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What would they do if confronted with this?

J

johnbasalla

I fill in weekly on a specialty show on an FM radio station. The show focuses in on music from the 1950s and early 1960s, This week (04/23/2023), I featured an all 45 r.p.m. vinyl edition in conjunction with, and celebrating, the two-day Vinylthon event of 04/22 and 04/23. I had, recently, been given a large amount of 45 r.p.m. discs. I was playing them in chronological order from when they first appeared on the Billboard Top 100 or "Hot 100" chart.
I was the only person at the station.

Everything was going fine until I just had to go to the restroom. The restroom is across the hall from the air studio. There was no way that I could hold it any longer. With most songs lasting under 2:40, I knew that I couldn't start the next scheduled record and be back before it ended. I ran to our library, and pulled out a CD that had a 6+ minute version of a Ray Charles song. After the song that was playing ended, I quickly told the listeners that I had to go to the restroom, apologized profusely, and put the song on. About 4 minutes of the song played by the time I got back.

What would DJ's and personalities back in the day do when confronted with a similar dilemma? I'm assuming I'm not the only person in the world that had a 'nature-call' during an air shift.
 
Were jocks who, as was the case with the original poster, "couldn't hold it in," free to spin "MacArthur Park" or "American Pie" or "What'd I Say" (which is what I suspect the OP played)? What if the next three songs scheduled were all less than three minutes long? Was having to pee a legitimate reason to play something else? I can see the long-song solution working on free-form/progressive/AOR stations, but on a Top 40 or a country station?
 
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LP cut of Get Ready by Rare Earth is a good one, over 21 minutes of pure washroom break time! :D

I do remember one of my cousin's who was a DJ back in the 80s and I'd sit in the studio with him. He taught me how to run the board and stuff and one evening he was sick and I filled in and asked if I needed a potty break. He gave me a list of long tunes including ones mentioned above!
 
johnbasalla said:
I fill in weekly on a specialty show on an FM radio station. The show focuses in on music from the 1950s and early 1960s, This week (04/23/2023), I featured an all 45 r.p.m. vinyl edition in conjunction with, and celebrating, the two-day Vinylthon event of 04/22 and 04/23. I had, recently, been given a large amount of 45 r.p.m. discs. I was playing them in chronological order from when they first appeared on the Billboard Top 100 or "Hot 100" chart.
I was the only person at the station.

Everything was going fine until I just had to go to the restroom. The restroom is across the hall from the air studio. There was no way that I could hold it any longer. With most songs lasting under 2:40, I knew that I couldn't start the next scheduled record and be back before it ended. I ran to our library, and pulled out a CD that had a 6+ minute version of a Ray Charles song. After the song that was playing ended, I quickly told the listeners that I had to go to the restroom, apologized profusely, and put the song on. About 4 minutes of the song played by the time I got back.

What would DJ's and personalities back in the day do when confronted with a similar dilemma? I'm assuming I'm not the only person in the world that had a 'nature-call' during an air shift.
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Just call it an "extra". Then "now back to the countdown"
 
The reason I posted on the 1950s/1960s page is because there are so few options for long songs until the later 1960s. All of the long songs mentioned are outside of the 1950s and early 1960s window, which is the what the show is all about. Just lucky for the one Ray Charles piece.
 
At one station I was at, they mentioned that back in the day if the overnight jock had duties outside his airshift (or had a listener/groupie he wished to "entertain" on the couch in the lobby) and needed time to leave the studio to do them, they'd either put a bunch of music on carts with the tone to fire the next song after one was ending, and they'd stack them 6 tall in the ITC cart machines to fire one after the other, or they'd use one of the long cartridges sometimes used for news so they could record an entire "mix" onto it and play it back when they needed time away.
 
I can remember once when I heard a station playing a sampler album and I figured they were taking a break. The reason I knew it was because I had a copy of the same album. 😀
 
The longer the version of "Take Five", the better. Is there a version that is long enough for this?

Dee Snider used to freely admit what he was doing on "House of Hair" back when a station where I live ran it.
 
I forgot. Dee Snider was referring to commercial breaks. I don't know if meal has any long songs other than "Eruption"/"You Really Got Me", "Still of the Night" or "No More Tears".
 
I know that most places I've worked had the john close by the studios. I planned things out. I went into a stop set, had the next two songs cued and ready, then hit a jingle, started the first song and ran out the door. I always made it back in the allotted time. how long does it take to pee? I even washed my hands. For real emergencies, I always had a couple of carts ready which had a record/jingle/record which could be used. I never saw it as a problem. Of course I was young during the 3 minute song days. Today I'm looking for gas stations after driving 20 miles. Times change all too quickly.
 
Hyrum said:
I know that most places I've worked had the john close by the studios. I
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When I had 5 stations in Ecuador, the offices were on the second floor of a former large home. Like many structures from the early 20th century, it only had one bathroom for the whole floor. Fortunately, we were able to build the studios around the outside of the floor, with the bathroom between two of them. In the central area were the general offices for traffic, billing and prize fulfillment.

But it was one single bathroom for the whole facility. After several experiences where nobody could get "in" because someone left the latch on lock, we put a sliding "Empty" and "Occupied" sign. If you went in, you first slid the sign to "Occupied". In that era and in that culture, courtesy was paramount and we never had a problem. And that was better than having jocks peeing off the balcony into the courtyard.
 
Hyrum said:
I know that most places I've worked had the john close by the studios.
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I worked at one small station where the bathroom was the other side of a fairly thin wall from the studio. If someone was to do anything particularly "noisy" in there, the sound would carry through - especially the "flush". A Mic Live light was procured and fitted into the bathroom to alert whoever was using the facility not to flush until the jock had finished, lest it sound like somebody was expressing an opinion on that day's playlist.
 
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