The Captain accepts he cannot please everybody, taste in music being what it is, but the veteran deejay must be doing something right.

On this, the tenth anniversary of Power 95, the Captain, aka Keevil Burgess, has again been voted Bermuda's favourite deejay by radio listeners.

According to the Media 2000 Bermuda Media Survey (a survey of all broadcast and print media on the Island), Power 95 FM still remains the number one rated Bermuda radio station through all parts of the day with a 40.4 percent share of radio listeners. Some 586 households were polled with the residents, ranging in age from 13 to 70. They were questioned in detail about their radio listening habits and general media usage.

Two years on and Power remains ZBM's flagship radio entity and the lead radio choice on the Island. Just recently The Captain was also named Bermuda's top radio deejay for the Bermudian magazine's Best of Bermuda Gold Awards 2002.

The Captain, who is also the station's programme manager, was one of the key figures in the launching of Power 95. Certainly he and the station have grown together in popularity, though he is quick to praise the contribution of the other deejays.

Throughout the Captain's morning (6 a.m 11 a.m.) show listeners hear his recorded catch phrase “Captain, play me a tune, tune, tune” which he reveals is his own voice. And when his shift nears completion, he tells his listeners “you can stick me with a fork, ‘cause I'm done”.

Certainly the voice is widely recognised and he is still the Captain whether he is on the air or out with his family.

Sometimes even when he is at home, he will hear a guy on a bike ride by his house and shout out ‘Captain, play me a tune!'.

“It's laughable, but that's Bermuda,” he says with a chuckle.

“They recognise that's my house and they're going to shout out to me, even if I'm not even in the yard.”

And people will often stop him in the street and ask for a certain song to be played. It is a small price to pay for being a celebrity of sorts.

“Overall I definitely feel blessed,” he admits.

“I could be doing some real hard work to make a living, but this is something I enjoy. There is no jealously or animosity towards other ‘jocks' whether they are on competitive stations or are in-house here. I feel good about the ‘jocks' on Power 95, they are all professional, good and bring a different flavour to the station.

“I'm sure there are people who like me and some who don't like me. As a whole Bermudians are very opinionated and they probably also do comparisons with the United States and what they do on radio and what we do.”

The Captain is rarely allowed to be anybody but The Captain when he is in public and requests are not confined to when he is working.

“There are people who constantly hand me notes in the street with requests on them,” he says.

“I could be having a cocktail at the golf club (he is a golf fanatic) and somebody would say ‘Captain, my birthday is tomorrow' and expect me to remember it.

“Years ago when I was driving a cab people would get in and I would say where to and they would ask ‘are you The Captain?' I would get tourists who would say ‘you sound like a broadcaster, the way you speak'.”

The Captain makes it a point to be accommodating to those he meets on the street.

“Actually I like the attention in the right places, I try to acknowledge everybody and speak to everybody,” he says.

“I think I get a lot of respect from all walks of the community, Politicians, business folks, school kids, just about everybody. Everybody knows me... I'm amazed. Recently my wife, daughter and I took a ride on the ferry and a lady who had her daughter with her said ‘go on and speak to him, he's The Captain, we listen to him every morning'.”

He added: “I get good feedback and bad feedback. I must be doing something right, I've been around a long time, more than 18 years. I started on 1340, then went to 1230 which is ZFB and then started up Power 95.”

The Captain explains why the station was launched in 1992.

“With the advent of CDs, the quality of recordings changed and we felt that ZFB was no longer the AM station that Bermudians turned to, that the quality of the AM band was not good enough,” said the Captain.

“We decided to make it an FM station. A group of us got together, some not here now, and decided we would go that way and make it more a music station. However, because it is a very popular station we still play quite a few commercials, even though initially we wanted it to be a more-music-less-talk station.”

The Captain chats every morning with guests. And the selection of music appeals to the younger generation, though the music does vary with the deejay.

“It's very difficult to please everybody in an Island this size, but traditionally ZFB has done that with gospel, reggae, soca, R&B, hip hop,” said the top deejay.

“Most stations in America don't programme this way, they have one format, R&B or jazz, and that's all you get twenty four-seven. Some of our jocks specialise in reggae more than others, but I tend to have an all hit show...soca, reggae, R&B, and try to give it to them all in the morning.”

