Great Moments in Radio...

It was back in the '80s. The Reagan Administration had just spanked Libyan Dicatator Mommar Khadafi. The Nation was on high alert for terrorist acts, in response to our actions. Later on, Def Leppard would immortalize the moment with a sound bite from President Reagan in the song "Gods of War", where Ron says "If you counted on America to be passive, you counted wrong". I was working on a Saturday, doing a remote at the Convention Center, to coincide with the area new car dealers auto show. Back in those days, the Dj did it all. You had to bring the equipment and set it up all by yourself. We didn't have the state of the art gear that we have today. No Tent, No Inflatable call letters, No kickin' sound system. All we got sent into the field with, was a banner, a Boombox, and some ancient army issue mobile radio hardware. So I get up early, put on my nice 501's, an Op shirt with a collar, and show up early to set up, test the equipment, and meet the mucky muck vip's. I was thinking in my mind what I needed to script for the live breaks I would be doing. I try to keep it concise, succint, and to the point. People want to get back to music. I came in the back door, with all the other working Joe's and set my equipment down near my designated spot. I ran back out to my Firebird, and got the prizes. You gotta have prizes. As I came back in I was grabbed, thrown to the ground, and had a gun drawn on me by the security team. Buch a good 'ol boys. The leader was a big 'ol boy. Probably 6'6", 300 pounds, with 100 of that being his massive beer belly (that more than "Dun-Lopped" over). He had bad teeth, a real tweeker set of chompers, and spit when he spoke. We'll call him Phil. His wingmen were "Rusty", a short lil' scrawny scrapper looking dude, who was flanked by "Chet", an enormous door shaker who I'd love to see catch anything in a foot race. So big Phil's got his gun drawn on me. I think it's a 9mm Smith&Wesson. At issue is the two anvil cases that hold the on air transmitter and microphones and crap. Sitting right next to everything, is the antennae, and stand. Captain Obvious could have put the two together. Big Phil wants to know what's in the cases. By now there's a huge crowd leering for a glimpse of something juicy to share later on with the other car dealers. "It's that Max Volume kid, the cops got him"! Big Phil thinks the radio gear is bombs. I said "I'm the Dj, I'm doing a live broadcast, that's my equipment". Big Phil lets me up, and while keeping his gun drawn, says "Open 'em up, lemme see". I walk over, open the anvil cases up, and start to assemble the transmitter. Big Phil finally puts his gun away. He comes over and says, "Look we figured you were one of Khadafi's boys". I looked at him and said "Are You Completely High"? He grabs my shirt and says "We don't want no trouble Rocker Boy", shoves me, and walks off. I researched my options legally. The consensus was, that the nation was on high alert. This pretty much gave Phil all the creative latitude to do whatever he wanted. Good Times!