WPIR - Primitive Inventory Control

 

I found a lot of 7-inches all marked with the letters WPIR on eBay [LINK] and it got me curious. I know that station. I have met some of their alumni over the years, memorably card-carrying record industry member Jean-Pierre Diaz, formerly at Arista and Kelly Wright formerly of Fox News.
MY mind kept coming back to the enormous collection of 7-inch records for $4.99 a pop. I made a back up copy of the sell list. [LINK] Everything in the pile was released between 1991 and 1995. There is one outlier from the 80s but it's clearly labeled 1992 in sharpie. I briefly wondered if the vinyl was stolen, gifted, purged or rescued and even which WPIR it was from. But the auction description made it very clear which one we were dealing with. It's the kids at WPIR at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

“College Radio station (WPIR Pratt Radio New York) promo 45 record lot - Most vinyls are in VG to NM condition. Many have "WPIR" written on the 45 cover and label (Primitive inventory control)”

There were other possibilities of course. But Pratt was always the most likely candidate. WPIR was reporting to Billboard's Campus News way back in 1973, they also were in the Broadcasting yearbook in 1975. But strangely the station and Pratt Institute do not appear in the seminal text The Gas Pipe Networks. That's because WPIR was founded later, in the 1960s. Jennifer Waits at Spinning Indie paid them a visit in 2023. [LINK] She dated the station back almost 60 years. 

"Originally an AM carrier current station dating back to 1966, WPIR broadcast nightly at 600kc on AM from the first floor of the Willoughby dorm at Pratt, according to a 1971 residence hall handbook. These transmissions could eventually be heard across multiple dorms on campus."

Their current website at wpirprattradio.cargo.site seems to date back to about 2023. No joy. I found an earlier version on Tumblr HERE which covers 2010 up to 2018. The first post is October 7th "a killer website coming soon."  There's a note in December about a program named "Across State Lines." I have a book from 1989 simply titled Gigging which lists off venues, and college radio stations by location. There's no separate listing for Brooklyn, and despite including hyper-local sticks like WCCR and WBAR; WPIR is mysteriously absent.

The 1979 IBS Journal of College Radio, annual directory issue lists them as a carrier current station with no other information. That much is true. But the lack of information also tells me they didn't respond to whatever letter IBS sent out to collate the issue. They knocked and no one was home. The very active radio staff of the early 1970s were gone. Their inclusion in the 1974 issue had been appropriately robust:

"Pratt Institute, WPIR, Brooklyn, 11205, (212) 759-4220. CC 600 KHz, CAFM 91.9 MHz, est. 1969. Member of Student Activities, House Coun. Progressive rock, network affil, IBS, Zodiac news, pot. aud, 2,000, on air 7 days per week, 18 hours per day, station free to estab. own policies and programming. FA Steve V. Nutt; GM, Joseph Gvisca; PD, Steve Smith; MD, Bruce Lisanti."

I've checked my CMJ issues and they appear to have only reported intermittently, but do appear in the 1999 college radio directory. But the data is bogus. It reports them broadcasting at 30 watts on 89.7 FM... [or perhaps the FCC story is true.]  They're also listed in the 2006 book Get Media Airplay by Rick Davis. I get the impression the station went into some dormant period in the late 1970s, are rebooted in the 1990s. My theory seems to beconfirmed by the 1994 issue of Prattonia [LINK]. It contained two mentions which are both relevant:

"On April first Dan Frieze, director of WPIR, received a letter for the FCC which demanded that WPIR turn off their illegal FM transmitter with the possibility of a $100,000 fine if the demand was not met. WPIR returned to it’s normal AM station."

It's the oldest legend in college radio it has to have been true at least once. Some 20 pages later we see the single sentence "WPIR began resurrection attempts under the direction of Glen Gollrad." It's in the section labeled "Pratt News 1992 - 1993." It seems highly improbable that a freshly re-launched college radio station would immediately begin broadcasting illegally, but kids will be kids. I have to point out that the timing correlates with the film debut of "Pump Up the Volume", released in 1990. Many old carrier current and class D stations rebooted in this era quite literally inspired by that film. The soundtrack [LINK] was an instant classic that you can get in a used bin for $1 today. Thank you Christian Slater.

My theory was complicated by the discovery of a WPIR chart in a February 1990 issue of CMJ. Sean Qualls is listed as the PM.  The station clearly exists at the start of the 1990s, they're even playing the Pump Up the Volume OST. Perhaps the reboot was fresh funding and hardware, perhaps it fell silent again sometime after 1990. Then I found another chart in 1995 from MD John Parkins. The MD in 1997 was listed as "Fuck Face". Good job kid. Charts were emailed and manually collated back then. This did not slip past. This was social commentary. There is a whole story there somewhere.

The longest dormant phase appears to have been in the 1980s, but there were probably several shorter ones. The truth is that the history of every carrier current station is complicated. It's because they do not broadcast, so in lacking those dry government records, the data is always fragmentary. I carefully dated more of the record list from eBay. The station is quite active today. It remains unclear if the records were purged recently or if they were liberated in a period of inactivity 20 years ago. The world may never know.

