Maximum Louie Louie

This was an event unparalleled in the history of college radio. There are radio stunts that garner a bit of attention for a radio station. This stunt is recorded in no fewer than half a dozen books and innumerable websites. This stunt eventually led to a recurring parade... this stunt outdid all other radio stunts and thus became a historical event unto itself. It was called Maximum Louie Louie.

The setting was an infamous college radio station, 89.7 KFJC in Los Altos, CA, on the campus of Foothills College. It's only a 110 watt station but it blankets downtown San Jose, CA which gives them a reach of about 1 million people. The station was founded in 1959, when Foothills was just a Junior college giving name to the JC following the KF. Originally a 10 watt station on 88.5, the station moved to 89.7 in 1961, before the station ever aired rock n' roll music. They went stereo in 1974 and then increased power to 110 watts in 1980. (Note: some sources put them at 250 watts.)  All this was prelude to the big event.

On August 19, 1983, at 6:00 PM , the station aired 823 different versions of the song Louie Louie consecutively. The event is referred to as Maximum Louie Louie. The idea originated with two student members of KFJC, Jeff "Stretch" Riedle and Phil Dirt aka Frank Luft with encouragement from SM Robert "Doc" Pelzel. How this event came to be, and all of it's unintended consequences are two different stories:

The idea originated with two student members of KFJC, Jeff "Stretch" Riedle and Phil Dirt aka Frank Luft. In an inspired moment back in 1981, Stretch tore through the KFJC library and found 33 versions of Louie Louie and aired them consecutively. It took about 90 minutes. Coincidentally KALX held a completed a listener survey and determined that their all time favorite rock song was Louie Louie. A DJ there, Mel Cheplowitz used the KFJC song list and added 17 more versions and aired a  50-song all Louie Louie power block in December of 1981. Riedle responded with an 88-version special in the Summer of 1982. Cheplowitz raised the stakes and broadcast a "Lou-A-Thon" in December of 1982 that included 100 different versions. (some sources say 200) Local press started to comment on this musical escalation. Cheplowitz said he was done, but Riedle told the San Francisco Examiner " We started this thing, and we intend to end it." It sounded almost like a threat. More here.

The station began soliciting versions of Louie Louie. They planned to broadcast live versions by local bands every two hours. Jack Ely, the original Kingmen's vocalist flew down from Oregon. The original songwriter Richard Berry took a train up from Los Angeles. Riedle would tilt this windmill and kick it's ass. Local press began to guess how many versions KFJC might pull together... 200?  400?. All told it was 63 consecutive hours of programming. Los Altos was never the same again.

So how many versions were really broadcast, and by which artists? Riedle taped the event. But 24 years later, despite the numerous aircheck sheets, some versions remain unidentified even today. [SOURCE] In honor of the event, Rhino Records released RNEP605, a "Best of Louie Louie" compilation. It's only 10 tracks, but that LP made it into the hands of a very special DJ in Philadelphia.

On the East coast, 2,900 miles away a WMMR DJ named John DeBella, regaled his listeners with the true tale of Maximum Louie Louie. Inspired, he decided that Philadelphia needed a Louie Louie Parade. Thousands of people came. On April 1st, 1985 it happened. They did it again in 1986, and 1987 until the City itself started to complain about the costs. But by then it had spread, Louie Louie parades had been held in multiple cities... as of 2017, Peoria, IL has been doing it annually for 30 straight years. So that parade has outlived the LouieFest, held yearly in Tacoma, WA from 2003 to 2012.

But 30 years is a long time. Jack Ely died in 2015, and Richard Berry back in 1997. Stretch Riedle is still with us but has not been terribly healthy of late. But in 2011 the original conspirators gathered at KFJC for “Return of the Invasion of Maximum Louie Louie.” More here. It was significantly shorter, but aired some archival tapes no one had heard since the original broadcast.  In their collective honor, we all now celebrate International Louie Louie Day every year, on April 11th; aka Richard Berry's birthday. It's been held since at least 2003, but I'm pretty sure Stretch is behind that one too.

