Driving to points North

I drove across the New York metro and Connecticut Friday on the way to Portland Maine, and for the first time in a long time caught Marko's Punk Rock Jukebox on 90.1 WECS. It is without a doubt the finest punk rock radio program I've heard in America. It also boasts the most obscure playlists. Host Marko owns an enviable collection of punk vinyl from the peak of the era. I've been unimpressed with the last few year of talent from that station, but Marko has kept solid for several years now. Thankfully the station streams now and I can listen to his show from the comfort of my cubicle. Of course the format is .pls requires a slight modification of your windows mediaplayer. Basically you install this doohickey. McAfee confirms this is free off malware and adware.

Instead fo rocking the local Boston radio while on I-95 North I played the Officer May record and celebrated the most recent peak of local Boston music. [I did catch a bit of Selected Shorts btu that's its own post.] Nobody else likes Officer May so I was alone on this point. Of course this would place said peak in 2003 likely leaving me at odds with our friends at Exitfare but so it goes.

In Portland I listened to several hours of 88.3 WYAR. Its a nostalgia outlet with a real touch for deep catalog standards and at night some truly amazing country oldies. I heard some slide guitar artisans I'd never head of previously. I'd really been looking forward to hearding something on WMPG but they were running a really run of the miss electric blues program. I dig the blues but weak whiteboy blues are not moving to me. But Saturday morning they made up for it all with a freakish program of Cambodian music; gotta love that. I couldn't listen to anything except 93.1 WMGX "the Coast" in my hotel room as it was audible ON ALL FREQUENCIES! I don't blame them though.... intermod happens. but it is odd to get intermod like that 4 miles out. I was in South Portland at the time.

But being in South Portland, I was abel to hear America's only Smooth Jazz Low Power station. http://www.wjzp.org/ they use Jazz-like branding but it's smooth jazz ,trust me. I get nauseous immediately.

Things were exciting and with wind chill managed to dip below zero. I ended up springing for a hot lunch mid afternoon at Rosies. A little demi salad and a bowl of hot minestrone helped me recover from working outside.

Aircheck History Part 2

RADIO DEFEATS AXIS IN WWI!

The earliest surviving recordings of a radio signal are segments of Morse code transmissions recorded 1914 by Charles Apgar, a New Jersey radio ham. He fitted the electrical element of a headphone to a home-made recording head he attatched to an Edison cylinder phonograph. This Rube-Goldberg device allowed him to record radio signals picked up by his receiver on wax cylinders. He made at least a dozen such recordings before 1915.

Some of these led to the discovery of high-speed coded messages being transmitted by German spies thru the Telefunken wireless station at Sayville, Long Island!

Other recordings made by Apgar were more pedestrian. He mostly recorded Morse code news bulletins from WHB in Manhattan. Apgar's original wax cylinders are long since lost; but somce samples of his recordings survive. These still exist in yet another aircheck. Apgar made an appearance on station WJZ in New York in 1934. These airchecks of airchecks are owned by the Antique Wireless Association, and a tape copy is in the Library of Congress.
More here: http://telefunken.8k.com/spies.htm

The art of hom-brew aircheks continued Sporadically until 1921 when the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company and the Victor Talking Machine Company bregan making regular broadcast recordings. Documentation exists for many of these. Sadly nothing survives of these or any of the other experimental recordings thru 1922. Some of their recordings from 1925 are known to exist.

By 1928 a number of big events: presidential speeches, Public safty tests, anniversary broadacasts etc are recorded. Without getting into rediculous details, these include WOR, WJZ, WEAF, WRC, WMAQ CKAC a few NBC network events and some lesser known shortwave stations. Aircheck recording increases in popularity in the late 20s into the early 30's leaving us with recording of figures like Colonel Lindbergh, Grantland Rice, King George V and others.

By 1935 NBC was using acetate discs to record and archive programming for later use. The other big networks jumped on board shortly thereafter.

more here: http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/earlyradio.html