The station has three main deejays during the week, The Captain, Don Bassett and Wayne Lottimore. On the weekends there is Brother Jack (Herman Robinson), Radigun (Jay Philpott) and Cousin Juicy.

The Captain also has a co-host for part of the morning shift, Ray Love, with whom he discusses current events.

“Last week it was the Police brutality in California, and we will touch on it lightly, to give the rider in his car something to rider in his car something to think about, to go to work and talk about,” said The Captain.

“We're covering a lot of the bases and I'm sure some young people would love for us to play hip hop twenty four-seven, but we have an audience that wants to hear Luther Vandross and a little this and little that, so we try to blend it up.”

“I would consider our station the number one station, it certainly is the cash cow for Bermuda Broadcasting Company in terms of advertising. We figured that people would tune this way, our competition has an FM station as well, but we wanted to be the first to go there and deliver quality.

“Every year there is a theme and now we're known as Power 95, the ‘Big Station'.”

The Captain doesn't necessarily share his young audience's taste in music and he admits that playing rap music does have its challenges with some of the lyrics they contain. Bad language is already beeped even before the made-for-radio CDs arrive here.

“As I get older it is difficult to play some of the music that is coming out right now, the hip hop with the language and suggestions,” explained the DJ.

“I'm probably not the first DJ to have to go through this, who has been in the business since their 20s and are now in their 40s. Some rappers come across a little angry, a little too sexual and can throw out what I call unnecessary stuff. But that's what the youth want to hear.

“The type of music we're playing everybody listens to it and reggae has a crossover audience as well so a lot of people is listening to that. I never think of music in terms of black and white, I just think that if it sounds good and the words says something and touches someone...that's what makes a song to me.”

The Captain, who went to prep school in Buffalo, New York, came into radio in Bermuda with plenty of role models. Some like Elroy Smith, Sturgis Griffith, Chuck Welch, have moved on to bigger and better things abroad. Despite offers, and no doubt opportunities to make more money, The Captain has resisted the urge to follow the other DJs overseas.

“When I first started Lee Harvey used to let me sit in on his show down at ZFB,” said The Captain who also used to mimic the DJs in upstate New York when he listened to them on the long car drive to his school with his brother, Dr. Gary Burgess. He never dreamed one day he would be a DJ himself.

“Another guy who had a great influence on me is Chuck Welch who is working in Orlando right now...even ‘Wayne L' to a degree,” said The Captain.

“Elroy is a phenomenon. If I didn't have a family I would link up with him and I'm sure he would give me a job. He's in Chicago, is in Billboard Magazine every year, named Programmer of the Year.

“He is wanted by more and more stations to programme their stations. I didn't hear him much when I was younger because I was away in school, but to me he is probably the biggest success story out of everybody who has ever been in broadcasting.

“Sturgis and Chuck Welch have done well but Elroy is a standout and respected in the industry like nobody. He always gives me kudos when he comes back, saying he likes my style and that's a compliment.”

Added Bermuda's top DJ: “I worked originally in television and on a dare from Chuck Welch, who was programme director at the time, I started working on 1340 radio at night.”

The Captain admits he doesn't know how long the plane will be flying.

“There are days when you just experience burnout, when it is hard to do it again,” he says.

“I don't have the need to do this every day for the rest of my life. It's something I enjoy but eventually it is something I'm going to have to say goodbye to and find something else.

“In the States would be a more competitive market, and some stations could change from rock or R&B to classical overnight and you could come in the next day and hear them say ‘we no longer have this format and therefore you no longer have a job'.

“I just feel very comfortable broadcasting to my people. Two things that are traditional in Bermuda, people listen to the radio every morning and they buy a newspaper.”

The deejays have to be quick to decide what are appropriate requests and what are not. With a community of this size it is easy to offend somebody.

“We get calls from people being malicious, putting on requests for somebody that they may have broken up with or trying to break up somebody's marriage,” he explained.

“You have to decipher through all of that. There are certain things we won't do, like if somebody was to call and ask to play a request for a certain licence (plate) number. And we don't use a person's full name.

“It's a small community and it's difficult to please everybody, while at the same time protect everybody and their rights as well. The ‘jocks' feel real bad if they have caused a problem out there when they were acting in good faith and the caller wasn't.”