FIRST: I'm a young kid of seven or eight. My sister and I are in the back seat and it is once again past our regular bedtime. Dad's driving. Mom's riding shotgun. The push-button car radio (AM only, thank you very much) provides hokie music, then news. The magic minute of 10:07 p.m. arrives, and the creaking door and croaking tone (of E.G. Marshall) usher in CBS Radio Mystery Theatre on WHAM. Mom is concerned it will scare the kids too much this late at night. She doesn't realize I listen to it almost every night in my room, under the covers, through the earphone on my little transistor radio. She's right, of course: That show, coupled with my vivid imagination, are far too scary for this time of night. Got to listen, though, because the dark bedroom to come with all its sinister shadows is half the fun.
SECOND: I'm a little older, maybe 11 or 12, and I alone am awake in the house at 3 a.m. I am rattled and anxious -- no doubt part of the teeth-grinding, mind-twisting crossing-of-days that was adolescence. I'm going out of my mind, staring at the ceiling, feeling every sting of yesterday's junior high social slings and arrows, and hearing every crack and groan of that old house. I reach under my bed, and there's that same old transistor radio, mostly thrown over for album sides and eight-tracks, but still faithful. I turn it on (the nine-volt is still juiced!) and find WSAY on the dial, just as the DJ drops the needle on Nights in White Satin (the full, poetry- and kettle-drum-soaked album version, of course...I mean, we're talking about WSA-freakin'-Y here). I breathe deep, comforted, close my eyes and drift away.
I have always loved radio. From those early days with it's constant, time-marking presence to today. When I was 17 it was WCMF and WMJQ hanging with me at the house before school; Mom and Dad being long gone to work, and me fighting off the morning lonelies. When I was 19 and suddenly came to myself in Fortran 77 class, rose and walked out on the day's lecture and my ill-chosen Computer Science major, it was the studios of Brockport State's student-run WBSU to which I turned.
Within two years, I was station manager. Within three years, I was out in the broadcasting world, Communication degree in hand, hosting a jazz show in the very-same studio where some DJ had once sat and played Nights in White Satin at 3 a.m. all those years ago (by then it was WXXI-AM, which has long-since moved from that odd house/studio on French Road that they had inherited from Gordon Brown's scattershot, eccentric experiment in freeform acid rock/Roman Catholic radio).
In the ensuing years I have DJ-ed and produced off an on, but mostly I have listened. I have listened and loved Garrison Keillor, Diane Rhem, Terri Gross, Click-and-Clack, Bob Smith, Bob Matthews and Bob Edwards. I have continued to root against the Yankees, but for the broadcast team of Suzyn Waldman (a brilliant baseball mind) and John Sterling ("th-uhhhhh pitch..."calling every single game without fail since 1989). I have listened and winced at the invective of many current talk-radio hosts, but have begrudgingly recognized the consummate skill with which they deliver it.
Radio. No other broadcast medium allows you to cast heroes and villains from your own imagination. No other broadcast medium can quite crawl inside you while you are busy doing other things. It still travels the open air, seeps in your ear and dances in your head with whatever it finds on your mind at the time. What are your memories of radio?
(And now a word from our sponsor: On Friday, December 3rd at 7 p.m., our church will be transformed into old-time radio studio WBCC for A Bloomfield Home Companion, complete with radio-theatre comedy and drama produced live before your eyes, our own house band burning up the music of Patsy Cline, Old Crow Medicine Show, Hank Williams, Bing Crosby, and Lucinda Williams, and special displays and archived broadcasts provided by the Antique Wireless Association Museum. Tickets are a mere eight bucks!)
OMG! Radio Mystery Theater. I remember listening to that on my parents' clock radio in the summer when I fell asleep in their bed since they were the only ones with a fan!
ReplyDeleteI also remember Casey Kasem's American Top 40 countdown on WBBF (950 AM). I won tickets to the circus during a countdown one year and thought it was totally awesome to hear my name on the radio! I bet my dad wasn't thinking it was awesome when we had to go to downtown Rochester after school one day to pick them up and back to the War Memorial a couple of weeks later for the circus.
I also remember listening to Dr. Ruth on Sunday nights on Magic 92 during junior-high and into high school.
Thumbs up these days to Diane Rhem, Terry Gross and Bob Edwards for great radio.
Growing up as a child WCMF was always on. I grew up listening to classic rock and still enjoy get togethers with my best friend and blasting AC/DC, Aerosmith, Steeler's Wheels, the occassional Beatles tune, and whatever else is in our equally massive music collection.
ReplyDeleteI then moved on to Country and then to hip-hop and top 40, and even dabbled in some classical. I still love all the genres and keep a collection of everything.
In my teens, I came across something interesting in my grandmother's house (this is what I wanted my pose to really be about). Old 1940s radio shows on casette tape. Abbott and Costello, Mel Blanc, Red Skelton, etc. I even came into possession of 40 CDs all 1940s mystery and comedy shows, complete with commercials. (Lucky Strip cigarettes- Doctors number 1 choice!) I LOVED them. Imagining everything in my head. The faces, the settings they were in, absolutely everything was up to me. I used to load the 5 disc stereo I had at the time with them and set it to loop them all as I drifted off to sleep.
