I heard several people say that
if you were under 30 and lived
in Boston or Cambridge and weren’t
a student at Harvard, Brandeis or MIT
you were either in a band or managed one.
I went to college in upstate New York,
but I was quite capable of managing
two turntables, the microphone and
an ancient tape cart machine,
always timing my intro to songs
to cover the musical space noted
on the album jackets to keep
listeners from recording entire songs,
unless it happened to be that one
I knew my audience would
really love, and then I’d warn them
when it was coming and hope
the label reps weren’t paying attention
so the promo copies kept coming in.
And no, although I wished I was,
I was never in a band or managed one,
but they did court me for airplay.