I was there when the music died....

First, I must confess that, at one point at least, I knew all the words to Don McLean's American Pie, you know:

So bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singing 'This'll be the day that I die. This'll be the day that I die."

(Typed this from memory).

---------------------------------

"Hey, wow! Is this thing on?"

I stood in the engineer's booth at the radio station where my brother works. It was last week, toward the end of the week, and I took a break by stopping by to see him. His job is to...well, I guess I don't understand exactly what his job is, after all. It's one of those things where he's supposed to watch this massive twisted tangle of gnarled cables and readout screens, and if he sees smoke at any point, he's supposed to call someone who is responsible for bringing in a fire hose.

Probably a little more complex than that.

So I was listening to this talk show that was coming over his network, and his job at that moment was to be sure that the "spots" (revenue-generating advertisements) played on time--he was supposed to check off the empty boxes on a clipboard as they played. Clipboard in hand, he grinned at me and dramatically put his hand on one of the hundred or so dials on the ancient-looking board, right next to the computer monitor that looked like it hadn't been wiped down since the invention of the UNIVAC.. He started rattling off a lot of jargon about a second "backup" channel that was playing the exact same thing at exactly the same time, then flipped the switch and watched me for a reaction as....the same commercial kept playing.

"Yeah, we're really not supposed to do that..."

Good thing I didn't know what the hell he did, although I feigned being impressed. I was too busy watching the amplitude graph go up and down and thinking of the movie "Contact".

"Hey man, don't get in trouble while I'm here!"

"Are you kidding? Nothing ever happens..."

I remember him telling me about when he took a couple of days off and the new guy forgot to play all the spots for about 3 days--that was a catastrophic moment that all the veteran employees remembered--like one of those things that everyone can relate to: "Remember that week where that guy (what was his name, again?) forgot to play the spots?"

He grinned and flipped the switch back. The spots ended and a guy started droning some conservative rhetoric. My mind's eye saw a cheap grey suit with a striped fat tie and a sock drawer at home that was organized by color with everything matching and running in rows like cornfields. Narcolepsy struck immediately and I lost the urge to ever vote again.

Then my ears started ringing.

Nope, it was some crazy interference coming out of the board. My brother flashed into action, picking up the intercom and paging someone. He turned to me and said "I've never seen this happen before..."

Awkwardly, I said: "Hey dude, I'm outta here--I'll let you get this taken care of..."

"Okay!"

As I walked out, I saw someone running into the booth (I guess he forgot to bring the fire hose). I kept thinking to myself "I sure hope I didn't kick a plug or step on a cable or accidentally brush against a key or something" (I've been known to be slightly clumsy...)

I talked to my brother today and hesitatingly asked if they had figured out where the noise had been generated--he told me it had originated at the broadcast point, so it didn't have anything to do with him.

The funny part was that several conspiracy theorists called into the station thinking that the government was broadcasting interference over the program's airwaves to either mask the message that the program was trying to deliver or subliminally insert counter-programming into their subconscious.

That's what that whiskey and rye will do to you...