My worst Booboo on the air:

I had my most embarrassing moment as a radio DJ this week. (Fortunately, my worst moment did NOT occur during the 75 minutes that a microphone was live without my knowledge; I muddled through that long ago period of time without saying anything embarrassing or obscene.)

I was playing a Bach cantata on a record. The record is part of a set, the complete cantatas, that we have at the station. Most records have one cantata on each side, some long cantatas take up a whole record.

I was playing a 28 minute cantata. Suddenly I realized it was going to end about two and a half minutes too soon. I scrambled to get a CD ready to play and the record ended. I came on the air, announced the piece and then said something like this:

”And this is an unusual Bach cantata, because it doesn’t end with a chorale. Unless … let me check the record …”

I flipped the record over. There was a lot of small text on the label and it was upside down, but I saw at once that the other cantata started in the MIDDLE of the second side. I put that side on the air and it played for the expected 2.5 minutes, concluding, of course, with a chorale.