Up All Night

July 23, 2012
From a young age, disc jockey Miller seemed destined to sit behind the studio mike of one of New York’s most powerful FM stations introducing the latest and greatest rock albums to an audience of night owls. In her entertaining, though sometimes tentative and self-deprecating, memoir, she recalls that even as a child she lived in Radioland because it would get directly inside her head, and she could hear catchy and revealing songs as well as the patter of DJs such as Cousin Brucie and B. Mitchel Reed. Miller began collecting 45s with the money she saved by scrimping on school lunch, and she developed a filing system for her records that included notes on the music from several local radio stations. At the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s, working as a music producer for her college radio station, she sees a woman behind the mike spinning classical records, and in that moment she realizes that maybe she can actually talk on the radio, too. In spite of her deep knowledge of the music and her innate ability to connect listeners with these sounds through her smooth delivery, Miller faces the entrenched chauvinism of the male-dominated world of rock radio and openly chronicles her disappointments and her successes as she moves to the pinnacle of her career as New York’s premiere female disc jockey at WPLJ and WNEW. Fiercely honest, she narrates her failed marriages, her friendships with rockers like Springsteen, whose music she introduced to New Yorkers, and Paul and Linda McCartney, and her lifelong struggles with health problems, including breast cancer, all the time maintaining her sense of humor and the grace that has made her such a wonderful companion to listeners all these years.

August 1, 2012
An autobiography by a veteran female DJ in New York City. After four decades on air, Miller still works as a DJ at Clear Channel's Q104.3 FM and Sirius/XM radio. In her debut book, she chronicles her entire life, beginning with her 1950s childhood in Fort Bragg, N.C., Brooklyn, N.Y., and suburban Nassau County, where she grew up in a somber household with Jewish parents whose lives had been "tainted by tragedy" stemming from World War II. Music-related memories include being riveted by Elvis's performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and attending a Beatles concert in 1964. "The current music was just about my only source for the alien but evidently essential information about socializing," she writes, "since such things were never spoken about at my house." Miller also discusses her college career at the University of Pennsylvania, where she started working in radio. Subsequently, she worked as a DJ in Philadelphia, and then New York, focusing on classic and progressive rock. An early fan of Bruce Springsteen, Miller describes meeting and/or interviewing celebrities such as Lily Tomlin, Paul and Linda McCartney and Murray Head, as well as briefly dating Steven Tyler. Darker chapters of her personal life include a long-running battle with breast cancer, which followed a doctor's misdiagnosis, a costly divorce and her struggle with uterine cancer. Throughout the book, Miller's voice remains upbeat and energetic, despite the shadow of her family's mysterious health issues. Her enthusiasm for rock 'n' roll vividly colors her life, if not these pages. Of interest to aspiring or working DJs, but the mostly tepid stories won't hold wide appeal.

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April 1, 2012

You bet that there are readers anticipating this memoir by the country's top female disc jockey, who got into progressive rock radio while at the University of Pennsylvania and eventually made it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here she tells her story, revealing her battle with cancer and fears about an unnamed illness that has taken many family members early in life.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.