The DJ Rollie D Story

December is here, and that means that everyone is pumped for either Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa.  Or maybe you're feeling Festivus or another holiday that I'm not quite aware of.  Regardless of what you celebrate at this time of the year, one thing you're bound to see wherever you go is Christmas lights.  They adorn homes, get thrown up into trees, and even get strung over stoplights to create the most magical sight you've ever seen as you drive past or through a town. Back when I was a young lad, my parents would take my sister and I over to the small community of Mountain Iron and we would drive around the newer addition on the south end of town off of Highway 7 (the name escapes me).  This is where the community went all out in Mountain Iron to my knowledge, and most of (if not all of) the homes were decorated in bright lights of many colors of the rainbow.  After that, we'd head over to Olcott Park in Virginia, where the bigger light displays were set

I was exposed to country music at a young age.  My late father would turn it on in the truck and there we'd be, listening to 99.9 Radio USA, hearing the voices of radio personalities such as Scott Hanson, Jessie B Hawkins, and Justin "The Big Deal" depending on what time of the day we were listening.  The music was always so new and fresh to me back then, about 2005-06, and there seemed to be a lot less artists and bands on the country radio spectrum than there are today.  Perhaps we were in a period of transition at that time? One of the bands that spoke to me a lot back then was the country group Rascal Flatts .  My mother always found them to be whiny, but through their songs such as "Mayberry", "Prayin For Daylight", and of course "Life Is A Highway" from the 2006 Disney smash hit Cars , they could turn their vocals into something amazing in my mind through the use of harmony and amazing syncopation and instrumenation.  In 2004

When I was younger, I just wanted to be a "car driver" when I grew up.  No, not a cabbie or a limousine driver, just a guy who drives cars.  I guess perhaps I was ready for the road at age 4, despite what my parents told me, up to the fact that they'd go to jail if either my sister or I drove the car, even just to Virginia.  Still though, my aspirations held on through most of my childhood.   If I can recall correctly, my dream career went through several changes as I got older.  After car driver, it was something along the lines of firefighter or doctor, also known as those professions every child wants to be around the time they hit Kindergarten.   Then it went to meteorologist, voice actor, and finally to news anchor/comedian/radio host, which is where I'm at now.  I also touched on a few other fields in high school, including urban engineer (too much math), and school principal/superintendent (too much schooling to get a license).  I've also wanted to

I was six when one morning at home my family was called to be informed that my aunt had passed away.  All of a sudden, we were heading to Kansas City for about a week to attend her funeral.  The experience was different. I barely knew her even though she had lived with us for about two years.  I guess I just didn't have the firmest grasp on "not coming back" just yet. It was either the day before the funeral or a little before the funeral when we were attending a visitation.  It was my first time seeing an open casket.  My aunt looked so peaceful, almost as if she didn't collapse just a few days prior.  Of course I now know that morticians will dress a body up and put some makeup on before that day, even using a scent sometimes to cover the smell of no longer being present on Earth, but that day was different. I never cried that entire week.  While I was sad that my aunt had passed away, I still felt as if I would see her again someday, and that came from wh

There's just something magical about waking up on some random morning in October or November and looking out your window to see that snow flew for the first time overnight, and your town or yard is now covered in a blanket of the fluffy white stuff.  If you're like me, you feel like a little kid again, and remember the times when you drug your little sister through the yard on a sled, tripping and falling down the whole way, or you remember that time you wiped out on the sliding hill in the nearby town and ended up with a bloody chin.  Or maybe even you remember the time you and your family built snowmen out in the front yard and you would roll up a ball that was way too big for whatever else you were working on, so you'd stop at the first ball. Winter is by no means my favorite season, especially now in the Fargo-Moorhead Area.  Basically, November and December are the fun parts of it, when Christmas lights start to go up around the town and your family goes on a li

This week, millions of small children and children at heart will take to the streets in celebration of Halloween.  They'll dress up in lots of different costumes and say "trick or treat" for candy bars ranging from Twix to Almond Joy, and maybe even get a popcorn ball laced with lead (I'm only kidding).  It's a lot of fun, and a small part of me longs for the days when my family would walk around the Thunderbird Mall in Virginia and get candy from the store employees.  Of course this was back before about half of that mall shut down. But there is one thing about Halloween that I don't like, and it technically applies to the rest of the year too.  It's the part that the little kids don't see because their parents would rather they not be exposed to it, and some adults and older children don't even spend time watching it either. If you haven't guessed already, I'm talking about the art of scaring people and watching horror movies,

It was a few weeks ago that a friend of mine turned to me and said "Rollie, you're an old soul."  Realizing that he was probably right but still in denial myself, I asked some of my closer friends this question, and the answer they gave was also "Yes".  Now that I feel older than I really am (21), I start to realize some things, and I'd like to point those out while also doing some internet research on this ideal, because even little things like this are things I feel should be fact based, and not just solely on my opinions.  The first thing I wanted to find out was what it actually meant to be an old soul, so I turned to the internet, which I know you can't believe everything you read on there, but I feel  this article  from the website Psychic Today at least gets us a basic description of what it means to be an old soul.   Per the article, "Most old souls feel a certain disconnect from the Earth, and most are inherently aware that they a

