RADIO DAZE

This is an essay I read to the audience at the 2004 Boston Beanstalks Miss Tall Boston Pageant.  I was a contestant, but I didn't win.  Oh, well!



Radio Daze
By
Yvonne E. Christian

One night in February 1994 my friends and I went to a seminar about wanting to break into broadcasting.  

The first speaker, Charles Laquidara of WBCN-FM, talked about how he got into radio, and that speech got me interested in pursuing radio again.  I had been a disc jockey back in the mid-1980s at Emerson College’s two radio stations: WECB-AM and WERS-FM.  After graduation in 1986, I worked briefly at a very tiny radio station that went financially bankrupt soon afterwards.

In the following years, I couldn’t get another radio job.  In the meantime, I started hanging out with Joe and Andy at WROR for a few years.  They were a lot of fun, but my days of hanging out with them ended in the early 1990s because their radio station changed music formats, and their call letters became WBMX.

With the help of my fellow Emerson alumni Shred who works at WBCN, I had the opportunity to go to WBCN one morning and fill out an application for Listener Line Volunteer. I was very familiar with WBCN, the Rock of Boston, because I had listened to that station many times while I was an Emerson student back in the 1980s.  I remember listening to Ken Shelton, Mark Parenteau, Carter Alan, Carla Razwyck, Albert O and, last but not least, Charles Laquidara.

Weeks later I became a volunteer on the weekends helping out Melissa, a weekend disc jockey and one of Charles Laquidara’s Big Mattress producers.  So here I was an ex-DJ helping out another DJ with song requests and contest giveaways.  Our callers were mainly teenagers.  The boys were asking me out for a date while Melissa talked to the girls.

One day, Melissa invited a 13-year old girl named Christine to the station.  When I opened the front door to let Christine and her family in, I was surprised to see how tall she was.  She was taller than her own mother and almost as tall as me.

After I introduced myself, Christine asked me about how tall Melissa was and I said, “They call her ‘Little Melissa’ around here.  Don’t accidentally trip over her.”

By the way, the only disc jockey taller than me was Mark Parenteau.

I was with WBCN from October 1994 to April 2000.  Nearly six years.  I had a lot of fun with Melissa, Charles and the others.  I left because I was tired of answering phone calls and not having much to do there.  I finally realized that the radio business was the wrong career path and now I am a writer.

What do I write about?  Well I have six years of being with WBCN to write about.  Just check out my website that’s listed in your programs (http://www.yvonnechristian.unimstores.com).  Soon I’ll be writing my tell all book, “Laquidara Dearest.”