In a past life, after earning a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, I earned a modest living doing the news for a radio station. The inspiration for wanting to do that, as well as studying Economics, was Danny Schechter, the News Dissector on WBCN 104.1 FM in Boston. Danny died yesterday.
Category: Radio
Once and Future soon to be Past
Yikes! There are only a few days left to catch Brian “Friend of the Blog” Sibley’s six-part BBC Radio adaptation of T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”. The King is, of course, King Arthur, and his wizard is the great and grand Merlyn [sic]. “The Sword in the Stone” is part two. Click here to listen.
Click to his brother’s Clack
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, are Boston originals. The best comedy duo of brothers since the Smothers, Tom and Ray also happened to fix cars, and they started the Good News Garage in Cambridge before hosting “Car Talk” on WBUR (Boston University Radio), leading to the show being picked up by NPR. The garage was originally a DIY business, and my brother used to go there to learn how to work on his VW Bug.
I genuinely loved listening to “Car Talk”. I realize that some people of a more serious bent didn’t always appreciate the banter and kidding around that Tom and Ray loved to indulge, but I delighted in it and I always looked forward to the Puzzler and, especially, Stump the Chumps. Sadly, Tom Magliozzi has passed away.
Dale Dorman, the voice of Boston Top 40 radio
Boston radio DJ Dale Dorman has died. He joined WRKO-AM in 1968, the same year that WBCN-FM went from Classical to counter-culture. Dale provided the perfect contrast to the underground sound of ‘BCN. He was a DJ with a distinctive voice and personality that was just right for the Top 40 format — top 30 at ‘RKO — and he was essential to helping ‘RKO become a longtime ratings leader.
Come to the Sunshine
Something that Denro and I talk about incessantly is how drastically music changed year-to-year in the 1960’s. The best place to go for a thorough and insightful exploration of Sixties popular music is Andrew Sandoval’s unique and outstanding online show, Come to the Sunshine.
After Pop gave way to the Psychedelic shake-up of 1967, 1968 was the year when underground FM stations started to take over the older teen market. The influence of FM on AM could be heard in records like this one, which became an unlikely top 20 hit.
What made underground, aka Hippie, radio possible in the Sixties? The same thing that was behind other 60’s happenings like NASA, the pre-Internet Arpanet, and the Vietnam War. The United States Government, that’s what.
To promote the adoption of FM stereo radio, on January 1, 1967 an FCC mandate went into effect that required radio broadcasters to no longer simulcast their AM signals over their FM stations. College-aged disc jockeys started to flood the airwaves in major cities, formats changed overnight, and instead of playing the latest singles they played album cuts.
The iconic Boston station, WBCN, had an overnight format change, but it didn’t happen because of the simulcast requirement. What made ‘BCN possible was the desperation of the owner of a failing all-Classical station. Former ‘BCN disc jockey Carter Alan, who is now on WZLX in Boston, has the story in his excellent book, “Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN.”
The glory of vinyl
This 1956 educational film from RCA explains the process of recording, producing, and manufacturing vinyl records. Stereo recording was a very new innovation at the time, and stereo records as we know them weren’t available until 1958. Note that 12″ LP’s were introduced by Columbia, not RCA, which developed the 7″ 45 rpm format for singles.