Riot Radio

Riot Radio is a free internet radio show that plays independent punk music from around the world. The program was started by it's host Kevin in 2002 as a a college radio show on WONY at the State University College of Oneonta New York.

Oneonta is the middle of nowhere; no judgement meant, nowhere can be a nice place. This particular nowhere is about halfway between Binghamton and Albany, NY. But point being, the 180 watts of WONY don't reach any further than Oneonta, and really don't need to. College radio stations like that can be very unusual little mutants; evolving independently of the rest of the college radio landscape. Those are always my favorites.

I discovered this show on a cassette tape. I bought a Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine cassette for $1 at a record store. When I got home, I popped in the tape and discovered that instead Trent Reznor had been overdubbed with Riot Radio Episode # 73. [LINK] That tape was made around 2015, meaning that it circulated for a decade before it found me. I listened to the whole tape, it's weird, the music highly eccentric and obscure. Kevin has tapped into something that mere mortals know nothing about. I needed to ask him a few questions:

JF:  How does a small town kid  from Oneonta discover the obscure corners of global punk rock?

Kevin: I'm actually not from Oneonta. I only went to college there. I'm from a town called Lake Grove, which is in Suffolk County (Long Island), New York. Not so much a small town but a dense suburb that is just a short train ride from the city. I had a pretty stereotypical suburban punk experience. From a young age I had, let's say, low parental oversight, ha. I was basically feral, outside a lot.  

I have an older brother, and when we'd have to do yard work we'd drag out this big boom box and he'd play tapes. One day he put in NOFX Punk In Drublic and things just clicked. It was like an epiphany. Like "this is what I've been looking for" kind of a thing. I was attracted to the speed of it immediately. But listening to it, it was like "oh here's people who are asking the same questions that I am, too". And there was humor in it, which I liked. It just made sense. I wasn't angsty. I wasn't depressed about my situation. I didn't want to get stoned and chill out. I was angry. I wanted to burn things. And I was goofy. I was a weird kid who didn't really feel like he fit in anywhere. I was such an oddball. Even among the kids that I most closely related to I didn't fit in. And then suddenly you find out that there's this whole world of people like you. There's a name for what you are. You're a Punk. So I started eating up whatever I could get my hands on. And those older kids, when they found out that's what I liked, they started feeding me stuff too. And that was a great area for that kind of growth. 

As I got older I found out there was a solid local scene there. A short train ride and you're at CBGB's. There was a record store that catered to that scene and sold comps. The Creep Records comp from back then, with Plow United, Violent Society, The Boils, Super Hi-fives, The Orphans. My brother had that. I would steal it from him all the time. He was very instrumental in me getting into punk. He was showing me new bands all the time. 

JF: Can you tell me about starting your show out at WONY?

Kevin: I went to college at Oneonta because I really needed to get out, ha. I didn't know what I was doing, really. I had no plan. I needed to go somewhere and highschool was ending so I applied to a few colleges with the idea to just go wherever was furthest away. Oneonta was the only school that accepted me, ha. But a college town like that isn't really a friendly place for Punks. It's a small town. Very racist and small minded, even with all the college kids. Tons of bars but they all cater to a way more preppy club scene. There was nothing to do. Then I found my clique: a few other punks with nothing to do, but again they were older. We'd wander around, get stoned, cause trouble. If there was a show anywhere within a 4 hour drive we'd be there. Albany and Poughkeepsie both had great venues. We'd drive out to Worcester Massachusetts and see Dropkick Murphys play like once a month. We'd go to shows all over. But when those guys hit their senior year I knew I was going to be left alone. So I got this idea to start a radio show. It was something to do. I figured if there were other punks in that town it'd give them something to do. It was like putting out a distress signal, ha. And it worked too. 

The people running WONY let me do a show  Friday and Saturday night. None of the other college kids wanted those slots because they were all going to the bars. I'd shove as many CD's as I could into a backpack with a six pack of beer and I'd go do my show. Friends would come up. People would call in. I'd play Angelic Upstarts and old cabbies would call in blown away. Every Halloween I'd do like 4 hours of the Misfits. People would call in and let me know they appreciated what I was doing. I'd talk on the phone for whole shows sometimes. But I was playing a lot more of the classic stuff then. Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Cock Sparrer, Blitz. I'd work in more obscure stuff sometimes, but this was like 2002, the internet wasn't what it is now. MP3's were like just invented. But also that wasn't the purpose. The point then was to play the songs every punk knows, or should know. Give people a good backtrack to party too. It was a really great time. I still love listening to college radio.

 

JF: Riot Radio is much older than Zobnoba, what's the connection to that website?

Kevin: In college I met these two dudes who became some of my best friends, Jonny Wray and Dan Fitz. Jonny and Dan were friends since they were kids and came from a small town upstate New York. But Jonny came up with that name, Zobnoba. The guy was really ahead of his time. Again this is right when MP3's were invented. Like, the first year Napster existed. Jonny was a Music Industry major, which I ended up studying too with a focus on Audio Engineering. Jonny came up with this idea to start a record label that was strictly digital. He called it Zobnoba Records. He was super into zombie movies and he was playing around with that idea, but really it's a nonsensical name. 