Music and radio has always been a huge part of my life and I plan to keep it that way.
I followed my younger brother's footsteps into radio. I took a downsizing from my factory job and just walked into a station and asked- no education or experience outside having listened for 30 years and a rather large knowledge of classic rock.
ReplyDeleteI remember sneaking my little transistor radio into bed one summer night and channel surfing. I would listen until I got a station id and was thrilled to pick up WV from NY. Then there was the time my older brother and I spent a few nights at my grandmother's in Brighton. We took over my uncle's room and were listening to his clock radio. The dj came on and introduced a song by a new group- The Doors- called "Light My Fire" (the full version). He then proceeded to play it three times in a row.
The radio in the 60s and 70s was thrilling. I can remember hearing new songs by the Beatles- always an event beginning with weeks of anticipation. I remember when "Twist and Shout" was new. Norwegian Wood. Then came Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band played in its entirety on the day of its release. My 11 year old mind could not wrap around what I was hearing. The newness. The "fullness" of the music. There had never been any music of its kind before.
I dj'ed and oldies show for about a month, anything I wanted to play from between 1955 and 1975, as long as the audience wouldn't harsh on it and especially as long as I aired the commercial spots on time and on schedule. I then broadcast with WXXI's Reachout Radio, coordinating volunteers and post-producing shows that read the daily paper, popular magazines and current novels to the hearing impaired over a 1-channel monitor they could get for free from ABVI.
Then came The Blues Spectrum- WXXI 1370am Mon-Sat 11pm to 5am. I filled in on Fridays & vacation days for the regular host, Jim McGrath. 40% of the songs came from a list Jim published monthly in Living Blues Magazine and 60% was my own choosing. I took the "Spectrum" part of the show's title to heart, playing everything from Bessie Smith to Lou Rawls and Joe Williams to Steve Miller, The Allman Brothers, The Beatles, Hank Snow... if it had the riffs or the feeling of the Blues, I played it.
That same WSAY that Corey listened to I listened to in my teen years, especially before Rock came to the FM dial. (Yes, until the mid-60s, rock was only on the AM and the FM was a vast empty savannah dotted with classical music and jazz- mostly big band.
WSAY (slogan "Be Big, Be a Builder") brought me the band The Masters of the Airwaves song "Gettin' Tight" about a young man that doesn't make enough money to squeak by. It took about 12 years for me to finally find a copy to record. It was at WBSU and I found it when I accompanied Corey on his shift.
Now, it's WGMC for great jazz. It is 95.1 for Brother Wease, the self-described Jew-lite biker with the tattoo shop and a heart as big as all outdoors, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities over the years. WBER, "the only station that matters", keeps me abreast of Indy music, some of which is very unusual and damn fine. NPR. 107.7 the Lake.
Having driven all over the country and listened to radio everywhere, I can tell you that Rochester, NY has some of the best radio in the nation. Better, IMO, than LA, SF, and giving Chicago and NYC a run for their money.
I miss being on the air, but my ears are still tuned. I still love radio. Thanks for inspiring the memories.
My fav radio memory was driving at night with my dad and trying to see what radio stations (AM of course) we could pick up from far, far away. We'd get NYC pretty easy and Chicago, but once in a while we'd get some station from a town in Ohio or Massachusetts or Virgina. I swear we once got a station from Louisiana. Just knowing that I was listening to something meant for people somewhere else was really cool. Sadly, the Internet has made that mundane and angry talk radio has ruined AM. The static's still fun though.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say I worked for Reachout Radio- broadcasts for the VISUALLY-impaired, not hearing-impaired, which would be quite the concept.
ReplyDeleteAnd Charles Benoit is perhaps modest when he excludes his own fine radio show and intelligent humor on WGMC 90.1 FM, so I'll toot his horn for him.
Corey's and my dad told me he used to listen to WHAM while he was in the Army and stationed in Georgia. On the AM band, the antenna pattern is mandated by law to be changed at sunset to a north/south dispersion pattern, so you have to be in line with the station to pick it up after sunset. WHAM 50,000 watts pushed due south to my daddy's ears when he was young and homesick 1000 miles from home. What did that mean to Dad? He'd probably tell us if he had the internet. He does, however, still play the radio. A lot.
Thanks for the AM/sunset rule Kendall--I got to listen to a Syracuse basketball game here in NC a few years back on WHAM!! I came across it by chance in the car one night and couldn't believe it. Made me want to drive round until the game ended. I asked my husband (who can't stand sports) if he was up for a sudden road trip to Charlotte--90 miles away.
ReplyDeleteHey, Brenda and Jim, in particular, check out "themonsterclub.com" for free access to a lot of vintage radio drama, including several CBS Radio Mystery Theatre broadcasts. It's a great site!
ReplyDeleteThanks Uncle Corey!
ReplyDeleteiTunes also has a radio channel for comedy shows from that era as well.