System Bus Radio

The System Bus Radio program exploits the design of your computer's system bus to transmit AM radio without any other radio transmitting hardware. When I first heard of System Bus Radio I thought that it's inventor must be a genius hacker. I was right.

A system bus is a single computer bus that connects the primary components of a computer system. these are the CPU, Memory and Input/Output (I/O). This combines the functions of a data bus to carry information, an address bus to determine where it should be sent, and a control bus to determine its operation. The expression "system bus" covers all related hardware, components, wire electronic pathways, and software. (Early computer buses were parallel electrical wires.) If you are still not sure what the bus is, check out this link here. The genius who wrote the original machine code was William Entriken, and he was kind enough to agreed to a short interview with Arcane Radio Trivia.

JF: What gave you the idea to try to convert your Macbook into a radio station?

WE: Well first of all I realized that it was possible.  One day I was sitting downstairs in my basement where I have an actual radio, which is hard to believe nowadays. I do listen to AM radio and the reception is just terrible down there. Some stations still turn off at night. I had the radio on and of course it [the frequency] got silent, and as I got into that room, it started getting louder. I realized this was interference from the computer. I thought wow, that's a lot of interference to pick it up like that. I just got lucky because there are only certain frequencies that it works on... and that's where the idea started.

 JF: Can you explain what components you are exploiting to emit a signal?

WE: I believe that it is the connection between the processor [CPU] and the RAM. There is a lot of space there. Basically you want something that's not shielded. If you have a shielded connection you don't get any signal that's leaking outside. So the processor is in steel, you can't have anything leak out of that, and the wires are only two atoms wide. It's airtight. The RAM likewise. The RAM is extremely tight. But between the processor and the RAM is the system bus. So the ideal is that you can push something onto the system bus that's where your emission is going to come from. It's less shielded. You don't need to have 14 nanometer wires on the system bus because there's not as much going on.

JF: The field tests indicate that it's working on a wide variety of devices.

WE: It's really exciting. It went on to some Portuguese website, then Hackernews, it hit something big. So many people came in and they're from all over the world, Japan and all over Europe, and the interesting thing is that they have different radio stations in Japan and Europe, and the US and different devices. So luckily testing it on all different frequencies on shortwave and long wave, and AM, and it's great because you're not going to know unless you test it.

JF: That sounds like we're exploring the different system buses on all these devices.

WE: Yes! So you're multiplying a bunch of things together. How hard are you hitting the system bus? What is the radio frequency emission envelope of your system bus? Then once it hits your system bus it has to exit your enclosure. So there is shielding on your enclosure too. On an open air system you're have more radiation than something enclosed. Even the same computers in different model years might have different designs. The NSA has a file about this, it's called Tempest. 

JF: Tempest?

WE: They went through these issues a long time ago and they studied this in much more detail. Tempest is an acronym and they have standards on every component you could get near electricity. So you can read them and see whether they are approved or not, and of course these ones aren't because they're leaking like crazy.

JF: I read about the script that is controlling the transmission. How is that able to modulate the pitch.

WE: So there are only two parts, one of them is modulation, it couldn't be easier on—off, on—off, on—off. That's all you're doing. The "off" is hopefully just using a sleep signal. There's a command on the computer for sleeping, it would just wait hopefully. That's accurate enough, and then the "go" signal. That's the timing. That's it. That's why it only works on AM. That's your carrier on AM.

JF: What about the On signal?

WE: The other half of the program is is the "On" part, that's actually the hard part. The ideal is that the baseline is when the computer sleeping, and ideally it has a different radiation signature than when it's not sleeping and you want as broad a contrast as possible.  The problem is that when you write a program there's no function for "make noise." So typically we make a loop, I=1, then I=2, I=3... all the way up to a million. What happens is that the compiler, because it's so smart, skips over that. The end result is that the computer's not really working but it's telling you that it did. They're too smart for their own good. So what we had to do was find something that the compiler would not skip over, and we want it to load from memory.And computers are very lazy. They don't want to load something from memory if they don't have to. It's expensive. So what they'll do is cache it. You will get it from memory but then keep a residual copy in the processor. Again, that means you'll loading from the processor and nothing leaks out of the processor.  We want it to load something from memory over and over, and computers really hate doing that, and will try very hard to avoid that.

