“Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.” --Kurt Vonnegut

No, it's not difficult to love music; even the worst among us can claim that distinction. So what we do with that love becomes what defines us. A frustrated musician like me will find ways all life long to stay close to that object of attraction. A career in broadcasting seemed a logical choice. I was fortunate to grow up in an age when radio was still something of a wild frontier.

Station owners were largely small business people not always averse to risk. The number of FM stations in my city more than doubled in the space of my teenage years. By my junior year of college I was in, working full-time at an album rock station. Yet I soon experienced the same frustration, this time over the lack of control I seemed to hold over my destiny. Despite the devotion I had for my work, advancement eluded me. Eventually I abandoned the business, trying my hand for a time working clubs, even topless bars, where at least the money was not an obstacle to fulfillment.

It was during this stint that I discovered how my love had led me astray. Talking with a rather erudite performer about a mutual associate who seemed to go nowhere with his career in the burlesque trade despite his devotion to it, she related a comment he made. “I want to succeed in this business because I love and worship women,” he had told her. Therein lay the problem. “The last place you should work if you worship women,” she mused to me, “is a topless bar.”

That was it, of course. The last place you should work if you love music is a commercial radio station. It's all about gaming the ratings system, not music. So after nearly two decades of spinning my wheels, I followed my brain instead of my heart and pursued a satisfying academic career. This brought contentment, security, and the opportunity to reflect on how I should pursue my desiderata.

Looking back now, I am most nostalgic for the year and a half I spent on the Gulf Coast working at a station that was essentially a unique experiment. We played almost everything that might appeal to an intelligent adult who appreciated the original and the eclectic. We were jazz, new age, folk, progressive, you name it.

We were also just about a complete failure from a financial standpoint as well, since listeners of this variety are as rare as Jewish NASCAR drivers. But the impact the experience left with me...I was a feline in an endless patch of catnip. I wanted to recreate it over and over, even if I was the only audience this format would ever have again.

Even as a grade schooler, I was fascinated by the radio, especially its power to cultivate intimacy over long distances. I am reminded of Norman Corwin reminiscing in the Ken Burns PBS documentary Empire of the Air about the earliest days of the medium: “My God! This is coming through the air!” I know we're talking about a century-old technology here, but it is still nothing short of magic to me, too.

My obsession with the technological side began while in high school, when my favorite station, the local freeform FM rocker, suddenly changed format to Top 40. I struck back, going on the air with a low power (perhaps 5 milliwatt) transmitter jury-rigged from the local oscillator of my first transistor radio. My neighbors across the street were entertained, but that was about it.

Later in my career, after I assisted several station engineers with maintenance and repairs, I built from there... constructing a transmitter from scratch in 1993 and endlessly reverse engineering it until I obtained enough power to make it past the street corner. I went stereo in 1998, got the CD burner in 2000, and erected the antenna I use now the summer of 2002. Life is good.