Tonight’S Fox: The Confessions of a Mobile Disc Jockey

By Stephen M. Barrows

We see them at weddings, at class reunions, at corporate parties, even at your childs Sweet Sixteen parties in your back
Yard.


They are the ones who supply the entertainment. They are the ones who motivate the partygoers to dance. Who are these people who make others dance to their tune? They are the Mobile Disc Jockeys.


TONIGHTS FOX: THE CONFESSIONS OF A MOBILE DISC JOCKEY tells the story of one such DJ. We follow on his journey from humble beginnings to his success as a Mobile DJ. From playing in hole in the wall dives to spacious mansions, we learn of the ups and downs a Mobile DJ faces while at the same time, shattering the myths that surround the Mobile DJ.
TONIGHTS FOX educates as well as entertains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465393128

Stephen M. Barrows

Stephen M. Barrows began his writing career in 1975 by working for his high school literary magazine. By 1978 he was Arts and Entertainment critic for “The Thunder”, the high school newspaper. As a freelance journalist for various local newspapers, Stephen writes articles ranging in subject matter from music to politics. When Stephen is not performing as a D.J. or writing, he devotes time to composing music at his home in Connecticut where he and his wife reside.

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Copyright © 2011 by Stephen M. Barrows.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4653-9311-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-9312-8

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This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO FOUR SPECIAL PEOPLE:

ROCKIN’ RICHARD PHILLIPS

ANTHONY ROBBINS

PASTOR JOEL OSTEEN

AND MY BELOVED WIFE GEORGIA

PLUS A SPECIAL DEDICATION TO HOWARD STERN:

WHO HAS KEPT ME LAUGHING EVEN DURING THE

WORST OF TIMES

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people who have given me valuable assistance and guidance in which made this book possible:

First of all, I would like to thank my comrades at WNHU and WYBC-FM for giving me the chance to bring my voice to the public airwaves in the early days of my career.

I would like to also thank Rockin’ Richard Phillips for taking me under his wing and providing me with his wisdom and insight as I enter my Twenty Forth year of working under him. More power to you, brother.

A round of thanks also goes to Fred Marotti who had the honor of inkjeting my manuscript plus making sure the computer was working OK so I could get the whole thing completed on time.

Finally, I would like to thank Jack Schuler and Nancy Mac Craig for taking the Time to proofread my work and to make whatever changes that were needed and for their guidance and wisdom on how to get the whole thing published. God bless you my friends.

INTRODUCTION

The time: September of 1991. The place: The American Legion Hall in Enfield, Connecticut. The Event: a wedding reception. The performance is only ninety Minutes old and the tension is already so thick, that one can cut it with a chainsaw. There has been more than one sign of impending violence. One half of the head table is demolished, and the partygoers from the bridal party to the invited guests are getting smashed all the more on the alcohol, which is being served from the Open Bar every few seconds. The event has gone from a celebration of love to a time bomb just waiting for someone or something to ignite the fuse.

Suddenly, word begins to spread throughout the crowd that one of the partygoers has threatened the Disc Jockey with death. The reason: he didn’t have a certain song that the guest wanted to hear. Before this night is over, one of the artiers would spend the rest of the night in jail and the father-of-the-bride would be injured in the fight that ensues in the parking lot outside. What you are reading is not some wild fantasy story. Every word of this is true. How can you be certain that it’s true? Because I was the Mobile Disc Jockey who was performing that night and saw it happen before my own eyes.

Shortly after that performance, I relayed the happenings to one of my friends. Astonished, he laughed and said, You should write a book about your experiences as a Mobile Disc Jockey. With this in mind, I decided that now was the time to take off the wraps; To tell people once and for all that even though the life of a Mobile DJ is filled with excitement and glamour, it is also a life filled with pain and frustration.

Many people think that the DJ up on that stage playing music in front of a dancing crowd is a god to be worshipped. They assume that a DJ must have every piece of recorded music known to man. The DJ is, of course, a technical whiz when it comes to the sound system. It is assumed also that a DJ is a master at swaying partiers to get up and dance the night away. In the minds of all audiences, every DJ makes a good deal of money for just playing music for four to six hours of party fun.

What you are about to discover in this book is that ninety percent of this DJ image is just an illusion. You will learn that even though we’re considered something special by many, we too are human beings. We share the same joys and the same pain as those who sign the contracts to hire us to play. And so dear reader, turn the page and let us begin.

Stephen M. Barrows

April 7, 2011

CHAPTER ONE

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.

Sir Thomas Beecham. Quoted in Atkins

And Newman Beecham Stories (1978)

My Journey to becoming a Mobile DJ has, like most journeys, included many detours.

It began back in 1965 when I was living in Miamisburg, Ohio, a small town about forty miles north of Cincinnati. It was here I first heard the strains of music. I started out by listening to Classical music and by the time I was six years old, I could name a piece of classical music and it’s composer by just hearing a few bars.

But at the same time, my taste for music expanded to Rock n’ Roll. It was done through my babysitter, a young woman by the name of Deborah Curtner. She would come over with her records by The Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits, Elvis and countless others. As the music played, my older brother and sister would dance while I’d be using a badminton racket as a guitar or using a pillow for a drum with two pencils for drumsticks. For me, at the ripe old age of six, those Saturday nights were pure magic. They remain among my fondest memories. I would also watch the music programs Shindig and Hullabaloo faithfully every week on TV.

Then came the day I bought my very first record album. It was Herman’s Hermits’ first American release. To me, acquiring that record was far more than getting a bicycle or a baseball glove. I had saved my pennies for weeks on end in order to purchase it. And now it was mine. I played that record over and over again until it became warped. I loved every song on it. I still have it somewhere in my collection, and when I reminisce back to those happy days, I had no idea that this album would be only the first of some two hundred LP’s that I would eventually collect.

