Every April, Stevens Point is the location of the World’s Largest Trivia Contest. It originates and emanates from WWSP-90FM, the student-run radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. 90FM is where I went to college. Well, okay, officially I went to college at UW-SP, but no matter how many classes I took or what the diploma says, I majored in college radio.

I spent five years helping to run that contest and have been playing in it ever since. The team I’m on was in fact started by radio station alumni and probably about half of the forty people who currently call themselves Cakers logged some amount of time at the radio station. A couple of them will be on the air there this weekend, reading questions. We have a deep connection to this contest and each other. That band of brothers effect comes into play, a sense that we earned the right to spend this weekend laughing, drinking and goofing around because we went through the toil of staging a fifty-four hour contest from some 11,000 people.

Somewhere along the line, we adopted a theme song. We have a piece of team lore that goes along with it, but, honestly, I’m not entirely sure that it’s true. What I do know is that the song is so entrenched in our team persona–complete with awkward but effective choreography that naturally developed–that it feels like it belongs to us. That, of course, is part of the beauty of the way we connect to music, especially pop songs. Sometimes we identify with them so closely that it begins to feel like the song was written for us, about us, that someone tapped into our deeply felt thoughts and convictions and found a way to express them better that we ever could. There’s not a single line in the song that really speaks to me (well, maybe, “we are far too young and clever”) but the entirety of it represents me and the people that I thrill to spend three strange days with every April.

Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Come On Eileen” (live)

(Disclaimer: I’m not even sure where I got this version. Someone posted it on the Interweb, and, like a good Caker, I dutifully downloaded it. So thanks to the unidentified person who originally uploaded it. And, of course, I’ll take it down if some tough record executives or surly midnight runners insist upon it.)