Katherine Spiers

socalfood:

Midnight Snack: Canter’s Deli with Nicole Cifani

On becoming an on-air DJ:

Henry: How’s that work? You send him hour’s worth of music, and he just plays it to gauge audience reaction?

Nicole: Yep. He gave me free reign. He said, “Go for it, do what you want.” I remember I was out having drinks with people that night, and I came home and saw an e-mail from him that said, “I’m going to put it on the air in ten minutes,” and I was kind of drunk, dancing around in my apartment like “what!” with a bottle of wine in one hand. Maybe it was two buck chuck, I’m not going to confirm that by any means.

Henry: You can confirm it. No one’s above that.

Nicole: That’s true. Especially the Cab. So after the hour ended, he got back to me and said, “I’m going to play it again at midnight.” It was really exciting.

Henry: Were you nervous putting together that hour? Or did you just know - this is what it is, and this is going to be great.

Nicole: Yeah, I feel like it was a valve that needed to be released. Like there was pressure building. I needed the outlet. I was training at KCRW for a little while to be an on-air DJ, but it was really bad timing because Nick Harcourt was leaving, and Jason Bentley was coming in, and you know, he’s getting hit left and right as music directors do there, but I just kept practicing, and I kept working on it, and I was ready.

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