Monday, 21 January 2002 | Bob and Doug

Not only did my brother listen to Top 40 religiously every week, he made detailed lists of each song and artist, notebooks full of statistical information waiting to be calculated, waiting to reveal how long Borderline had been at Number 1, and the speed with which King of Pain slipped down the charts. And he recorded. Not all of the songs, of course, but the new ones he approved of, with maybe a long-distance dedication or two thrown in.

Combined with a weekly dose of Solid Gold, the pull was too strong for me, and I began listening, too, picking out favorite songs, rooting for their success, and sometimes even composing my own awkward dances to their seductive beats. Before long we were recording joint-compilations, songs chopped off at the beginnings thanks to a windy DJ or a tardy hand, sloppily blended with commercials at the ends.

In between the songs my brother and I would talk; he would recite Bob and Doug skits, often referring to me as Doug, attempting to rope me in as his partner. I wasn't very good at it. I didn't know the lines—in fact I didn't have anything at all to say—though that didn't deter me from blathering on. If I couldn't think of anything to talk about, my fallback was usually making sound effects: producing a noise (such as a whistle) in one microphone and carrying it to the other, so that the headphones listener would get a special treat. Again and again and again.

Homemade commercials about breath deodorant and toilet paper. Fake news reports. An interview with Ronald Reagan. By our third album, we got tired or bored or older, and stopped including so much commentary and focused more on early '80s pop.

So I'm in the process of preserving these embarrassing relics on CD, because I just acquired the capability, and because I like to do that sort of thing, despite the fact that I don't want anyone to hear them and that I'd like to remember my childhood mind as being less obnoxious than the tapes suggest. So far I've recorded two tapes, and today I made the CD covers, incorporating the original tape covers my brother designed. He pretty obviously liked The Police at the time.