Lemuel Ropnoodle on KRAP, Poo Poo N.C. 1974 (06:35)

. . . I was responsible for a nine hour airshift each day on both AM and also FM dials . . .

by Pete Salant
It's the last night of September, 1974. Scene: the 'quaint' Westbrook, Maine studios of WJBQ FM/AM, Portland, 34 creaky steps above the hardware store, just down the road from the fragrant paper mill. I'm the 20-year-old afternoon drive jock at 'JBQ, having been there for nearly two months, since a few days after the debut of its soon-to-be-legendary mono Top 40 format. Itching to move on, the trek to that next big job begins as I bravely venture into the Marconi-equipped production studio to turn several days' worth of airchecks into a masterpiece. In the process of "augmenting" the airchecks, the turntables skip and mistrack, the cart machine only starts when it sees fit, and I give up.

I wisely turn my frustration into creativity as for the next four hours I become 'Lemuel Ropnoodle,' former drive jock at K-R-A-P, Poo Poo, North Carolina (a little known "K" station east of the Mississippi), ad-libbing my way through the very real studio malfunctions, overdubbing jingle and song vocals with myself using one working reel deck and that tricky cart recorder, and producing 7 minutes of virtual insanity. By the way, two weeks later, after sending out my real WJBQ aircheck, I landed at already-legendary WAVZ, New Haven for most of the next six years until moving on to New York City to program WYNY.