Being a radio personality and a DJ, it's more or less an imperative that I listen to music on a daily basis to continue exploring and curating new music for the various things I use it for.  Some of the songs I find get listened to on an almost daily basis by me, and others may only be checked out every so often.  Others are used solely for my drumming practice and not much else, if anything past that.  And then there's that collection that I hear once or twice and decide never to listen to again.  It's a wide mix. But the problem I always have is trying to describe what my favorite type of music to listen to is to my friends and co-workers.  Listening across a wide variety of genres gives me this issue and I don't really have a favorite genre, though I do have a mixture of favorite sounds that make me ten times more likely to put a song on repeat for my personal collection.  It's a strange criteria for me, but after I describe it a little bit you may be able t

This week my Astronomy class was supposed to go out and look at the stars and planets out near the Buffalo River, which is about twenty minutes east of Fargo-Moorhead.  I was so excited to get out into the country side and see the universe so close up, as it had been a while.  But when the clouds rolled in, I was stuck and couldn't see them anymore. Having grown up in the countryside from birth to graduation, I'm no stranger to looking up into the night sky and seeing the stars come out, dancing across the sky and twinkling the whole way.  I saw the Northern Lights a few times too, and even some of the most basic constellations appeared for me after I learned them back in 2006 at the Palucci Planetarium in Hibbing through a fantastic presentation on the night sky.  It was always a truly amazing sight. Living in this area though, I never really see the stars that much anymore.  Everything's covered by the city lights and you have to drive at least fiftee

It was a cold day in February, and I was at the bowling alley with my homies.  The bowling alley we're at uses Touch Tunes to pump out the tunes, and it's a win-win for both parties, because the person paying the money can subject everyone at the bowling alley to their favorite music, and the bowling alley will definitely profit from it. But on this night in February, someone chose to play a certain track, and it was instantaneously music to my ears.  They just had such a great sound, with tambourine and multiple guitars, and I think that's a little bit of sitar that we hear during the instrumental breaks, and then bongos to top it all off.  I had to pull out my phone and crack out Shazam to see what all the ruckus was, and man was I glad I did. Folk-rock band Lord Huron has been doing what they do for just over five years now.  They've released three albums and gone on the road several times to share their music with those who purchase tickets to their concert

Chances are that sometime in the last year, you've watched something on a streaming service, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime TV, or maybe even Crackle.  When you choose to pay for multiple streaming subscriptions, and finally get a device that supports all of them (thanks Roku!), you don't really want to spend time looking everything over five times to determine what you should watch.  Instead, you want to make your TV time as worth it as the money you're spending on it. So, before you spend time paging through TONS of suggested series, let me ramble off a couple of my favorites.  Some of these are origninals to the streaming service, and others are from different networks that have streaming deals with the services.  Read away Adam Ruins Everything (TruTV/TruTV App) Adam Conover has made a name for himself on TruTV series Adam Ruins Everything by comically debunking major facts/assumptions about everything from the government to the TSA to even the sim

It was at some point during my DJ years that I began to enjoy the occasional can of Monster or Rockstar energy drinks.  I mean, how else was I supposed to get energy fast on the go?  Coffee takes time to brew, and cold coffee wasn't my thing at the time and it probably never will be.  So, I turned to energy drinks.  I soon quit them for a while after I stopped DJing, but then picked them back up again Senior Year with the Lemonade-flavored Rockstars because those tasted delicious and a friend got me hooked, and so I also naturally got into the Monster "x+tea" flavors.  Starting overnights saw me turning to the Xyience brand of fruity deliciousness, but those gave me what felt like heart flutters, so I quit them for a while and moved back to Rockstar, where most recently I've been drinking their "Whipped Strawberry" flavor, anywhere from one to three cans most days.  It seems that to say I'm addicted would be an understatement. Now, the health ma

Back in July while I was in Washington, I took the "Top 10 Album Challenge".  Since I didn't elaborate fully on why each album was one of my favorites, I'd like to do that in this week's blog post.  I have included artwork for each album to make it easier to find on your streaming services or You Tube, and also my favorite song from each album. These are not ranked in order from 1 to 10, but I'm sure you'll be able to tell which ones are my favorites out of the ten listed here. Artist: Zac Brown Band Album Title: Jekyll & Hyde Album Release Date: April 28th, 2015 Discovered By Me: May 2016 Favorite Track: Loving You Easy On "Jekyll & Hyde", the Zac Brown Band truly took genre mashing to the next level, with tracks that both scratch the surface and cut deep across the genres of country, americana, jazz, and even a little bit of hard rock and roll.  They pulled out all the stops, and while a good chunk of their fans dis