Green Day "Wake Me Up When September Ends"

Happy September Eve! Wake up and prepare yourself for all the Green Day memes to begin.

Green Day "Time of Your Life (Good Riddance)"

How many mornings start with: "Um, Todd, there's a girl here to see you with a pig." This actually happened one morning when the PR girl from a local television station showed up to the radio station with a real, living barnyard pig. PR people call this a "drop off" -- where they stop by local media stations to plug a charity event or a special deal at a local restaurant and bribe us with free food. It's an old trick that usually works.

In this case, the PR person wanted to interrupt our morning show to plug that they were now airing the show "Green Acres" on a local television show. The show, which ran from 1965-1971, somehow was a major event for this station. A couple days before showing up with a pig, I received an email asking if it was OK that the PR person stopped by to make waffles. I declined, but the first rule in PR is that "No" means "Absolutely you should show up with a pig and waffles!". So, of course she showed up. Being that I not only produced the morning show at the time but also ran the controls, I didn't have the time or ability to entertain the PR person. Thankfully, she got the hint that I had my arms full and left with the request that we plug "Green Acres".

Later that morning after the show, the Promotions Director saw me in the hallway and said she heard what happened with the pig and waffles. Expecting an apology or even some empathy, she immediately replied by saying, "I hope you were nice to them. That TV station spends a lot of money with us."

Bruce Hornsby "Walk in the Sun"

I graduated from high school during the summer of 1995 and spent many late nights cruising around Northwest Indiana with my small but solid group of friends who would soon be heading to different colleges than me. I planned to spend my freshman year of college locally at Indiana University Northwest whereas my friends were headed to Ball State, Purdue or Indiana University in Bloomington. Since I didn't have a curfew, I tried to make the most of late nights that year and usually stayed up until the sun started to rise. My older brother worked for United Airlines that year and his alarm would sound around at the ripe time of 3:45am. One particular early morning, I remember him passing me on his walk to the bathroom while muttering, "You're still up and I'm getting up for work...what's wrong with this picture?" That unusually hot summer featured hits from TLC, Hootie & The Blowfish and Green Day on the radio, but I also remember many late nights in the car when I would come across Bruce Hornsby's "Walk in the Sun". The jazzy soft rock tune played on many Adult Contemporary radio stations during that hot summer and, like many of my high school friends, disappeared in the autumn...