Prior to the advent of compact discs, LP’s became the major source of my happiness. In fact, music was my first love—before I discovered the opposite sex.

The Summer of 1966 found my family moving to Connecticut. My passion for Rock n’ Roll had gone from seed to sapling to full flower. After moving into a house in picturesque North Branford, a quintessential New England town, we started traveling on weekends to my birthstate of Vermont. It was on one such trip that my cousin, Todd Dressel, turned me onto the music of The Beatles. At that time, he had nearly every record they had recorded. I ate it up like it was candy. When I came back home, I started saving my money to buy Beatle records for my own listening pleasure. In a period of about eight years, I purchased every Beatles record available under the sun.

As I was buying Beatle records, I was also being hooked into the music of other great artists. I started listening and buying records by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Cream, The Doors, Garage Rock Bands, and Motown groups; You name them, I bought them. If I loved a certain song, I would either buy the single or album, or I would record it on tape. At one point, I remember asking my junior high school art teacher if he could tape a couple of Rolling Stones’ albums for me. When he said yes, I gave him a blank cassette and by the end of the next day, there I was listening to December’s Children on Side A and Aftermath on Side B. Life was complete!

When I wasn’t playing my records or tapes, I was listening to the radio and dreaming about the day I would be a great radio broadcaster like Casey Kasem or Murray The K. However, I soon learned, the hard way, that private dreams and individualized musical taste can result in vicious jealousy.

Among my schoolmates, there existed a secret rule that musical likes and dislikes could not differ. If you were a Beatle fan or a fan of music that was different from the musical taste of the rest of the group, you automatically became an instant social outcast; a target of scorn and humiliation. It was a law that you: (a) listen to the music of today and reject all music of yesterday and (b) recognize music approved solely by the group. By the time I made the transition from junior high to high school, the music I was listening to on radio was becoming dull and boring. It was as though Rock n’ Roll had lost its punch. It had traveled full circle back to the days of novelty tunes, predicable Pop songs, and slow tunes that would cure insomnia. At that time, I asked myself "This is the type of music I am supposed to conform to? Am I to give my allegiance to musical groups whose style of performing is to paint their faces in Kabuki make-up and vomit fake blood and spit flames on stage just to please my peers? Should I dress up in a three piece polyester suit and boogie the night away? The hell with this! So I retreated back to the music which spoke to my own heart. At least it gave me some comfort in knowing that good music still existed.

In retrospect, I find it interesting that still in existence is the same peer pressure to follow the group. Here we are in the technological age, starting the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, and the high school mentality, which follows some people into adulthood, still demands conformity—in spite of all our claims to be a free spirit.

But one of the refreshing facts about music—the truly universal language—is that in all its forms, there is a sound for each and every person. People with open minds and souls will find their own special music—disassociated totally from the group.

When I started my freshman year at North Branford High School, I was still totally immersed in the music of the British Invasion of 1964. During that period of Rock history, my listening was dominated by the music of The Beatles. In my early high school days, I hummed every Beatles’ song. I wrote the phrase BEATLES 4-EVER on the covers of my school books. I spent hours on end reading about their history. Especially during the period between 1964 thru 1966, the era known as Beatlemania. I would also have the honor of seeing the Broadway production Beatlemania and attending every Beatles convention that was held in Connecticut. There was no doubt about it! I was what you would call a Beatles Junkie. When I learned something new, I was hungry to learn more. My father was always saying that if I would only apply this hunger for knowledge to my school work instead of Rock n’ Roll, I just might learn something. For me, as so many other teenagers, listening to The Beatles was an escape from the pressures of high school. At the same time, I could no longer listen to the radio for pleasure because no matter where I turned the dial, with some exceptions on the Hard Rock stations, I would hear nothing but Disco.

To this very day, I have no use for Disco. To be truthful, that type of music goes against me like rat poison. Disco is like Rap; I don’t even consider it to be music at all. It is nothing more than a beat with a lot of bass and no rhythm or drive whatsoever. Mick Jagger once said: How can anyone get so emotional over any song that consists of four beats on a bass drum?

I remember years ago I saw a commercial on TV for some Disco collection that was being put out by some club call The Seventies Preservation Society. The commercial consisted of a man and a woman talking to each other on the telephone. The man says: What are you up to right now? and she says, I’m listening to my Disco collection entitled Disco Fever. Then the man says, I love Disco, I hear it’s making a comeback." When I first heard that, I thought, ‘Oh, great, if Disco does make a comeback, (God Forbid) I’ll shave my head, sell my house, move into a cave and do circle jerks for the rest of my life with D.B. Cooper.’

I remember in high school, I was dating this one girl who insisted that I take her to see Saturday Night Fever. My date enjoyed the movie but as far as I was concerned, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. As I kissed her goodnight, I remember that I was visualizing what to do when I got home—escape into my bedroom, roll a couple of joints, slap on my headphones and mercifully listen to The Beatles and Stones for at least two hours—long enough to get the Disco Taste completely out of my ears!

Midway through my sophomore year, my schoolmates began asking me When are you gonna stop living in the past? You can’t listen to artists like The Beatles for the rest of your life. What they said to me did smack a note of truth. But if I was going to comeback to the present, musically, it was going to be on my own terms, not theirs. All I needed was to find the type of music that was going to make me sit up and take notice. To expand my horizons further than I couldn’t possibly imagine.

My chance came just before Thanksgiving of 1976, when I was introduced to my older sister’s boyfriend, John Vecchio, a college art major who had spent the previous month in England on holiday. John and I shared a musical interest that kept us talking about music nearly the whole night—of course the hashish enhanced the conversation. John told me about this new musical sensation