You’re driving on a long-distance road trip all through the night. You want to get where you’re going. You want to go to bed. Everyone else in the car is sleeping. Three o'clock in the morning is the time when normal people want to sleep.
You're Magical & Weird
But you’re not normal. You're magical and weird. Even though your body wants to sleep, even though your eyes might be drooping, you want to keep going. Then the sun starts to come up. Even before it’s anything close to dawn, you can see a break in the black, a break in the dark, a tiny narrow band of less black. Then it’s a dark gray line, and then it’s a narrow band of gray, lighter at the bottom, at the horizon. Mountains, maybe, if you’re on the eastern seaboard. Flat in the Midwest. Maybe it’s more of a surprise out west, I don’t know. Maybe the sun just leaps up in front of you. But in the hills and mountains of the eastern seaboard, it creeps.
And you drive toward it as I did, heading back to Massachusetts. Or you see it in the rear-view as I did, heading to Nashville, for no other reason than my friend needed another driver. Driving all night toward the sunrise, the darkness feels like a blanket, or a cloak. Protection against the daylight and what it will bring. Where are you going? Someplace fun? Or are you on your way back from someplace fun? Did you fight with your friends? Are they even your friends or people who needed a ride, or who wanted to go to the same place you did, but with a minimum of cash or emotional involvement? No matter how desperately your want to get there, or get home, or wherever, someplace new or someplace old, the dark protects you. You can see other cars just fine - that’s what headlights are for. And there aren’t that many headlights on that stretch of road. Wherever you are, everyone else is asleep, in the car and out in the world. It’s just you and some truckers sharing the road. It’s their road, though, and you’re just passing through.
The sun starts to rise and you get anxious. Sooner or later, or just sooner, you’ll be exposed. And you’ll see everyone else in the car and they’ll see you. The truckers will be able to look down into the your window and see you’re not some badass going it alone, zipping along through the night on your way to someplace cool. No, they’ll see your friends, or your roommate, or your sister, or that girl down the hall that you barely know. And you’re not some badass, you’re a college student who thinks you’re a badass.
The Badass Elite Squadron
Even now, in the middle of middle age, 3:00 in the morning is my favorite time to be awake. Especially if I’m not driving. I like the way the air feels outside in the summer in the middle of the night. It’s like something amazing is about to happen, and it’s going to happen to you. Even if nothing happens, you feel like part of some elite badass squadron awaiting orders.
Middle of the night in the winter is a different kind of badass. When it’s 10 F or -10 F it’s crazy to be out if you don’t have to be. So if you are out, in the car, or watching meteor showers, you’re part of an elite, badass and really tough squadron. The badass stargazing squadron. Fine, that’s not actually badass when you say it out loud. But being up and out and about, or up and in the living room at 3:00 in the morning, feels secret and special.
Growing up in the 70s, there was nothing more secret and special and badass than overnight radio. Overnight FM radio was the dark side of the magic kingdom that was daytime FM. Deep album cuts, punk singles from England, interviews with insanely cool people I’d never heard of, weird shit like Frank Zappa. There was the King Biscuit Flour Hour. There was Dr. Demento. The radio was always my connection to the world outside of Hatfield, Massachusetts all day long. At night I could hear cheering crowds at Fenway 100 miles away, and on really clear nights my radio connected me to New York, millions of cool, sophisticated people, and not a potato field in sight.
Overnight Radio Is a Conscious Choice
Overnight radio is still badass, if you know where to find it. You hear things normal people don’t hear. You’re up for whatever reason - you can’t sleep. Maybe you’re going home after a party, or after last call. Or you’re driving, coming home off a road trip and you finally pick up your station at the edge of its signal and you know you’ll be in your bed in an hour. Or in your lover’s bed. Or you’re going to work or coming home from work or you’re at work. You hate your coworkers. Everyone looks weird under the lights in the middle of the night. You’re all working overnights for different reasons but you’re all freaks and you’re making that $1.20 differential. So there’s that, and making more money by being up at 3:00 in the morning when everyone else is asleep is at least badass-adjacent.
Anyone listening to the radio at 3:00 in the morning is listening because they want to. At WMPG, was my favorite time to be on the air. Sometimes I said stupid shit like “did you ever think the person on the radio was talking to you personally? [dramatic pause] Well, I am [another dramatic pause, then read the weather].” That was stupid for security reasons, my own personal safety actually, and it was stupid because I didn’t need to say it. I didn’t need to make it weird between me and my listeners because we were already magical and weird, together. The badass overnight radio listening squadron, reporting for duty.