1992 – autumn – Radio Nova 22
Over time, I forgot about Contact Radio. The white nights in the dorm (not due to studying) and my ability to postpone my life, which had not yet become proverbial, occupied all my time. However, a new opportunity to work in radio arose, in the person of one of my most constant partners in white nights. The guy’s name was Razvan, and through a surprise circumstance, he was hired at Radio Nova 22 as an editor-presenter-producer, 4 in 1, for a weekly economics program. He was a math student, a latecomer like me, and had officially nothing to do with economics, but he was an intelligent person with a decent general culture, so he was able to research for 15 minutes of content per week, even if it was economic. Especially if we also consider John Kenneth Galbraith’s saying that economists were invented to make astrologers look like professionals. So Razvan was on the air for an hour a week on Radio Nova 22, of which 45 minutes were filled with jazz, his favorite music. He told me and two other friends who completed our quartet of revelers how he met Sorin Chifiriuc (a big name in Romanian rock music), who was then the program director at Nova. I openly and wholeheartedly envied Razvan. Obviously, after he warmed up his seat a bit, I asked him to put in a good word for me, maybe there was a vacant position for a “DJ” at the first private radio in Romania, which debuted on the air during the New Year’s Eve between 1989 and 1990. He listened to my request, and on a rainy autumn afternoon, I walked on foot through Regie towards the north direction, to the Nova headquarters, which was on the top floor of the Giulesti Theater, in the tower. I had with me sixteen pirate cassettes bought from stalls, of those that technically sounded the best. The tracks were queued, meaning the tape was in sync with the beginning of the songs. The understanding was that I was to appear on a test broadcast with a resident presenter, who would introduce me as his guest. I was supposed to speak live on the microphone, to present the music, while he would provide the technical part and be alert if I fainted from excitement. Of course, this way of selecting a radio presenter or DJ was somewhat controversial, but it was Chifi’s method, and Chifi was always an original in his way. One thing was clear: in this way, you could immediately see a person’s ability to control their emotion in front of the open microphone and improvise for a minute in correct Romanian language, with a pleasant voice, without making too much of a fool of oneself. At that time, the audience was on the one hand quite permissive (anything could be done on the radio) but, paradoxically, much more selective than today in certain respects. For example, grammar was a criterion. Today it is no longer the case.
I was walking through the swamps of Giulești trying to suppress my emotions, completely forgetting that in high school I had often appeared in various shows where I recited and sang (sometimes well, sometimes embarrassingly). In the summer of ’87, I had performed a sketch (stolen – meaning written by others and heard by me on a cassette) alongside three boys from Craiova who were then called Blondo Umano – later the comedy group Vacanța Mare (back then, much better). In other words, I had a “live” experience worth considering, which should have saved me from stage fright. I didn’t know that stage fright is a microphone’s best friend, the one who gives the adrenaline necessary for a decent presence. Not in excess, of course. I arrived at the Radio Nova headquarters. There, someone, I think another director, Virgil Ruta, an architect by profession, led me into the studio. On a table was the mixer, on the right and left at the same level – two semi-professional Technics turntables, and in front of them, half a meter higher than the level of the mixer, was a double Denon cassette deck. I know that some of those who read or listen to this story may not know what broadcasting tools I’m talking about, but if they do a search on Google, they will find them and understand how radio broadcasting was done before the first app that mixes your songs to your desired beat appeared. Chifi wasn’t there; I was to meet him in a completely different context in a few years.