So Jonny and Dan graduate and they don't want to go back to their small town. Jonny has a brother who's a head chef at a college in Philadelphia and can get them jobs washing dishes. So they move down there. I follow suit once I graduate and all three of us are sharing a house with some other kids in Philly. Jonny is trying to build an AM Radio transmitter so we can start a pirate radio station, but we couldn't really get it to work. We'd play the Stooges and drive around seeing how far we could get before we'd lose reception. The thing would only reach to like the end of our block. So Jonny says lets just do a podcast. This is in 2005. No one knew what podcasts were. I didn't even know. iPhones don't exist. iPods were like a brand new thing. Only a handful of podcasts even existed, one of which is done by Mike Watt the bassist from the Minutemen. And we're all big fans of the Minutemen and a documentary on them called We Jam Econo just came out and is having a major effect on us. So we build a recording studio in the basement, real DIY like, and we start recording our own music to play on a podcast Jonny is calling Zradio. Z for Zobnoba. And we call it a "radio show" because no one knows what a podcast is. But me and Jonny are both bass players, and Dan doesn't play anything, he was an English major. So our music is weird. We're messing around with drum machines. Dan buys a cheap guitar and literally starts beating the hell out of it. Jonny is taking little kid's toys apart, the ones that make noise, cracking them open and soldering new wires to them to make them sound all crazy, something I later learned was called Circuit Bending. Dan is going on Myspace, which was also pretty new then, and finds other weirdos experimenting with sound and starts asking them if we can play their music on the show and we find out there's tons of kids doing this shit. 

Within a year people are sending us music from all over the world. We're doing two episodes a week and live streaming them over the internet. We find there's a whole scene of this shit in Philly and we're having shows in our basement and recording them and streaming those live over the internet. Bands on tour are sleeping at our house and at times we're helping kids from other countries connect with people all over the US to plan out their tours. Everyone wants to know what the Z stands for and the explanation about Zobnoba Records is kind of besides the point now. The Z now is like a symbol for what we're doing. It's not just DIY. It's Do-It-Yourself but By-Any-Means-Necessary. That whole time was wild, and it was fun, and new, and exciting. And we're helping to encourage and promote this scene of experimental noise weirdos, but at the same time, I'm a punk. As fun as it is, and I have a lot of really good friends that came out of that scene, I'm still feeling like an outsider. Like everyone knew me as the punk kid who comes to all the noise shows. And I want to do for Punk what we're doing for Noise. So in 2010 I bring back Riot Radio as like a Zradio spinoff.  Which is why it's on the Zobnoba website, and why I play a sound clip saying "Riot Radio is brought to you by Zradio" at the end of every show. Doing Zradio educated me on what the Riot Radio Podcasts purpose was going to be.

JF: You mentioned that you were dubbing RioT Radio episodes onto blank tapes and leave them at shows. How far did you manage to distribute those tapes?

Kevin: Yeah, I used to find whatever tapes I could for free and "recycle" them by dubbing episodes of Riot Radio to them. I stole a roll of UPS labels from work ( I work in a warehouse) and I'd use the labels to cover up whatever the tape art was, and then I'd scribble the word "Free" real big on it. Somewhere else I'd write "Punk and Oi from around the world." Then when I'd go to shows I'd just drop a bunch on the merch tables. But this was mostly at shows in Philly. I saw Pat Society from Violent Society grab one once. That made me really happy, ha. I have no clue how far they've gotten. I'm actually surprised you found one in West Chester. Although that's not too far. I played in a band for a while called Mindless Attack, and we got out of Philly occasionally. The furthest we went was to Miami so I might have spread some down there. I get sent to Chicago by my work once a year. I stuck a few in a record store called Bucket Of Blood up there once.

JF: Since you're not using the studio at WONY anymore, what's your set up for producing the show now?

Kevin: My setup is super basic. It's still exactly what I was using when I started the podcast in 2010 and it's still in my bedroom, ha. My neighbor back then was throwing away a super old karaoke machine and I pulled this mixer off it, straight out of the trash. I still use that, with a mic and an iPod, also old as shit, ha. And it all goes into my laptop. Any music I get I convert to MP3. I create the playlist that goes on the iPod, and I just play the songs, adjust the levels, drink beer, stop the playlist to talk. I have a discman for background music. I record everything in real time just like I was back at the radio station even though it doesn't get broadcasted live. People have asked me to do that but I need to keep Riot Radio more guerilla style because I never know when I'll have time to do it. Keeping to a schedule doesn't really work for me.  

