Small radio station in Montclair plays a song over and over again
4 minutes reading time
Why Boyz II Men plays endlessly on 91.9 FM in Montclair
George Louvis, the operator of WVRM, is known for playing “I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men on a loop.
Courtesy of George Louis
George Louvis has been broadcasting WVRM on shortwave from his office on Valley Road since the late 1990s. The signal is weak, reaching only one block between Bellevue and Lorraine Avenue via antennas.
Unknowing listeners tuned to 91.9 FM while driving through the Uptown shopping district are delighted to find the signal playing its only program: a one-minute loop of Boyz II Men’s 1994 hit “I’ll Make Love to You” on repeat ad infinitum. But the irritating broadcast is not a disrespectful prank. Or, if it’s a joke at anyone’s expense, it’s at Louvis, who has pumped the signal into Upper Montclair’s airwaves for more than 15 years.
“The mystery behind it is what has kept people entertained,” Louvis said from his home in the Midwest — though he still returns to New Jersey regularly. “I feel an obligation to keep it running until the machine gives up the ghost.”
Specifically, the machine is a DGX 1050 Drive By Broadcasting transmitter. These were made for commercial use by companies to advertise upcoming special offers or broadcast music over a store’s PA system, according to Louvis, who rented them to car dealerships and shopping centers that played their advertisements to passing motorists on a frequency chosen by the company.
In August 1999, Louvis had installed a transmitter in his office above his family’s former restaurant – now renamed the Montclair Diner – and was running advertisements for businesses along the small shopping street. That Christmas, he hooked up a five-disc CD player to the transmitter and broadcast a mix of Christmas carols and Christmas radio plays from the 1930s and 1940s.
When he returned to work on December 26, 1999, everyone in the restaurant downstairs told him how much they enjoyed the nostalgic Christmas shows like Fibber McGee and Molly. WVRM, or “Village Radio Montclair,” was born.
Louvis rented copper wire from the phone company to send his broadcast to several transmitters he set up in friends’ homes around town, including one he installed on the roof of City Hall. He played music in a classic rock format and created original, Montclair-relevant programs, interviewed residents live and produced a talk show called Sports Yak, hosted by two regular WFAN callers.
He soon moved WVRN to the Internet, but live broadcasting proved prohibitively expensive.
“It cost $3,000 a month to have a stream that could serve 10 listeners. I saw that as the future and wanted to be a part of it. But I was too far ahead of that wave and it crashed on me,” Louvis said. “I couldn’t sell enough ads to recoup the costs.”
By uploading audio files of WVRM’s live broadcasts to a website – a harbinger of the podcasting boom – he was able to increase his listenership and streamline the sale of advertising space to companies. Likewise, he no longer had any use for the countless transmitters he had set up in Montclair, at least until his friend Gary asked him if he could borrow one for a party.
Caught in a loop
The DGX 1050 has an additional feature that allows the user to record a 60-second audio loop directly into the device, allowing the user to broadcast the short message instead of a live feed. If power goes out during a broadcast, the device will automatically revert to the recorded loop once power is restored.
After he got all his transmitters back, his friend Gary asked him if he could borrow one for a party he was having at his house. Louvis has trouble remembering exactly when that happened, but he estimates it was around 2007, and WVRM had already been off the air for several years.
The friend had problems with neighbors who were quick to call the police if his music was too loud, so he developed a trick where he could use one of Louvis’ transmitters to pump his playlist into various FM radios set up in his yard. This way, each radio could play the music quietly, but audibly wherever the guests were.
When the party was over, Gary gave the transmitter back to Louvis, who put it on a shelf in his office and forgot about it. “At some point there was a power outage in the building and the loop started playing. I have no idea because I’m not listening, I don’t even think about the thing,” he said.
“Why on earth he recorded that one-minute loop of Boyz II Men, I don’t know,” Louvis said. “I can only assume that when he tried to do the live broadcast, he pressed the wrong button and ended up recording it.”
Eventually, a video surfaced on YouTube showing an agitated driver driving down Valley Road between Bellevue and Lorraine Avenue, with the sweet 90s Motown hit playing over and over on 91.9 FM. Friends alerted Louvis to the video.
“I didn’t want to turn it off because people went there to see it,” he said. “After a year or two, I turned it off because I thought, ‘This is just stupid.’ But I didn’t bother unplugging it. I just pressed stop.” Another power outage cut off the connection to his office, and the loop began transmitting again. Over and over and over.
Louvis seems to be trapped in his own loop.
You cannot choose your inheritance
It’s amusing how much praise the station gets from the locals, even though this particular song might not have been Louvis’ first choice – he’s a bigger fan of the oft-forgotten R&B trio Tony! Toni! Toné! But rather than any nostalgic slow jam, he’d rather it be one of his songs.
His current office, where the station is located, was once the Stardust Recording Studio, which Louvis ran from 1981 to 2010. He and others have mixed, produced and engineered songs for Diana Ross, Earth Wind & Fire and the soundtrack to Whoopi Goldberg’s 1996 racial farce “The Associate” in the cozy studio over the years.
He sang onstage at the Grammy Awards and was “a rock star” in the 1980s when he played concerts along I-95 with a band called The Persuaders, he said. One of his songs is set to be featured in a movie soon.
Given all his achievements, Louvis can’t help but smile at the fact that an inside joke in his town, in which he was both victim and perpetrator, attracts the most attention of all the things on his resume.
One day, he went into his office and found a stack of T-shirts illustrated by an anonymous fan who wanted to promote the station. The graphic jokingly misrepresented Village Radio Montclair’s call sign as “WBYZ.”
“I find it funny that this should be my legacy,” he said.
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