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Former WTJU deejays get behind the mic

Reunions Weekend will have a way-back, play-back soundtrack.

As part of student-run radio station WTJU’s 50th anniversary celebration, show hosts from throughout the eclectic station’s history will return to the airwaves over Reunions Weekend, May 31 through June 3. Longtime station manager Chuck Taylor expects to welcome as many as 200 former staffers, several of whom will get behind the microphone—many for the first time since their days on Grounds.

Page Nelson (Col ’76) will revive the chamber music show he did for 10 years after graduation. Classical announcers—including Boyd Tinsley (Col ’86), who hosted a show for five years in the late 1980s before attaining mega-star status with the Dave Matthews Band—generally spent an hour in research for every hour that they were on the air, Nelson says. “My four years as an undergraduate were really my preparation for my real education, which was at the station,” he says.

Marcia Doran (Col ’78) will bring back her eight-year rock ’n’ roll show, “Rock ’n’ Ruin,” which once aired “anything and everything” from George Jones to the Sex Pistols. “I’m probably going to stay away from the weird stuff,” she says, “although I don’t think I could do anything too terribly weird, because it probably got weirder after I left.”

Taylor says current staffers will help alumni with the newfangled controls, though the alums may have to demonstrate how to play the station’s old vinyl LPs. Afterward, the deejays will take home a shiny CD of their performance.