Radio Memories Vol. 22

In the summer of 1974, I was again working the overnight shift at WIS TV. My task that week was to wire in a new microphone panel in the new studio we were building. This studio would be used for larger productions such as a taping of a ballet by Sidney Palmer, one of our producer/directors, with performers from the Columbia City Ballet using a temporary “set” composed of some artfully placed curtains and columns.

A “set” is the grouping of furniture, risers, backdrops, etc., used in a TV production. They could be temporary, as described above, or permanent. An example of a permanent set would be the news set: desks, chairs, chroma-key backboards, and weather maps. It was used so often that it was too much trouble to take down and set up again, so it remained set up in our smaller studio, under the 400-foot tall downtown tower.  

Chroma-key backgrounds in those days was a sky blue flat surface up behind the “talent” or, in this case, the news anchor. The chroma-key technology allowed the director to replace the blue with some other video source, such as slide or graphic. A good example of chroma-keying or blue screening is the movie "Mary Poppins" (1964), which used a blue screen for dance scenes. During the 1970s and 1980s, as digital technology improved, green screens became more widely used. 

Once the construction is completed, it will become our smaller studio. So, looking to the future, in addition to wiring the microphone connector panel, I was replacing the 20-year-old one and the wiring up to the master control and the production control rooms with new cabling and new connectors. 

Wiring these panels was slow, repetitive, mind-numbing work that involved handling a red hot soldering iron, reels of resin core solder while working in a steel box hung on the studio wall. It was also lonely work, no one around to talk with. In order to break the dead of night silence, I would often go into the production audio booth and track one of the albums on a turntable and patch the sound into the studio to keep me company. 

Tubular Bells was the debut studio album by the British musician Mike Oldfield, released on the 25th of May 1973. Throughout 1973, the album slowly gained popularity. On the 26th of December 1973, it was revealed as the theme song for the horror movie The Exorcist. 

In the Summer of 1974, WIS TV was using the beginning of the album cut as a theme song for one of its shows, so there was a copy in the production audio control room lying in wait for me come across it and scare the “Bejezzuz” out of myself. Sure enough, one of those lonely overnights, I chose the 30 minute track of Tubular Bells to keep me company as I worked in the quiet, semi-dark studio all alone in the middle of the night. 

As you may remember, the track starts innocently enough with a repeating round of bells, lightly, almost gaily, while additional elements are being added every few measures. What I didn’t know was that after about 15 minutes, the light, almost fairylike mood of the song would suddenly morph into something that sounded like it came from Dante’s ninth circle of Hell. 

When those heavy notes crashed through the 18” cone of the studio speaker, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I almost dropped the red hot soldering iron on my pants leg. I was thoroughly and completely freaked out. 

When I realized what was frightening me, I unplugged the soldering iron, ran out into the hall, around the “levellator” that was used to raise and lower the cameras between the two studios and up the narrow stairwell to the production suite and into the audio booth. I yanked the tone arm off the record and quickly shoved the offending 12-inch disk of vinyl back into the album shuck where it could remain for eternity as far as I was concerned. Never in my life have I been affected so strongly by a piece of music. 

From that day forward, I was never a big fan of horror films. I could barely stand it when I saw the film the next year, and Linda Blair’s head spun around as the possessed teen, Regan MacNeil.