PORTLAND, Maine — The phone rang in the middle of the night and Jim Rand answered it.
On the other end of the line, a man had a request. He wanted to hear a song by The 13th Floor Elevators.
Rand was alone, broadcasting his regular Saturday night rock ‘n’ roll radio show from WMPG’s Bedford Street studio on the University of Southern Maine campus. Rand told the man he couldn’t play that particular record because he didn’t have it.
“You don’t?” the man said. “Hang on, I’ll be right over.”
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.
“And there he was, with a white label, DJ-only, promo copy of the record,” Rand said. “I played it and never saw him again.”
That was decades ago, but that kind of direct, human-to-human contact has always made the radio station stand out from the static on southern Maine’s crowded airwaves….