 8. Over the 20 years you've been hosting the program how has your taste in music changed? 

Kevin:  When I was 18 I was one of those too-cool-for-school punks. I turned my nose up at anything that wasn't punk. I judged people for what they listened to. I was a real shithead, ha. But if it was Punk I was listening to it. From skate to street to Oi! I loved all of it. I still do. But now I listen to everything. I like Blues. I like Reggae. I like wild weird shit and old soul and funk. I love salsa music and dudes like Tito Puente. It's all great. It's all history and you can learn something from all of it. I get real curious about what younger kids listen to these days too. I wanna hear the new stuff. It's all cool now as far as I'm concerned. If it moves you, then it's great. But pertaining to the show it's basically the same music. I played the classic stuff when I was on WONY in 2002. Since the podcast started the focus is on promoting the little guys. Giving them exposure. Punk lives and thrives in the Local Scene and with the youth. Supporting all that is the purpose of the show. And there's people making great fucking music out there. People should hear it.

JF: At some point you graduated and left WONY (I presume). What was the conversion from broadcast to podcast like from a technical perspective?

Kevin: From a technical perspective the only difference is now my gear is trash, ha. It's the same set up basically, just crummier. But having that DIY background made it easy. As long as you don't care about having fancy high tech gear it doesn't really matter. And you don't really need it. Technology now is crazy. You can make a podcast with literally just your phone. The hardest part about the switch was explaining to everyone what a podcast was. Trying to promote a podcast then wasn't easy. You constantly had to tell people "it's like a radio show but you download it." This was flip phone era and a lot of people didn't like that idea; especially punks. You'd tell a punk they have to go on the internet and they'd give you this face like they were about to spit on you, ha!

JF: When you left WONY Oneonta what drove you to keep the show going?

Kevin: This is going to sound corny but I really feel like Punk Rock saved my life. I was this weird little dude who thought I was completely alone, and it showed me I wasn't. It gave me a safe space to be myself. It taught me to be proud of who I was. It gave me the music that continues to get me through life, especially when things get tough. And it gave me a community where I met some really beautiful people. I feel like I owe a debt. If doing Riot Radio helps that in any way, or if there's a possibility it could help to remind some other kid out there that they're not alone, then there's no way I'm stopping.

JF: Are you working on anything else really cool you want to tell me about?

Kevin: Riot Radio has taken a few hits over the last few years so I'm really hoping to get it back up to steam in 2025. I've also been dabbling with bonus episodes for subscribers, so I'll definitely be making more of those. On top of that it's all been life stuff. I recently started trying to buy a house, which is a whole thing and takes up a lot of energy. If I'm ever able to actually get one though I hope to build a legit recording studio in it. And if I can do that I hope to start helping bands record demos and stuff. Maybe even start making music myself again. So if that starts happening I'll let you know. But it's all hanging on a big IF there, ha.

DJ David Brenner Live (Part 2)

1979 Desert Inn flyer

I did listen to that entire David Brenner Live episode. In the first 10 seconds they plugged the local affiliate and I learned that this was broadcast on WXRK New York, NY. I doubt hardly anyone has heard this program since it first aired in 1985. Since there were only four episodes, I expect it was not re-broadcast at all. I did spend the time to ID all the music. Billy Preston's band did some covers which I didn't include.  They seemed to run out of material at the end and have to improvise their way to the end of the 90 minute segment. Interestingly he says that on September 4th the show is going weekly. Clearly that did not happen. 

Cyndi Lauper crashed the show, something that was known to happen in New York back in those days. Even I managed to run into Cyndi Lauper. Somehow she was everywhere all at once. Brenner graciously managed not to play any Cyndi Lauper while Cyndi Lauper was there. That would be a social faux pas, like wearing the bands T-shirt to their concert.

LISTEN ON ARCHIVE.ORG
https://archive.org/details/david-brenner-live-8-21-1985-side-b

If you are a jazz head you might know it was also Art Farmers birthday, thought it passed unobserved by Brenner. One of the highlights here was Billy Preston; he had some hits in 1984 and 1985 with Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston and Patti LaBelle. Though it was his cocaine years he was in good form on the show. After the 4 episodes of "David Brenner Live" Preston came back as musical director for the 1986/1987 season of "Nightlife,"   Brenner's next stab at a radio show. It was wildly more successful.

Below is my track listing for this episode if you just want to know what horrible 1980s rock bands he was spinning back then, in the glorious Fall of 1985. I am pleased to report that despite their huge popularity in that moment, he managed not to play Huey Lewis & The News.

1. -Intro
2. -Stand up routine
3. Sting - Fortress Around Your Heart
4. The Hollies - Carrie Anne (clip)
5. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Our House (clip)
6. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Woodstock (clip)
7. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Just a Song Before I Go
8. -Graham Nash interview pt 1
9. The Hollies - Bus Stop
10. -Graham Nash interview pt 2
11. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Teach Your Children
12. Taxxi - Still in Love (clip)
13. -Mary Gross interview
14. Ratt - Lay it Down (clip)
15. AC/DC - Sink The Pink (clip)
16. Paul Young - Every Time You Go Away (clip)
17. -Cyndi Lauper Call-in
18. -The Hooters - interview
19. The Hooters - And We Danced
20. -Cyndi Lauper interview
21. Harry Nilsson - You're Breakin' My Heart (censored)
22. The Hooters -All you Zombies (clip)
23. Graham Nash & The Hooters - Teach Your Children (live)

News and Reviews 2024

We are now in year 19 .... Annually gather my thoughts and I revisit my my statement from 2015... " it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole." This blog began in April of 2005. As of this date, that works out to more than 2,980 posts. The odometer will finally roll over 3,000 some time next year.

