The Last Party on the Party Patio

Once upon a great lifetime ago, I discovered the greatest radio station in the world by mistake.

I was sixteen years old, spending the summer at an honors program at Miami University. It was a little overwhelming. I was living in the dorms (my first time away from home for longer than a week), taking college classes, finding my way around a small college town that I'd only visited once before. I had no transportation. I didn't know a soul there.

Eventually, I did find my footing there, mostly due to a group of fellow students who met every night in the lounge to play Trivial Pursuit. One of the players, Jen, often brought down a milkcrate brimming full of cassettes by bands I'd never heard of. 10,000 Maniacs? The Cramps? Psychedelic Furs? For someone who was listening to bad top 40 radio, this new music was intriguing.

Another of the players commented that he'd heard some of the bands on the local radio station, which also played two hours of Doctor Demento on Sunday nights. Later that evening, I turned my dial to 97.7. It was one of my most important discoveries that summer. (The other one was the ingredients in a margarita, but that didn't really pay off for a while.)

97X was one of the first "modern rock" (remember when it was still called that?) stations in the country. They weren't owned by a huge conglomerate; the station had been purchased in 1981 by Doug and Linda Balogh and was run out of a tiny blink-and-you-missed-it building right outside of Oxford. Most of the bands that they were playing had funny names (and even funnier haircuts) like Depeche Mode and The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen. They devoted an entire hour to reggae, played local bands, and even simulcast one of the local church services (which if I'm not mistaken, immedicately preceded Dreadloxx, the reggae show - how's that for eclectic?). Winners of call-in contests either had to pick up their prizes at the station or send enough money to cover postage for the T shirt they'd won. (I drove past the station three times when I went to pick up my boxer shorts.)

For my senior year in high school, the station was my little secret. Every morning while getting ready for school, I was humming along to "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side" by The Smiths and crossing my fingers that the next song would be "Invisible" by Alison Moyet.

Of course, modern rock started to become more mainstream over the years. Top 40 stations started to pick up the dancier stuff like Erasure and Pet Shop Boys. My R.E.M. albums started to disappear from my record collection, turning up eventually in my sister's bedroom. 97X continued to gain momentum as the little station that could, eventually being immortalized by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, repeating the tag line over and over much to Tom Cruise's annoyance.

97X - BAM! - The future of rock and roll.

Hey, anything that annoys Tom Cruise has to be a good thing, right?

Incidentally, that scene is one of the biggest gaffes in the entire movie. Trying to get in a tiny station broadcasting from 50 miles away was challenging. I've known people - myself included - that rearranged all of the furniture in the house in an attempt to get a clear signal. (One of the guys I knew brought a radio with him when he was apartment hunting.) The idea of picking up 97X with absolutely no static in a car driving down Columbia Parkway was absurd. It was even an absurd idea when they boosted their signal a few years back.

I recall waking up at 4:00 in the morning to hear the late night DJ going on about this new song from this guy from Cleveland and how he was going to be BIG. The song was "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails. Almost every Memorial Day weekend has been spent listening to at least part of the Modern Rock 500. I remember calling up the station from Best Buy to get the name of a song for a customer; the DJ answered the phone (and my question) politely and quickly.

For a short period of time, I worked with one of the morning DJs. He worked part time doing telephone customer service for a department store credit card. Every Sunday he would read the Weekly World News out loud to us between phone calls. I accused him of losing his indie cred at the Christmas party because I caught him doing the electric slide. (He replied that I had no business talking, since he'd spotted me doing the hand motions to "YMCA.")

How many bands did I discover through listening? How many concert tickets have the words "97X Presents..." in bold letters across them? How many Listener's Choice Six Pack themes did I try to come up with over the course of those years? How many window stickers and keychains did I have over the years? (And what the hell happened to my boxer shorts, anyway?)

In the last few years, as ClearChannel ate up every station in the known world, I cherished my little mom and pop station on College Corner Pike. But it was inevitable. We all knew it was going to happen sooner or later. And at the end of last month,
it did. WOXY was purchased by a Dallas firm for $5.6 million. (Not a bad return on an investment - the Baloghs purchased the station for under half a million.) WOXY will be moving to an internet-only format somewhere around May 1st. I'm afraid to think of what kind of programming will inhabit 97.7 on the radio dial after that point.

It's kind of strange. I just programmed my car radio presets a few weeks ago, and when trying to figure out what to program, the first station I thought of was 97X. It's been the middle preset on my radio in every one of my cars since 1987. The switch to internet isn't going to affect me all that much; I've never been able to get clear reception in my new apartment, and it was already included as one of the preset iTunes stations. But, in a way, it seems like a part of my life is over. I'll never have to make that drive up Route 27 to pick up the CD I won, and use it as an excuse to visit uptown Oxford at eat Bruno's pizza under the water tower.

Oh, wait. The water tower is gone too. And Bruno's has moved as well. (Just to the other side of the square, but they're no longer right on High Street.)

If you need me, I'll be over in the corner, mourning my lost childhood. And looking for my Future of Rock and Roll boxer shorts.