I was going through some old boxes last night and hit the motherlode: A cache of 8 bazillion cassette tapes. Airchecks from my days at Wink 104, and … wow. They’re funny. I might post some once I retrieve my cassette deck from the attic (right now they’re being played on my cassette/radio alarm clock). About the only thing I could load in were my shouts, which you can hear here and here.

Why Dave Sheppard? First off, you don’t use your real name in radio. You get psycho stalkers tracking you down and calling you at home — or worse, showing up at your door. So why not Sheppard? It sticks, right? I think Vonda Sheppard had a big hit at the time, and between Late Night Lenny, Christopher Knight, and myself, it sounded like a pretty good idea.

I wound up leaving radio forever in the summer of 2002 for a variety of reasons. Mostly because it wasn’t enjoyable anymore. Since everything was controlled by the computer, my job had been reduced to reading a card, waiting 20 minutes, and repeating. And in that sense, radio wasn’t fun. I had also just installed my XM receiver, so I was listening less and less to FM.

I left on the best possible terms — I had a great time working with the people there. Wink was the first station I worked at where the full-timers treated us part-timers like actual human beings, like we were just as important on the staff list as they were. In the same way, it was probably the best place to have hung up my headphones.