Links to all 19 years of News & Reviews:

2024	...	2023
2022	2021	2020
2019	2018	2017
2016	2015	2014
2013	2012	2011
2010	2009	2008
2007	2006	2005

Best Posts:
I started off 2023 with a big research project into the publication history of TAB books. (Many of you surely own a few.) But then in September I did a little research project on cassette magnetic shields. I also dug deep into the weird history of George Garabedian and Mark 56. I had a great time with those three in particular. But I think my favorite was The Lost Lost World, where I researched the various radio theater interpretations of the 112-year-old book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It got me back into radio dramas a bit. Then I traced the history of metal radio back just a little bit further than before. I had a great interview with Ron Harris, formerly of WCPR, but that was only just posted.

 
Most Popular Posts:
The burden of time allows old posts accumulate more clicks than the new posts. So my most popular posts haven't changed in over a decade. Since 2009 the most traffic has gone to a post about Peter Tripp.  This is what I call the post that Reddit built. It remains an aberration in my web-traffic with 96k+ hits. I did eventually collate a list of all Radio Wake-a-thon records here. It garnered another 12,700 hits of it's own. My 2007 post on the Career Academy of Famous Broadcasters continues to get comments from it's legion of former students. 

My biggest post of 2024 was a biography of E. Rodney Jones, The World's Greatest Disc Jockey. That was closely followed by an interview I did in February with the host of Soul Express, Dean Farrell. I doubt they ever met but in soul music they have a definite kinship. My interview with Erik Hanson, host of The Local Show at WHCM a close third. But at this moment the WRKZ post is accumulating hits the fastest. 

Best Zine
Because of Slingshot I get to read a lot of Zines. There were some awesome ones this year. I really liked Restless Legs and Fluke of course. But that last issue of Restless Legs was a revelation, underground lit at it's absolute finest. I reviewed some of those in the last issue of Slingshot #141. Radio Dies Screaming is Dynamite Hemorrhage with a new improved name.

• Radio Dies Screaming [LINK]
  
• Restless Legs [LINK]
  
• Hiroshima Yeah [LINK]
  
• Fluke [LINK]
  
• Ear O' Corn [LINK]
  
• Copy This Cassette! [LINK]
  

Best Radio Show:
I've been back on the podcast wagon for a while. The bit of travel I did in 2023 was radio-free time I mostly spent napping I do miss spinning the dial in new places and finding unexpected things.

• The Local Show - WHCM [LINK]
• Had a great interview back in March.
  
• The Lost Highway - Waieke Radio [LINK]
• Unpredictable playlists exploring dark corners with a punk rock zeitgeist
  
• Left of the Dial -   KWNK [LINK]
• Brilliant sides of punk and noise-rock
  
• Radio Free Midwitch Show - RFM [LINK] 
• It's not new but I've just discovered the archive and wow. It's as random as random gets. Screaming, shouting, beeps, blips, retro keyboards, drones, broken guitars... it's the dogs breakfast.
• Turn Me On Dead Man Podcast [LINK ] 
• Every episode is different but great sides in drone and psychedelia
  
• All Hex Broken Loose - Radio Valencia [LINK]
• From Joe Henderson to Max Roach and it works
  
• Retrospect '60s Garage Punk Show [LINK]
• Just what it says on the tin.
• Riot Radio [LINK]
• All the punch rock 7" goodness you didn't know you needed.
  

Top 10 Records of 2022
Usually my top 10 is comprised of full-length albums, and is format agnostic. My definition of "full-length" is utterly at my discretion as to number of tracks, or length in minutes. But generally EPs, Singles, re-releases, and demos get sifted down the the notable list. I've gotten more flexible on this as the digital age seems to be driving shorter release formats. But if you release 3 rad singles in a year, an album that is not.  

It was truly a great year for music. The increasing affordability home recording software and gear is really democratizing music. However, I'm noticing two things. 1. an increasing "sameness" to the production style, which may be related to the software packages. and 2. an increasing number of streaming only records. Will Laut's Lost and Found, while truly brilliant is only on streaming services today, no physical media, no downloads to be found. So I demoted him from the top 10. 

The world is changing and I don't think I'm going to change with it this time. The album has been a dominant audio medium for over half a century. While that is clearly changing, I'm old and I'm not on the boat. I'm staying right here, where LP stands for "Long Play" and I have the attention span to prove it.

