Category: Radio

Dragnet on the Net

A TV show I enjoyed a lot as a kid in the 60’s was Dragnet. When I was older I learned that Dragnet had not only been on TV in the 50’s, it had first been a radio show. The revived Dragnet returned with its old formula, and supporting cast members, intact. In the intervening years Sgt. Joe Friday had apparently been overlooked for promotion, despite his unbroken string of cracked cases and successful arrests.

In the Fifties, Dragnet dealt with some hard facts of life, such as drug addiction and sex crimes. When Jack Webb returned as Joe Friday ten years later, he used the show to crusade against the growing influence of the youth culture. There was an anti-Summer of Love attitude, and Hippies were depicted at best as misguided and confused kids, or as drug addicts hiding behind the trappings of Eastern religion. Parents were concerned about the rapid pace of change in Sixties, and many were struggling with rebellious teenage children. In 1968 the world seemed to be coming apart at the seams, and Webb offered a clear, unwavering view of right and wrong. It’s my opinion that the popularity of Dragnet helped to get Richard “Law and Order” Nixon elected in 1968.

Even the growing ranks of comic book collectors, empowered by the Batman TV show, weren’t spared Webb’s critical gaze, as seen in the infamous “Superfan” episode. I saw this when it first aired, and it starts off nicely enough, with a brief history of Hollywood, but towards the end it’s painful for an old fanboy to watch, because I have to admit there’s a lot of truth in what Stanley says.

Getting back to Dragnet in the Fifties, the link at the end of this sentence searches eBay for Dragnet OTR. “OTR” stands for “Old-Time Radio,” and as you can see there are plenty of sellers offering Dragnet radio shows. Anybody who buys one of these collections is wasting their money, because they’re available for free on Archive.org, from a wonderful organization of enthusiasts called the OTRR — the Old Time Radio Reseachers Group.

If you don’t feel like downloading and unzipping the files, you can listen to Dragnet on Tunein.com. I’ve been having a lot of fun doing that for the past few weeks. It’s interesting to compare the radio and TV versions of Dragnet. For example, here’s an episode from 1955 called The Big Deal.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2012/01/The+Big+Deal.mp3|titles=Dragnet “The Big Deal” 4/19/55]

Will there be Tintin fever or failure in America?

Personally, I don’t think Steven Spielberg was the right talent to bring Tintin — who is only a couple of years younger than Mickey Mouse — to the big screen. But it’s too late now, because ready or not, America, Tintin is coming to a movie theater near you for Christmas. Last week, Tom Ashbrook, who apparently has a soft spot for the intrepid boy reporter, devoted an installment of his radio show On Point to the world of Tintin.

[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2011/12/onpoint_1216_2.mp3|titles=On Point with Tom Ashbrook: Tintin!]

Recovering and restoring sounds and pictures

For Thanksgiving, WBUR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook rebroadcast a program from last year, about the discovery and restoration of the Bill Savory collection of Jazz radio broadcasts from the late 1930’s and early 40’s.

[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2010/09/onpoint_0910_2.mp3|titles=On Point: The Savory Collection]

It takes a lot of technical know-how and painstaking work to copy old 78 rpm transcription records and then clean them up digitally, without losing the vitality of the original performance. Compared to dealing with old audio recordings, handling and restoring movie film is an even more difficult and expensive undertaking. Here’s a fascinating short documentary on the Chaplin at Keystone restoration project.

http://youtu.be/voEGsQj4CPs

As wonderful as it is that computers have made it possible to salvage, reclaim, and reinvigorate these materials to an extent never before possible, I wonder about the future. There’s so much technology involved, with so many different digital formats, how will people be able to see and hear this stuff in a hundred years? Which reminds me. I have VHS home videos from a full-size camcorder that I need to transfer to the computer.

Hi-Five for Hi-Fi

The death of pioneering radio producer Norman Corwin, age 101, received some attention this week, but I’d like to point out another recent death. Edgar Villchur, only seven years younger than Corwin, was a pioneer in home audio. Villchur can take some of the credit — some would say blame — for the home hi-fi craze in the 1950’s that drove many a wife crazy, if not out of the house.

Villchur started Acoustic Research in Cambridge, MA, and his sealed box design, the so-called acoustic suspension speaker, proved that low frequencies could be reproduced in a home without a gigantic cabinet like another legendary speaker had, Paul Klipsch’s Klipschorn. The trade-off was efficiency. Acoustic suspension speakers require a lot of power.

In 1957, the year before Villchur introduced the legendary AR-3 loudspeaker, Herman Horne on Hi-Fi was a 3-part parody on The Stan Freberg Show, a radio series on CBS. The entire run of the show is on archive.org, but with only so-so sound quality. I’ve assembled the Herman Horne segments, taken from the Smithsonian Historical Performances CD collection of the show, and it’s obvious that only part 3 came from the original magnetic tape.

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne01.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne02.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne03.mp3|titles=Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi]

Note how Freberg changed the voice of the character, making it more comical in the second and third installments. A lot of what he made fun of about audio fanatics is still quite true today. I think the only real difference is there isn’t much of an emphasis on sound effects.

Boston, you’re my home

Boston radio station WGBH is named after the Great Blue Hill, the site of the station’s antenna (the TV tower is elsewhere). In addition to its three over-air HD stations, WGBH has online stations, including one that plays The Jazz Decades, the long-running series about the music of the era between WWI and WWII that was hosted by the late, great Ray Smith.

For those who prefer being up-to-the-minute, there’s WGBH Local Indie, a service devoted to Boston area indie bands. Last night on the Roku player I caught the tail end of a song that sent me grabbing for the netbook to find out what it is. It’s When He Comes Home, by the Banditas. The timeless, essential, stripped-down sound of garage bands lives on!

And now… sports! The Boston Red Sox had their all-time worst end-of-season collapse this year, and it’s all my fault, as Denro explained to me:

I still say that you cursed them after that rainy rescheduled “Irene” game in late August. That’s when it all fell apart. They never won two games in a row after that. It came out today that some players resented the owners for the rescheduling of the games, so you sowed the seeds of dissension, as they all read your blog.

Yes, I know, and I’m truly sorry! But let’s please try to forget the unpleasantness of this terrible year’s debacle and its front office fallout, and look back with our friends across the pond at the BBC, to the stunning success of 2004, when the Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino.

[audio:http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/witness/witness_20111015-0900a.mp3|titles=BBC Witness: 2004 Red Sox]

Rewound the years

You say you want oldies, but you’re tired of hearing the same songs over and over on your local station? You want the fun and surprises of hearing EVERYthing from the first 20 years of Pop-Rock music? You want Rewound Radio. Brought to you by the folks who run musicradio77, a tribute to the world’s greatest Top 40 radio station, 77 WABC in New York.

It’s a ’65-’74 no repeat Columbus Day weekend on Rewound Radio. They say “Turn it on and… Leave it on all holiday weekend!” and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Click here for a complete list of online listening options.