Yesterday, I talked about me and Denro, years away from meeting, listening to “Evil Woman” by Crow on WRKO in January, 1970. Here’s a Dale Dorman aircheck with exactly what we heard, as it happened.
Category: Radio
Important Boss Radio 66 Notice
Boss Radio 66 is apparently off of Google Blogger/Blogspot.
https://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/
I’m trying to find out what’s going on.
Until then, you will find individual station programs on MIXCLOUD.
Update: It’s back. Whew!
WABC, PTT, and Me
Twenty years ago, while stopped at a red light in my little ’89 Honda Civic, behind a couple of other cars, this happened. I was a little late for work that day.
An elderly Russian guy came flying down the Mass Pike exit ramp behind me. I saw him in the rearview mirror, heading towards me fast. I knew he was going to crash and braced for impact. The collision pushed the Civic into the car ahead of me with so much force that it, in turn, hit the car in front of it.
The old guy was taken to a hospital where, as I was told later, he accused me of causing the accident. The Massachusetts State Police didn’t agree. I escaped with a mild concussion, and a badly sprained right ankle.
So began my Posterior Tibial Tendon troubles. I had forced the brake pedal down with so much strength the brake lines blew out upon impact. But a couple of other things also blew out. A blood vessel in my calf split open, and I didn’t know until later that some of the fibers in my PTT had been torn. The damage progressed once I returned to my running schedule.
I was almost home from a 25-mile training run for the Lowell Marathon when suddenly, mid-stride, my right foot literally just stopped working! I could feel something sticking out that shouldn’t have been. My PTT had slipped out of position. After popping it back into place I was able to hobble home the last half-mile.
That white area in the MRI seen along the PTT is tendinosis. There’s a bulge there to this day. With a lot careful attention to that area, along with motion control running shoes and orthotics, the tendon has held all these years. I dread the day if and (probably) when it finally breaks. The PTT in my left ankle is perfectly fine.
What does any of this have to do with WABC? As I have said many times, I was very fortunate to have grown up listening to WABC during its Musicradio ascendency. Its influence on me was so great that it led to my relatively brief but memorable stint working in AM radio. (Technology paid much better, believe me.) The man who transformed 77 WABC into the Musicradio powerhouse was program director Rick Sklar.
https://musicradio77.com/Sklar.html
Rick was a marathon runner in his spare time and in June of 1992 he entered the hospital for minor foot surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left ankle. He never returned home. An unfortunate anesthesia complication took his life on June 22, 1992. He was 62 years old.
Whether the torn tendon was Sklar’s PTT, or his Achilles, that was a terribly lousy thing to happen to him. I continue to be careful with my PTT, in the hope that I can keep running without needing foot surgery.
Time-Tested Tables and Tonearms
Telling the tale from my radio days about the transmitter fuse made me nostalgic and got me searching for information about the turntables I loved using. Especially for slip-cueing* singles!
The two tables we had in the DJ studio at the station were 3-speed Russco Cue-Masters. They were manufactured in California and available as late as 1981 — with 78 rpm! — only a couple of years before Compact Disc appeared in the U.S.
As you can see, no assumption was made regarding the choice of tonearm. I was working just west of Simpsons City, aka Springfield. Micro-Trak, a company located just north of Springfield, manufactured tonearms. The legendary model 303 had a wooden wand. Yes, wood!
Micro-Trak sourced its turntables from Russco, and offered them as complete packages with their tonearms factory installed. We had the 720 model — a Russco Cue-Master “Drilled for Micro-Trak Model 303.”
The Stanton 500 was a broadcast standard phono cartridge. The 500-E with elliptical stylus was well-suited for stereo records played on FM stations. The 500-E was one of the first cartridges I ever owned, while in high school. At the AM station, the 500-AL with conical stylus was installed in the 303 tonearms, and wired for mono use.**
This setup was an absolute sure-footed — or armed — delight to use! I have indelible memories of exactly how it felt and sounded handling those turntables and cueing up records. The clutch for changing speeds took some effort to move! That little notch seen in the picture above between the 33 and 45 speeds was where you could park the lever to disengage the drive so the platter would spin freely for swapping records.*** For all the love club DJ’s have for the direct-drive Technics SL-1200, they would be amazed by the tank-like build quality and mechanical strength of those old, idler/rim-drive professional turntables.
The radio biz is nothing like it was, of course. I am very glad that I was able to experience radio broadcasting as it was, when I did. Especially considering the opportunity came from an unsolicited offer that was dropped in my lap.
Bend It, Shape It (Stream-of-Consciousness Blog Post)
This is something I started working on six months ago, following an e-mail exchange with good, ol’ Denro. Something that’s an inescapable interest for us, as well as the re-issue professionals we have contact with — Steve Hoffman, Bob Irwin, Andrew Sandoval, and Steve Stanley — is 1960’s record production (with Hoffman going further afield, in both directions).
After the introduction of tape recorders (thank you, Nazi Germany) made overdubs and editing possible, recording studios evolved into becoming instruments themselves. It became more likely that the difference between a hit and a flop could be determined not only by who performed the song, but how the record was produced and engineered.
Here’s an example. “Bend Me, Shape Me” by the American Breed debuted on December 2, 1967, and in early ’68 it became a top 5 hit. But that wasn’t the first time someone had taken a bash at the tune.
There was a very Psychedelic version by an obscure girl group, as produced by Tom Wilson, whose many credits included Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel.
The Outsiders, whose “Time Won’t Let Me” in ’66 was also a #5 hit, put “Bend Me, Shape Me” on their third album.
Within a couple of tom-tom beats, I recognize American Breed’s hit record. I would characterize the sound as nudging its way into Bubblegum Land.
Music Mike provides some background on the single vs. the album version of the song.
Music Mike has one of those classic Top 40 DJ deliveries that I have always admired, but wasn’t able to master myself during my stint at an AM radio mic. So let’s give a listen to Mike talking-up one of my all-time favorite singles.
Here’s Music Mike’s online station: https://www.kvkvi.com/
Tech sidebar: Curiously, Music Mike’s site behaves the way mine used to do here. By default it’s presented to the Net as unencrypted HTTP, but if you specify HTTPS the encryption works. Which is good, except his pop-up player isn’t working with HTTPS, only HTTP. I checked TuneIn, and because it sees HTTP for the stream it won’t play the station through most browsers. This isn’t the sort of technical trouble that FCC-licensed radio station engineers used to handle.
Continue reading Bend It, Shape It (Stream-of-Consciousness Blog Post)
Itching for Ichiban
Tom Hanks is out of his Colonel Tom Parker persona, and he’s returning to the DJ mic at Boss Radio 66, Saturday at noon ET. You may have heard that Hanks is a typewriter enthusiast and collector. Here’s a typed note he sent to Boss Radio 66 before it declared its independence.
I don’t know what the dispute was at WFMU that led to Rock ‘n’ Soul Ichiban leaving the station, but I used to work in the radio biz, so I know how it goes. Whatever the trouble was, Hanks is no longer just a fan of the Ichiban Sound, he’s part of it.