tuning in my show on the radio as they drove to a party or a club downtown.

The first hour was where I could get in the quirkier stuff, the stuff that was a bit mellower, and frankly, the stuff I felt I had to play to get some band off my neck. I had more then enough bands calling me, begging me to play their first demo. The first hour was a kind of testing ground for stuff that might turn into something more later. I never played anything that I thought was pure crapola though, no matter how much begging I heard.

Benny and I talked a bit more, and he took off. We made plans to hook up later at Chuck's Inn. Most nights you'd find at least one of our 50 volunteer DJs hanging out there, plus the usual hipster crowd. I made a few station breaks, read a few public announcements, and concentrated on getting all the paperwork done in advance, like writing down song titles and the like, so I could enjoy the show more in the last hours. It was a typical early Friday night.