Tayadore Goosel and the Big Booboo

For those just joining the party, you might want to check out my previous workplace blogs, "The Man that Changed My Life, Tayadore Goosel", "Tayadore Goosel Has Left the Building", and "Tayadore Goosel 3: The Return of Stupid"

I am a man that does not like to make or admit mistakes, but I made a big one Monday night. Every Monday night from 6 to 8pm I run a Texas music show with a great artist by the name of Monty Russell as my co-host. This is a great show and one of my favorite parts of my job, as it's the only time I get to choose the music we play.

"Texas Music," for the uninitiated, is a broad title applied to pretty much any "alternative" country style. This includes: Americana - think Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young , Johnny Cash or Rodney Crowell; Red Dirt - think Cross Canadian Ragweed, or The Randy Rogers Band; Texas Swing - think Asleep at the Wheel; Outlaw Country - think Willie and Waylon or David Alan Coe; as well as Roots Music - think blues, bluegrass, and swamp-pop. This show does not include singers like Tim McGraw or Kenny Chesney. It does include people like Jim Lauderdale, Radney Foster, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Hank Williams III.

Some of these singers and songwriters can be pretty frank. The music styles we play occasionally contain explicit lyrics (in subject matter and language). Of course like any non-satellite radio station we are governed by the FCC's standards and practices. Profanity, and vulgarity are not okay. This is where my booboo comes in.

At about 7 o'clock, we got a request for a Hank Williams III song. It's called, "Not Everybody Likes Us." The album contains explicit lyrics, and is marked accordingly but there are several songs on the album that have been released for radio play and are "clean." Monty and I have listened to the album before and verified the "clean" songs. We both were "fairly" certain this song was one of the ones that we had checked off as okay. It was not. Two minutes into the song, ole Hank lets loose with the big one, a word (that while humorous in a Bruce Willis action flick) is a big no-no on country radio. As Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" puts it, "I said Fudge. Only I didn't say FUDGE. I said THE word, the mother of all swear words." Yep, Hank III dropped the F-bomb on my family radio station last night. Whoops.

We only got one complaint, and I apologized profusely for it, directly to her, and again on the air. I immediately called my boss and let him know what had happened, and left a note for my program director. This morning I apologized again to both of them, and the salesperson that is responsible for the accounts that sponsor the show. So far, everyone has been really understanding and not given me a lot of grief about it. I'm definitely not the first person who has played something they shouldn't have, and I won't be the last. It is however incredibly embarrassing, and a little nerve wracking. I don't know all the legalities, and last night that had me worried. I sort of felt like a criminal, and all I did was play a less-than-kosher song on the radio. Howard Stern I am not.

The point of all of this (other than soliciting a little sympathy) is to say if in a couple of days I start writing four or five blogs a day, know that I have been fired for my booboo and have now taken up writing blogs as my only occupation (that is very unlikely to happen). Or, if in a couple of days I have stopped writing blogs, reading and commenting on blogs or responding to emails know that I have been fired for my booboo and am now employed double time at McDonald's and The Waffle House (this is slightly more likely to happen).

As an employee, I feel mortified that I screwed up on the job and could cause some negative financial repercussions for my employer. As an artist, I'm a little exhilarated having just taken on "the man" for the first time. **Note**: I didn't really take on "the man" as it was unintentional in the first place, I stopped once I realized I was doing something wrong, and "the man" was not informed of my attack **End of Note**. Still, if I'm a famous writer in five years I'm totally going to embellish this story and use it as a credibility builder.