2020/01/06 • You’re driving on a long-distance road trip all through the night. You want to get where you’re going. You want to go to bed. Everyone else in the car is sleeping. Three o'clock in the morning is the time when normal people want to sleep.

But you’re not normal. Even though your body wants to sleep, even though your eyes might be drooping, you want to keep going before the sun comes up. Then the sun starts to come up. Even before it’s anything close to dawn, you can see a break in the black, a break in the dark, a tiny narrow band of less black. Then it’s a dark gray line, and then it’s a narrow band of gray, lighter at the bottom, at the horizon. Mountains, maybe, if you’re on the eastern seaboard. Flat in the Midwest. Maybe it’s more of a surprise out west, I don’t know. Maybe the sun just leaps up in front of you. But in the hills and mountains of the eastern seaboard, it creeps.

And you drive toward it as I did, heading back to Massachusetts. Or you see it in the rear-view as I did, heading to Nashville, for no other reason than my friend needed another driver. Driving all night toward the sunrise the darkness feels like a blanket, or a cloak. Protection against the daylight and what it will bring. Where are you going? Someplace fun? Or are you on your way back from someplace fun? Did you fight with your friends? Are they even your friends or people who needed a ride, or who wanted to go to the same place you did, but with a minimum of cash or emotional involvement? No matter how desperately your want to get there, or get home, or wherever, someplace new or someplace old, the dark protects you. You can see other cars just fine - that’s what headlights are for. And there aren’t that many headlights on that stretch of road. Wherever you are, everyone else is asleep, in the car and out in the world. It’s just you and some truckers sharing the road. It’s their road, though, and you’re just passing through.

The sun starts to rise and you get anxious. Sooner or later, or just sooner, you’ll be exposed. And you’ll see everyone else in the car and they’ll see you. The truckers will be able to look down into the your window and see you’re not some badass going it alone, zipping along through the night on your way someplace badass. No, they’ll see your friends, or your roommate, or your sister, or that girl down the hall that you barely know and wish you didn’t. And you’re not some badass, you’re a college student who thinks you’re badass. Not cool.

Even now, in the middle of middle age, 3:00 in the morning is my favorite time to be awake. Especially if I’m not driving. I like the way the air feels outside in the summer in the middle of the night. It’s like something amazing is about to happen, and it’s going to happen to you. Even if nothing happens, you feel like part of some elite badass squadron awaiting orders.

Middle of the night in the winter is a different kind of badass. When it’s 10 F or -10 F it’s crazy to be out if you don’t have to be. So if you are out, in the car, or watching meteor showers, you’re part of an elite, badass and really tough squadron. The badass stargazing squadron. Fine, that’s not actually badass when you say it out loud. But being up and about or up and in the living room at 3:00 in the morning feels secret and special.

Growing up in the 70s, there was nothing more secret and special and badass than overnight radio. Overnight FM radio was the dark side of the magic kingdom that was daytime FM. Deep album cuts, punk singles from England, interviews with insanely cool people I’d never heard of, weird shit like Frank Zappa. There was the King Biscuit Flour Hour. There was Dr. Demento. The radio was always my connection to the world outside of Hatfield, Massachusetts: WAQY Springfield and WMUA UMASS Amherst and WAAF Worcester, all day long. At night I could hear cheering crowds at Fenway 100 miles away, and on really clear nights my radio connected me to New York, with millions of cool, sophisticated people, and not a potato field in sight.

Overnight radio is still badass, if you know where to find it. You hear things normal people don’t hear. You’re up for whatever reason - you can’t sleep. Maybe you’re going home after a party, or after last call. Or you’re driving. You’re coming home off a road trip and you finally pick up your station at the edge of its signal and you know you’ll be in your bed in an hour. Or in your lover’s bed. Or you’re going to work or coming home from work or you’re at work. You hate your coworkers. Everyone looks weird under the lights in the middle of the night. You’re all working overnights for different reasons but you’re all freaks and you’re making that $1.20 differential. So there’s that, and making more money by being up at 3:00 in the morning when everyone else is asleep is badass. Isn’t it?

Anyone listening to the radio at 3:00 in the morning is listening because they want to. Not because the radio is on in a store, or at the office with 20 people around, or in the car on the way to the store. It’s a conscious choice. And the station is a conscious choice. And that’s where it gets good - when you can find it.

When I was on the air at WMPG my regular show was on Sunday at 9:00. Hardly the middle of the night, but at least the FCC regulations eased up after 10:00. I subbed all over the schedule, though, and the best shows were the overnights. I couldn’t do it and keep my day job - I couldn’t maintain regular overnights for more than a few weeks. The Saturday deep overnight guy had a new baby or an old baby or something, and he was out at least once a month, then twice. Then I was doing the overnight three times a month. I loved it.

Being on the air at 3:00 in the morning meant my listeners were listening to the radio on purpose, or with purpose. Sometimes I said stupid shit like “did you ever think the person on the radio was talking to you personally? Well, I am.” That was stupid for security reasons, my own personal safety actually, and it was stupid because I didn’t need to say it. I didn’t need to make it weird between me and my listeners because we were already magical and weird, together. The badass overnight radio listening squadron, reporting for duty.

Can’t sleep? Working nights, looking alien under the fluorescents? On the road, whether by choice or by obligation? Find some overnight radio, with a live DJ and a non-algorithm playlist.

You probably have a community station in your very own community, or you can find one online: WMPG in Portland, Maine is an excellent choice. Or WFMU or KUSF. Find yourself something magical and weird.