Commercial stations solve this problem by using what are called tape cartridges. Tape cartridges have all the spots needed on them. The DJ merely inserts the cartridge he wants, and pushes a button when he is ready for it. He also has a high speed record changer, to cut down the dead air time between records. With a tape cartridge system and high speed changers, there is no need for a separate controlman--the DJ does the whole show himself.

But WHRB likes it controlmen, and they like their job. The members have no desire to replace men with machines. There are many WHRBies, in fact, who know very little about music, (at least when they come, and before they have spent hundreds of hours in a controlman), but whose interest is purely technical. Bob Kalayan '67, this year's head controlman, does nothing but technical work, and, he says, "the more complicated it is, the more fun." It takes only five or six hours to train a controlman to minimal standards, but beyond that, there is all kinds of scope for a good man. What a controlman really likes is "har"--short for harassment. The more shifts from one tape to another, or from tape to live broadcast; the more "splits"--when there is one thing to be run on AM and another at the same time on FM; the more times he is recording something that will be used later in the show as well as controlling "air"; and the more times something nearly goes wrong and the controlman practically has to see to one tape with his foot and another with his teeth, the better it is.

The idea is to make things as complicated as possible without committing a "feep"--a mistake that goes out over the air--a heinous crime for any good controlman. And the emphasis is always on "elegance"--such as determining the point at which a record should be started down to the exact groove.

The famous reading period orgies are another way to add some spice to the esoteric life, and they are extremely popular with both listeners and the members. As Webb puts it, "Orgies are a chance for CM's like me to let their hair down." He is responsible for the orgy of War Horses--classical music other stations might play, but which WHRB would never touch on a regular show--Beethoven's Fifth, perhaps the Ninth, Dvorak's New World Symphony, and "almost all of Tchaikovsky." Other members offer orgies of "Mothers Day request music," Bossa Nova, Muddy Waters, Mozart, or "Music in E flat."

The orgies, the controlman's devotion to complication and elegance, and the station camaraderie are all steps to remaining happy while esoteric. And if few members stay active throughout their college careers, there is a steady procession of candidates who want to work and who have real technical skill and who have real technical skill and musical interest. The station has both devoted members and devoted listeners, and if it does not have a large Harvard-Radcliffe audience, WHRB considers that one of its minor worries. The college is there, but it is incidental.

Strange things do happen on the AM circuit to the College, though. A Cliffie once picked up her phone to make a call, and was slightly suprised to hear music coming out of the receiver. It turned out to be the same music WHRB was playing, so the Cliffie hastened to call the men who live under Mem Hall. "Do you know," she said, "that I can hear WHRB on my telephone?" The WHRB man did not know this, but he was equal to the occasion: "Turn on your radio and you can hear us even better," he retorted.

She didn't, but he probably would not have cared--being protected by his knowledge that, somewhere, over in Boston, in far corners of Cambridge, in the 'academic underground," there were countless esoteric households who were listening to good music, and not over their phones. --each of them sincerly thanking him for never letting the Beetles, Baez, or Beethoven's Fifth clutter his "air," and for remembering to play their favorite Renaissance music