WMUA reunion

[A. Joseph Ross]

I was in Amherst this weekend for the 60th anniversary celebration 
and station reunion of WMUA, the UMass student-operated station.  
Unfortunately, no one else from the 1960s era was there, but I held 
forth on 1960s programming and described, yet again, my experience as 
a freshman news announcer on the afternoon that President Kennedy was 
assassinated.

I was glad to notice that WMUA still has turntables.  With the 
eclectic mix of music they play, I can see why they still use them.  
The turntables in the control room still play 78 rpm records, and 
there are a couple of 78 needles there as well (with an unsigned note 
from somebody saying not to fool with them because he plays 78s on 
his show).  As at the last reunion, they let us alumni do airshifts 
(this time only 1/2 hour -- last time I was assigned an hour, and it 
stretched into 1 1/2 hours when the next show wasn't ready).  And so, 
I played a 78 -- Buchanan and Goodman's "The Flying Saucer."    

Unfortunately, the one cassette deck in the control room wasn't 
working, so I couldn't play the Flanders & Swan stuff that I had 
planned -- or the Howdy Doody song that I wanted to play in tribute 
to the Howdy Doody Show's producer, E. Roger Muir, who died this past 
week.

But I did play Irving Berlin's anti-war song, "Stay Down Here Where 
You Belong," which Berlin wrote before the US entry into World War I. 
Later, he was embarrassed by it and wanted to forget it.  But Groucho 
Marx kept singing it whenever he and Irving Berlin were at the same 
party.  And he sang it at his early-70s Carnegie Hall appearance, 
which came out as a two-record LP album under the title "An Evening 
with Groucho."  

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004           	         http://www.attorneyross.com