Rustin Thompson

One of my favorite, solitary games as a kid was playing deejay in my bedroom. I had a turntable, an 8-track tape player, and a cassette recorder, which I used to record made-up radio commercials. I’d play my 45 rpms, my LPs, and my tapes for hours at a time, talking into a cardboard microphone, while trying to avoid dead air. When I had a chance to be a deejay for real in college at the UW’s KCMU, I immediately produced a show called The South’s Gonna Do It, the forerunner of today’s Road Songs. I eventually graduated, KCMU became KEXP, and it wasn’t until I knocked on the door of KBCS in 1998 that I was able to get back on the air. Long live radio and KBCS!