When Radio Was Good, 1974-79....
Jan. 25th, 2007 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1And now, the third part -- or the first -- of my series.
When I was much younger, what I listened to on the radio was essentially what my parents wanted to listen to -- jazz on WADV-FM, Dan Lesniak's Polka Ballroom on Saturday mornings, and so-called "beautiful music" on WBNY (later WJYE -- "Joy"). They didn't listen to country or classical music.
That changed in 1974. On a field trip to the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, we took a couple of charter buses, which had a built-in radio. Most of the kids wanted to listen to KB -- WKBW-AM, a top-40 radio station at the time. (Like most AM stations these days, it's now a talk-radio station -- WWKB. If you're in the northeastern US and tune your radio to 1520 kHz at night, you can probably pick it up. This is what 50,000 watts of effective radiated power gets you.)
Almost immediately, I was hooked -- finally, music that *I* wanted to listen to. The first 45 RPM single I bought was "The Streak" by Ray Stevens, which I think I first heard on that trip to Toronto.
Later that summer, I was at a neighbor's house, in their garage, listening to a different station. The station was broadcasting Casey Kasem's "American Top 40". I soon became hooked on/addicted to this show as well, keeping track of what songs were where on the countdown. (I continued this weekly logging until around 1981, when I found a library that had copies of Billboard magazine.)
I also found another top-40 station, this time on the FM band: WBEN-FM, which called itself "Rock 102". What was unique about this station is that it was all cartridge-driven -- no on-air talent, just prerecorded voice-overs and sounders. They'd play two songs in a row, and at the end, the prerecorded voice would announce what those songs were. There was probably a silent operator or two in the studio, changing the carts or setting them up.
Oh, I'd occasionally listen to other stations, like WYSL for music, WGR for sports, WBEN for news and music, and WEBR (which went to all-news at around '77). But I'd eventually come back to KB or Rock 102. I also did a fair amount of DXing, trying to pick up other AM radio stations from outside my local area.
[Updated 14:53 EST] One of my favorite deejays at the time was Jim Quinn, who had the 6-10pm slot on KB. At the time, I wanted to be a DJ just like him. I may still have some "demo tapes" of me as a DJ. But according to my ear when I hear myself on tape, I have a voice made for silent movies. Jim Quinn is still in the radio biz, although he's now a host of a conservative talk show in Pittsburgh. Yecch.
I also discoved the joy that is the Dr. Demento Show somtime in the spring or summer of '78. More on this in a future post.
And then, in '79, one of my fellow students in my high school biology class suggested I "grow up" and give Q-FM-97 a try. The rest is, as they say, history.
When I was much younger, what I listened to on the radio was essentially what my parents wanted to listen to -- jazz on WADV-FM, Dan Lesniak's Polka Ballroom on Saturday mornings, and so-called "beautiful music" on WBNY (later WJYE -- "Joy"). They didn't listen to country or classical music.
That changed in 1974. On a field trip to the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, we took a couple of charter buses, which had a built-in radio. Most of the kids wanted to listen to KB -- WKBW-AM, a top-40 radio station at the time. (Like most AM stations these days, it's now a talk-radio station -- WWKB. If you're in the northeastern US and tune your radio to 1520 kHz at night, you can probably pick it up. This is what 50,000 watts of effective radiated power gets you.)
Almost immediately, I was hooked -- finally, music that *I* wanted to listen to. The first 45 RPM single I bought was "The Streak" by Ray Stevens, which I think I first heard on that trip to Toronto.
Later that summer, I was at a neighbor's house, in their garage, listening to a different station. The station was broadcasting Casey Kasem's "American Top 40". I soon became hooked on/addicted to this show as well, keeping track of what songs were where on the countdown. (I continued this weekly logging until around 1981, when I found a library that had copies of Billboard magazine.)
I also found another top-40 station, this time on the FM band: WBEN-FM, which called itself "Rock 102". What was unique about this station is that it was all cartridge-driven -- no on-air talent, just prerecorded voice-overs and sounders. They'd play two songs in a row, and at the end, the prerecorded voice would announce what those songs were. There was probably a silent operator or two in the studio, changing the carts or setting them up.
Oh, I'd occasionally listen to other stations, like WYSL for music, WGR for sports, WBEN for news and music, and WEBR (which went to all-news at around '77). But I'd eventually come back to KB or Rock 102. I also did a fair amount of DXing, trying to pick up other AM radio stations from outside my local area.
[Updated 14:53 EST] One of my favorite deejays at the time was Jim Quinn, who had the 6-10pm slot on KB. At the time, I wanted to be a DJ just like him. I may still have some "demo tapes" of me as a DJ. But according to my ear when I hear myself on tape, I have a voice made for silent movies. Jim Quinn is still in the radio biz, although he's now a host of a conservative talk show in Pittsburgh. Yecch.
I also discoved the joy that is the Dr. Demento Show somtime in the spring or summer of '78. More on this in a future post.
And then, in '79, one of my fellow students in my high school biology class suggested I "grow up" and give Q-FM-97 a try. The rest is, as they say, history.
