If you play in a band, you never forget the first time you hear one of your songs on the radio. I still remember that night last November: me and the rest of Balanced Breakfast were piled into the van, on our way to a special one-night engagement at Ground Rulez Coffeehouse with Pimpotronicasaurus, possibly the most popular funk band in the greater Bloomington area – hell, in all of McRoe County. Obviously, we were already on cloud ten, right?

And were we cranking the radio? You know we were, singing along to that new Chili Peppers jam. Then, as soon as it ended, I heard a most familiar popping bass line…could it be? It could, it could! Balanced Breakfast was rocking the airwaves with the hot new promotional demo single “Bad Influence”, and our lives would never be the same.

“Dude, Jeremy, dude,” I queried, “how’d the radio station get ahold of this? We just recorded it four days ago! Did somebody leak it to the Internet?”

For some reason, nobody else seemed as amped as I was. “No, no, it’s not really on the radio,” was Jeremy’s answer. “It’s on my MP3 player. I’m playing it through the car stereo with my iRiver AFT100 Mobile FM Transmitter.”

“Dude, man, put your iPod away,” I huffed. “Our song is on the radio right now. The radio, dude!”

Jeremy gave me that look he gives me when I put on the wrong bass string. “No, no. The iRiver AFT100 plugs into any audio player with a headphone jack and broadcasts a signal through a nearby FM radio. I can play my MP3s on any FM frequency-”

“Man, will you can the technobabble and let me enjoy this? After two and a half years in the music industry, I feel like I’ve earned this moment, you know?”

Well, that shut him up. I sat back and let “Bad Influence” wash over me, the heady rush of fame making my heartbeat pop like that bassline. As we cruised down the main drag, University Ave., I angled the van’s side window out, put my mouth down by the opening, and yelled triumphantly, “Balanced Breakfast owns this town!” That night’s gig at Ground Rulez became a legend in central McRoe County rock lore, and our radio play must’ve brought out the crowds – there were at least 50 people in that place, and not all of them were there for Pimpotronicasaurus. It was the high point of my career to date. Sure, it sucked when the guys kicked me out of the band later that night, but for one brief bright shining golden moment, I was in a band that got played on the radio. Hey, you know anybody who’s looking for a bass player?

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