Paba Free Fragments

So one of my best friends and I had a falling out several years ago. It is sad, but it is what it is. When we were in college we applied for a 2-hour  radio show on our college radio station and created The Paba Free Show. It was fun. Here are the fragments:


It took us a long time to think of a name for our show. Nothing seemed to come naturally to us or maybe we were trying to hard to be clever. I came up with the name based off a comment from George on Seinfeld who was looking for a "Paba Free" suntan lotion. I was a massive Seinfeld show fan, so it felt right. Here is the whole exchange and inspiration for the name.

Jerry: Are these seats unbelievable or what?
George: Where’s the sunblock?
Jerry: Here.
George: 25? You don’t have anything higher?
Jerry: What, are you on Mercury?
George: I need higher. This has paba in it, I need paba-free.
Jerry: You got a problem with paba?
George: Yes, I have a problem with paba.
Jerry: You don’t even know what paba is.
George: I know enough to stay away from it.

Our college radio station's range was tiny. When I mean tiny, I mean if you were on the far side of campus, you couldn't pick up the AM frequency. We also had "FM-Cable" but you would have to plug in a cable, for the television into the back of your stereo, to hear it, if your stereo even had this slot, which was unlikely. No one could ever figure out if that was working or not because no body had this slot on the back of their stereo.

I found this googling the old station. This was never a door I used, it seems the station has moved once (or has been renovated) and maybe even twice. We had it old school with turntables, old school mics, and tons of old LP's. All of this was cramped in a tiny little space, in the back of a building where no one could find you if they tried. All the photos made me sad we never took a picture and sad because it means I am getting OLD.

Our first shows were awful as we learned the ropes of the technology. Eventually, I think we had some nice DJ moments, but the tapes of the early shows were pretty embarrassing.

It was such a cool thing to tell people at parties or where-ever, "yeah, we have a radio show on Fridays". You felt like such a bad-ass just saying it.  Honestly, I haven't had too many humble brags this good in my life. I still get reactions from people when I tell them I had a radio show in college, and they say something like, "That's awesome!"...and I'm like....(sounding like I don't think so)..."yeah.....I guess".

My friend and I were  power-pop fiends. Bands in our common rotation: Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, Spoon, Sloan, Superdrag, The Apples in Stereo, Nirvana, Sixteen Deluxe, Beck, Crumb, Frank Black and Tripping Daisy (yes, I am aware some of those artists are not "Power Pop"). I always told my friend to never play the singles from "big bands" like Nirvana or Weezer and to NEVER play R.E.M. but he would sneak them in when I went to the bathroom. Bastard.

 

Cool Power Pop image. I mean, this is cool right? Or maybe not. 

Our first semester we had the show on Saturday mornings (that was my friend's stupid idea) from 10:00-12:00, then we went to Sunday afternoon from 2:00-4:00 and finally found a good place on Friday afternoon's from 4:00-6:00. That was my favorite time slot. We would do our show, grab a bite to eat on Northgate (where all the best bars in College Station were), go home and hang out, get ready and go out for the night later. It was a nice routine that I always looked forward to. One week my friend was feeling frisky and decided to have a few beers during our show (obviously, a big school "no-no").  I was freaking out the whole time and generally was a big douche about it.

Our audience was miniscule. The few listeners we had, were, of course, our friends. Frankly, they only listened once we were in the Friday time slot anyway. Two of our friends could miraculously  tune into the station and we would often have them call-in for over-the-air conversations. This made it feel like an actual show.  Another friend would listen as he drove a school bus on campus and he would tune in as he shuttled students around. Once he drove on the other side of campus, he couldn't pick it up. I'm sure the bus-riding students were confused as to what they had the radio tuned to.  I think one of the other DJ's said they tuned in once and it so happened she was a girl and kinda cute so this made us doubly excited.

We would beg people to call in with requests. The truth was sad....but outside a few friends, NO ONE was listening. Then one day-- it happened. An actual request. From someone we didn't know!  He requested Echo and the Bunnymen (who I had only heard of)...we were nervous that we didn't have an album to play...but we eventually found an old LP. You know this is a big deal because I remember what the guy requested to this day.  We were so proud. One time we had a "stand off" with our non-existent listeners, telling them we wouldn't play music until someone called in. They never called and we chatted for the last hour of the show. We were a little "in on the joke"...but we both would have been thrilled to have actual, occasional listeners.


The great thing about having no listeners was that we could pretty much do what we wanted. We ended up rapping one day over a music-only track of "All About the Benjamins"  (of course I made up most of my rap).  I also sang over a non-vocal track from a indie band, about Huevos Rancheros a few times. Both of these experiments were pretty terrible, but darkly funny in an awkward-white guy kinda way.

I made a pathetic little website for the show (I mean it was 1998-1999 so most websites were pathetic to begin with). We never got any email requests and I was sad about that.  When I look back on it, it's kinda cute that I was trying to be cutting-edge.

We taped most of our shows but I would tape over them all the time with new shows.  We stopped doing the show after two years, for whatever reason we felt like we would be "too busy" but I always regret not giving it a final semester.  I had only taped about 3.5 shows even though I am certain I lost a tape along the way in a move or lost underneath my car seat.   About 10 years ago,  I transferred much of our banter (editing out boring stuff) into single MP3 digital copies. I collected many of the songs we played on the show and and mailed them to my friend on a CD before our falling out.  I love having these in my MP3 collection as they are a part of my personal history that is recorded. Sure, it doesn't mean a lot to anyone else....but it does to me (ya know, like this blog).

Recently, I created two huge MP3 files (mimicking an audio tape), I wanted to create the feeling of it not being easy to "skip" tracks. You would have to "fast-forward" if you didn't like the song. I edited our banter to ensure the bands we said were "coming up next" really were coming up next and created a "new" show out of old stuff.  I found old tid-bits of dialogue that I hadn't recorded years ago. It took a lot of time but at the same time it was a lot of fun too. I sent it to my friend as a peace offering about a week ago.....we'll see what happens.

Since my friend has kinda ignored me the last few years it makes memories of the show a little bitter sweet. He was a like a brother to me, we fought about life, politics, religion, you name it. But we had a shared past, loved the same type of music, loved going to concerts, hanging out, being stupid and having fun.  Maybe we debated a lot, but we also liked pushing each other's buttons...it was part of what made us friends. We could disagree but still hang out. Maybe we grew up and maybe we're too different now....time changes things. I don't know. I don't expect our friendship to be the same, but it would be nice to be facebook friends. I miss my friend but at least I'll always have the Paba Free Show.

Update 1/31/13:  I sent the package, he never responded. Oh well.