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An interview with Kay & Meg,
two of the famous Radio City Diskettes
We caught up with the venerable duo at their high-stepping reunion
RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL. Heralded as the most exciting showing of software since Gypsy Rose Lee dropped her drawers here some forty years ago, the third annual Computer-Fest opened to a record-breaking attendance.
There were many new hardware and software products showcased, but the real story here was the entertainment.
They came from near and far. PC enthusiasts, mainframe programmers, vaudeville has-beens. All to see the reunion of the world-famous Radio City Diskettes, Kay and Meg, performing for the first time since their tragic head-crash of '81 (rumored to have been brought on by a drunken disk-driver at John Sculley's bachelor party).
 "It's just great to be back in the spin of things," quick-witted Kay said in a post-show interview. "I've wanted this come-back for a long time, but it's been tough convincing Meg. You know, she's always been the dense one."
Waiting in the wings was Meg and Kay's understudy or 'backup' as it's known in the trade lingo. "I'm here just in case," she said. "And I know the routine verbatim."
To be sure, talk of their obsolescence and antiquation in a world where hard disks and CD ROM/Optical technology are ubiquitous was not in earshot; just a room full of sentimental hackers who remembered the good ol' days when a box of SSSD Fuji's was the cat's meow and not the rat's...well, not like it is today.
It's been a long hard road for Kay and Meg. Formatted at an early age, they got their start in the often turbulent Osborne 1 days.
As Kay tells it, "some days we didn't know if we were gonna be product, data or workspace. I'll tell you, it was rough. We were passed in and out of so many drives, it was like nobody cared about us. And a lot of those early programmers never heard of a head cleaner either, so a lot of the drives were quite dirty. I still have track marks from those bad times. That's why Meg and I go around to the shops telling the new kids, 'hey, if you're not sure what you're gonna be, use some write-protection.'"
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Their second dilemma came with the advent of affordable home computers in the late 70's/early 80's; the Ataris, the Commodores, the PCjr.s. "It was a bad time for both of us," Meg recalled. "Nobody had two disk drives. Every-one was urging us to go solo; but you know, Kay and I are a team. When they bought us, they bought us bulk."
And after seeing these two perform, no one could deny that their magnetic personalities, like the magnetic sheathing that they're adorned in, binds them together forever like Boole to Babbage, Wozniak to Jobs, Kookla to Fran and Ollie.
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Esc: 400 Years of Computer Humor
by Chris Miksanek
click for details |
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