1. Chat Pile - Cool World
2. Soft Play - Heavy Jelly
3. Jesus Lizard -  Rack
   
4. Fontaines D.C.  - Romance
5. Human Impact - Gone Dark
   
6. Blacklisters - This is not at album by BLKLSTRS;
7. Penny Rich - On and On
8. Melvins - Tarantula Heart
9. Big'n -  End Comes Too Soon
   
10. Normans - Normans 
    

Notable mentions: Will Laut - Lost and Found;  Snakebite Sermon -  The Coffin and The Cross ; Skeeter de Milo - Bread; Dust Worship - Friend; Norillag - The Union of Death; Common Wounds - All Night Blood; Braces - Serotonin; Frontierer - The Skull Burned; ISTA - Megawatt; Initium - II, Flak (self titled),  Killing Joke - Honor the Fire Live (3LP), Killing Joke - Live at Lokerse, Dälek – Negro Necro Nekros (re-release 2xLP), ISTA - Megawatt (single), Orphan - "singles", Initium - II, Abandon - Assailable​/​/​Agonism, Cura AB - The Campaign , Doom Beach - Burden, Sunrot / Body Void - Split, Kublai Kahn - Exhibition of Prowess; Consumer Culture - Log Off (single); Urine Hell - Already Dead Tapes; Twenty One Trillion - 18,17,16,16,15; TODD - Purity Pledge;Doom Beach - Burden; Moiii - Moiii; Boucan - Deux; Consumer Culture - Log Off (single); Uniform - American Standard;  Softsun - Daylight in the Dark; Massa Nera - Pioggiadanza Sessions; End of Age - Narcoleptic Hallucinations; Normas; Dead Pioneers - Dead Pioneers ;

Ron Harris - Interview (Part 1)

Ron Harris is not a household name but when you read a lot of radio history sometimes you run across the same name multiple times. It makes sense that you'd see famous names repeatedly. It makes a lot less sense when they are not famous names.  It gets downright mysterious sometimes. 

I've come to believe that some people were almost famous, maybe even meant to be famous. These people had some kind of inertia that the rest of us lack and they veered off of that trajectory at the last second, perhaps for reasons only they understand.  After the sixth or seventh time I saw his name  I tracked down Mr. Harris and he was very giving of his time to answer my questions ...even the ones I didn't know to ask. What followed where tales of creatively liberated equipment, FCC violations, rock stars, Russian profanity, and an unexpected intersection with Rush Limbaugh... 

He had so many stories I'm just going to go ahead and call this "Part 1." I know I'll be back for more questions and answers.

JF - WCPR was the student-run radio station at Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, NJ. How did you end up becoming the music director?

RH: Well, I started my freshman year at Stevens on Sept. 14, 1969. WCPR was looking for DJs, and I became active both as a DJ and doing some production there. When the Music Director position opened up I volunteered for it.

JF: WCPR was a carrier current station at that time. 

RH: WCPR broadcast via carrier current on 740 kHz for much of its existence. Carrier current transmitters worked by coupling into each building's power lines, which served as weak antennas. Evidently not weak enough, because it turned out that the 740 kHz transmitter in one dorm could cause interference, or beat's against another one in a nearby dorm. So WCPR decided to change some to 750 kHz. In those days there were very few (if any) AM radios that could show the exact tuning like today's digital ones, so the frequency difference was pretty much transparent to the dorm listeners. Just for fun, we started calling it "The Sporty 7-40 and the Nifty 7-50" and the slogan stuck

 

JF: Is there any truth to the story about WCPR increasing it's range using the SS Stevens, the ship the college bought to use as a floating dormitory?

RH:That was a year or two before I got there. The ship had been built in 1944 as a military attack transport, the USS Dauphin. After World War II it was sold and converted into a cruise ship, the SS Exochorda. Stevens bought it in 1967 to use as a floating dormitory and renamed it the SS Stevens. The WCPR engineers installed a carrier current transmitter aboard the ship (the metal hull basically blocked all the commercial radio stations, making our signal the only one that could be picked up in the cabins). 

It turned out the AC power circuit they used fed the dorm cabins, and also the string of lights that spanned the length of the ship, on typically tall masts. Evidently that string of lights acted as a terrific antenna, and the station could be heard all over the eastern seaboard and beyond. Whether that was deliberate or accidental is not known (I mean, we were a science and engineering school!). Things were great until the Dean of Students received a letter from the FCC informing him that it was a very illegal situation! That was the end of our semi-national broadcasting experience!

A few years later, they installed a low power FM transmitter on top of the Stevens Library, pretty much in the center of the campus dorms. I don't know the story about why it was taken down, but I suspect the same government agency might have become involved.

JFK There was also a WCPR pirate radio station in Brooklyn in 1976. Was the WCPR staff involved with that at all?

I think I heard something about it, but it had no connection with us. Stevens Tech was on what's known as Castle Point in Hoboken, NJ, hence Castle Point Radio. It's literally a stones throw from the Hudson River, across from West 4th St. in Manhattan. The original call letters were WSRN ("Stevens Radio Network"), but they were changed in the 1960s.

[Confirmed with multiple references: Radio Daily-Television Daily refers to the station as WSRN in 1957, the Stevens Indicator in 1962, and Billboard as late as 1966.]

JF. Back in the early 1970s you were reporting airplay to the Billboard "Campus Programming Aids."  What was that like and how did it work?

