It was my first year in college and I had just gotten the weekday midnight to 3-am slot on my college radio station. I shared the spot with my buddy Rich and we had a funny little tag-team show going where we would tell jokes and talk too much between songs. Most nights there was a small pile of new releases waiting for us to play at our discretion. We were told to never play anything we hadn’t already listened to so as to avoid taking risks the FCC might frown upon, but at that time slot we usually didn’t care and were never supervised anyway. I liked the album art on a new vinyl called “Pretty Hate Machine” by some band that had a name that sounded like the lead singer was a tranny – “Nine Inch Nails” – so sassy. I started unwrapping it while Rich and I were making fun of a song we had just played off of Moev’s album “Yeah, Whatever“. We speculated that we might crucify each other as a mercy killing for having listened to that entire album. Eventually Rich got around to a segue and in his best fake DJ voice said something about having some fun with a freshly peeled album. He put the needle down on the first track and faded the mic.

Then we lost our minds.

By the time the song had finished Rich and I were sweating from jumping around the booth punching each other. We managed to get back on the mic panting but hadn’t prepared another song to switch to, so we just let it go to the next track, and then the next. I think we finally switched over to “Everyday is Halloween” by Ministry after “Kinda I Want To” finished.

What a great night.