My love for radio and how I got where I am

The search begins

I remember like it was yesterday when my mom ask me what I wanted to do when I graduated high school. At this time, I was only a freshman. So, I sat down and looked over all the classes that I took at the time and realized that I don’t want a job that involves any of those subjects. All of the subjects that I had in high school, I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life. I realized that I wanted to do something with music.

For a while, back in freshmen year, I was deciding if I should be a music producer or a disc jockey (DJ). I quickly scrapped the first idea because I really like listening to music, and being a DJ is perfect for that. My whole goal throughout high school was to find a college or a university that had a radio station.

The adventure begins

For my senior project in high school, I was able to get my internship at 93.3 WMMR a local rock station in Philadelphia. For one week, I was able to work with the morning crew and for the two weeks that followed, I was in marketing to see how everything works in terms of how the station puts commercials on air.

I was very excited to meet the cast of the Preston and Steve show the first week. I was already familiar with the show and the station because at my summer job I would listen to the station in the work trucks. The last week of working at 93.3 WMMR I was able to go to my favorite station, 102.9 WMGK.

I would listen to this station everyday for my drive in to school every morning. I sat in for the John Debella show for one morning and saw most of my favorite DJ’s. After working at those stations, I really wanted to be a DJ for my future career.

During that summer I gotten into radio more with researching radio and different DJs, etc. That summer, I got my wisdom teeth taken out and I was lying in bed watching TV and saw a movie called American Graffiti.

My favorite character in that movie is Wolfman Jack. Wolfman Jack is one of my inspiration of why I want to be on radio. After seeing that movie I did tons of research on the Wolfman. To my surprise, he was a real person that went by the name Wolfman Jack and he was actually a DJ in the early 60s on a station called 1570 XERF that was around in northern Mexico and southern United States area. Later to be on 1090 XERB in Los Angeles.

After finding out about him there is a website that has all of his old archives of his shows XERB. I would also, look up and listen to old Philadelphia radio stations like 560 WFIL and 990 WIBG and DJs like Dr. Don Rose and Joe Niagara. At this point I was set on becoming a radio DJ.

My internship in December

Last December, I got an internship in North Jersey at a radio station called 89.1 WFDU. I worked on the phone with requests that people wanted to put on air. Also, the DJ would teach me things like how to run the board. This station would play songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Where I am at now

Currently, I am taking a radio class now. I went through five weeks of training and now I have my own radio show called the Vault on Wednesdays at three to five on 89.1 WYBF. I play the best classic rock ever recorded.