RH: As Music Director, I wanted to increase our record company service, so, being a 15-minute PATH/subway ride from the Billboard offices, I became friends with Bob Glassenburg, the College Radio editor for Billboard. I was also sending out our playlist every other week to every record company I could find, and I had a talented classmate drawing a radio-related cartoon on each one to help it stand out . I also got to know the major record company promotion guys in NYC, and those contacts and connections increased the number of promo records we received [free!] to something like 50+ singles and 20+ albums each month (I don't remember the exact number, but it was probably higher than that). The promo guys at the record companies would call me to hype their current product. All in all, it was a really successful project and I was respected at the station and by the record companies. A side benefit was getting comp tickets to shows at the Fillmore East and other local venues!

Stevens being a science and engineering school, our Top 40 chart was called "The WCPR Slide Rule Survey." Yeah, I know it's a groaner, but back then every student was required to have  a slide rule!!

JF: You won a "Campus Humor" contest with some kind of with a satirical production about the kidnapping of a college Dean. Can you tell me about that and does that audio still exist? 

RH: The Gillette Company, makers of men's shaving items, released a new product, a hairspray for men called The Dry Look. One of their promotion ideas was a national college campus push. They went to some 30 or 40 colleges and offered the student radio stations a chance to participate in a contest. Each station would have several people or teams create different audio vignettes about some aspect of college life. The vignettes would be played on the station, and there would be a vote by the students for their favorite vignette. When they voted, they'd also be given a can of The Dry Look. The winning creative producer/team received a $100 prize. 

Then, the first place vignette from each school would be submitted for judging by several professional broadcasters, as well as the College Radio editor at Billboard. The judges included NBC TV and radio drama critic, Leonard Probst, and kids' show host comedian Soupy Sales. 

I wrote a script for "The Kidnap" a satirical take on the unrest and protests taking place at campuses across America. I enlisted our Chief Engineer, Mike Ferriola, to co-produce it with me, and we each did some of the voices, and utilized some station members and even one of the campus security officers for additional voices. I added some sound effects and music, and it was voted #1 by the students at Stevens.

Now, I knew we were up against much bigger schools (I think Dartmouth and Harvard were among them), so I didn't have very high expectations. As all of the local winning creations were being judged by the professional panel, I got a call from my friend, Bob Glassenburg at Billboard, saying "Ron, you S.O.B.! I'm not supposed to tell you this, but no one even came close to what you created! Just please act surprised when they contact you!"  Both Mike and I couldn't believe it, but it was true! Our prize was $1,500 and an all-expense-paid week's trip to New York City, plus $1,000 for WCPR. 

Of course, since we both lived on campus right across the river from NYC, the "trip" consisted of a few subway tokens, but Gillette did put us up in the Loew's Midtown Motor Inn in Times Square, and set up meetings with ad agencies and radio and TV stations! We also were guests on the Joe Franklin radio show, and Joe played our winning entry on the air on WOR during the program! It was a truly exhilarating and heady experience for us both! 

[I have heard "The Kidnap" audio and can confirm what Ron and Mike did with 1/4" tape and cart machines is amazing.  I have posted it on Youtube HERE]

JF: In 1973 you moved to Illinois to attend Southern Illinois U. What drove that change?  

By the middle of my junior year at Stevens I realized my heart wasn't in computer science or electrical engineering, but rather in radio broadcasting and production. During the first semester of my junior year I was spending all my time at WCPR, and went to something like two classes and took one exam, an open-book test on which I got a grade of 24 (out of 100). Then, as the semester was drawing to a close, around the beginning of December, I was summoned to the Dean's office. The conversation started out, "Ron, I know you're not happy here at Stevens...", and my reply was "Dean, I LOVE it here at Tech, and especially WCPR!" But the decision had been made: I should transfer to another school. As the semester was virtually over, I asked the Dean if I could get grades of "W" for "Withdrew" instead of what I should have gotten, "WF" for Withdrew-Failed.WF grades for every class that semester would have made it tough to transfer to any college, and no school meant I'd lose my deferment from military service. This being the time of the war in Vietnam, I really needed that deferment. The Dean agreed to bend the rules for me, and so my grades that semester were all "W"s. 

I went to the Stevens Library and looked at the college catalogs on file (Stevens was a very hard school, and I wasn't the first to need to look for an alternative). The one that stood out to me was Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, a recently-opened satellite campus from the main one in Carbondale, IL. They had a brand new 50,000 watt public radio station, WSIE-FM, and that clinched the deal for me! Their classes started on January 3rd, 1972, giving me about three weeks to apply to transfer there. I was accepted right before Christmas, 1971, and so on New Year's Day 1972, I loaded up my car and drove to Illinois without having any idea what the school and station would be like. I graduated a year and a half later with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communications/Broadcasting.

JF:  You were also a DJ at WSIE-FM. That's mostly a Jazz station today, what was that like in your tenure? 

In those days, WSIE was a mix of pop, classical and opera. I was working on the air on Saturdays and Sundays doing a show called, "Swing Easy" featuring light pop and big band jazz, as well as the show "Masters of the Opera" (no easy task, as I knew nothing about opera nor how to pronounce most of the names!). I was also doing production at the station, and was a teacher's helper in the Radio Production courses. There were some talented people there. Two who had graduated before I got to the school were Peter Maer, who went on to become a reporter for the Mutual Broadcasting System, and Bill Plaschke, senior sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times. I also worked part time at a country music station, WGNU in Granite City, IL (part of the St. Louis market), and I spent a full semester earning academic credit as an intern at KIRL radio in St. Charles/St. Louis.

JF. You started in commercial radio in 1973 at KGMO, did that overlap with WSIE or was that after graduation?

I graduated in June, 1973, and sent out about 10 aircheck audition tapes to stations around the Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois areas. KGMO AM/FM was the first station to reply, and so I started on-air doing 8:00 PM to 1:00 AM in mid-August. I was on KGMO-FM only, as the AM was a daytimer. DJs on the AM/FM simulcast were paid $100 a week salary, but those of us on only FM started out as hourly employees for much less money. Well, a month later I came down with mononucleosis, and had to recuperate for a few weeks. KGMO had a reputation for not wanting to wait for a sick DJ to return, and I fully expected to be let go. To my surprise, the station manager called me and said they liked my work  so much they were moving me to afternoon drive on both AM and FM, and even more surprising, they made it effective for even the time I was sick, paying me the $100 weekly salary for the month I was out! Interesting fact: the DJ who was doing afternoon drive and had left before I got there was a guy whose air name was "Rusty Sharpe" and he was pretty good. I guess he might have gotten his  job at least in part because his father was part owner of the station, one Mr. Limbaugh. And "Rusty Sharpe" was his son, Rush Limbaugh, who would go on to have the number one conservative network radio talk show for many years!

JF: What was KGMO like 40 years ago?  I think it was an AM/FM simulcast at that time. 

The station was in a building with a metal Quonset hut-type add-on as the studio. The air conditioning broke down fairly often, and it would get extremely hot in there. Of course, the service company deal was a trade out where KGMO gave them lots of free advertising in lieu of having to pay them for repairs, so when the AC died, we were way down on their priority list! I did many shows in that blazing inferno wearing just my briefs!

JF: By the mid 70s you seem to have mostly left on-air roles and become primarily a production engineer. Was that a difficult change?

Well, I had always been interested in radio station jingles, and had collected a large number of them from stations all over the U.S. and the world. The major companies that produced jingles were in Dallas, TX (thanks to favorable union agreements with the singers and players). I was friends with the two biggest and best known jingle "collectors" who ended up working for the two biggest jingle production companies. Jon Wolfert was at PAMS Productions, and Ken Justiss was at TM Productions, both in Dallas. Ken was looking for someone to work with him in production, and had heard a lot of my KGMO production work. He offered me a job at TM, and I didn't hesitate a second! Even though I had pretty much experience using only basic mono and stereo equipment, I was determined to become proficient at using the 16-trck multi-track recorders and other studio gear. Being the new "hotshot kid" it took me a while to gain the confidence and respect of the other engineers at TM, but I did. And although TM and PAMS were competitors, Jon, Ken and I stayed great friends, and I still stay in touch with them 50 years later!

Bob Glassenburg's Billboard column - 1973 (excerpt)

JF: You moved to Los Angeles and went on to be a production engineer at Westwood One radio Networks for decades.

Yes! In 1981, I went for an interview with Norm Pattiz, founder and CEO of the Westwood One Radio Networks. I started there as a production engineer in April, 1981, and would stay there for the next 31 years! In that time, I produced some of Westwood One's top radio programs, like Casey Kasem's  countdown shows; Scott Shannon' Rockin' America Top 30 Countdown and Randy Jackson's Hit List shows (Randy, in addition to being a top music producer and former member of Journey, was one of the original judges on American Idol); and I was Technical Director and board op for many live concert broadcasts, as well as "Radio USA For Africa" and a 90-minute Larry King interview special with then-President Bill Clinton in our studio! I assembled a 54-hour show called "The Rock Years, Portrait of an Era," a history of album rock! One of the first live concerts I board-op'ed was the Moscow Music Peace Festival, a major production involving several satellite hand-offs for a concert coming live from Russia. It was going well until an American band front man decided to teach the Russian crowd how to say "F__K!" in English! This was before we had digital delays to cut out obscenities, so I had to try to anticipate the word and mute the feed to try to avoid having Russian youth gleefully screaming you-know-what on a high-profile broadcast all across America!

Westwood One merged with another radio network in 2011. One of the stated goals was to combine the best people from each company for the new incarnation. But, the day the merger was approved by the Justice Department, the powers that be laid off something like 98% of the Westwood One employees! I lasted another few months, and then on February 6, 2012, it was my turn. I was 60 years old, and after 31 years of doing what I loved and more, often in 14-hour days, 6 or 7 days a week, I was ready to retire! The irony of it was that they ended up having to hire three people to take over all the work I'd been doing!

As I write this almost 15 years later, I really can't complain at all. I've had an incredible life, from my DJ days to working with presidents and rock stars, as well as learning and developing new skills, doing things I never imagined I would be able to learn and do. I'm still one of the only Chief Engineers who can't solder worth a damn, but hey, there are people for that! For a kid from West Caldwell, New Jersey, who flunked out of his first college, I've done pretty darn well!