JF: So how did you get around that?

WE: The one way we did that is something called break-cache. It avoids the [CPU] cache and loads what you want from memory. It's a very specific instruction, I don't even know why they have it but that's what we used. So it takes the data from the memory across the system bus to the processor.

JF: Do you have any background in radio previous to this?

WE: I do have a engineering degree. I went to Villanova for Electrical and computer engineering. I'm use to breaking things and building things.

JF: You do know that Villanova has a campus radio station...

WE: I was on that station, WXVU. My show was called the V-Spot. There were these cards we had to read for community announcements. Nothing we pre-recorded, everything was low-budget, do whatever you want, bring guests on, bring your roommate on, everything was off the cuff and super-fun.

JF: Any last thoughts?

WE: It's great to talk about this stuff, to know that other people care, and care about breaking stuff, trying things, and making things. It's going to be a dying trade in the future. You can't open an iPhone. You can take a radio apart with a screwdriver. It's a real shame... I used to take stuff apart until it didn't work anymore then find more stuff to take apart... I hope that your blog inspires people. I hope you're making engineers out of people rather than just history majors. 

JF: Me too.

Pai Vs. Schneiderman

This is probably the first scandal of it's kind at the FCC. According to the Office of the Attorney General of New York As many as 2 million comments” on the US Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules were faked. [SOURCE]  Why this is not bigger news... I can only posit that it is overshadowed by the comically villainous move by Ajit Pai to repeal in the first place.

I have often said that for all it's flaws, the FCC is the most high-functioning agency in the US government.  Since June of 1946 The FCC is legally obligated to follow all the guidelines set down by the Administrative Procedures Act; (APA), Pub.L. 79–404, 60 Stat. 237. So an important and mandated part of any FCC rule-making procedure is gathering public comments. According to the agency itself "Gathering and analyzing comments from the public is an important part of the Federal Communications Commission's rulemaking process. The FCC considers the public's input when developing rules and policies." [SOURCE] These fake comments derail that process.

For 72 years the FCC has listened to consumers and the industry it governs in order that it be a more effective regulatory agency. On November 29th, 2017 it was revealed that in that process to abandon net neutrality, more 10 million public comments were likely faked. That's more than the entire population of North Carolina. The PEW Research Center reported some damning analysis.

• 57% of comments used temporary or duplicate email addresses
• Seven repeated comments accounted for 38% of all submissions
• 94% of comments were submitted multiple times
• Over 75,000 comments were submitted simultaneously
• Over 25,000 instances of fake names
• 1.4 million repeated email addresses
• 8 Million temporary/fake email addresses
• Just 5 comments were submitted more than 800,000 times each

A separate investigation carried out by data scientist Jeff Kao states that the FCC received at least 1.3 million phony pro-repeal comments. [SOURCE]The sheer volume of fake comments can only have come from organized bot campaigns. This was a high volume automated astroturf attack. At one point the volume of fake comments was so high, the FCC claimed it was under a DDOS attack. [SOURCE]

Only 6% of comments were unique out of the 21.7 million total. Only these comments appear to be "organic" in other words... real. That is about 126,000 comments. Kao estimates that 99.7% of those are pro Net Neutrality. Pai ignored the situation and the repeal was completed despite a deluge of public and industry criticism that has not abated. It seems certain that he is aware, and highly probable that he is it's intended beneficiary. A number of FoIA requests could determine if he is also their architect.

That act of hubris has been followed by vigorous journalistic inquiries. Writer Jason Prechtel filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request on June 4th asking the FCC for data related to bulk comment uploads. The FCC acknowledged receiving the FoIA request, but it did not approve or deny the request despite being legally obligated to do so... Even today it's listed as Under Review. SOURCE Another journalist, Kevin Collier filed a lawsuit against the FCC, alleging that the commission failed to comply with FoIA requests about the alleged DDoS attack. A nonprofit named American Oversight filed a FoIA request for all records related to communications regarding net neutrality between ISPs and Chairman Ajit Pai. None of these have been answered.

But the story now is FCC Chairman Pai Vs. NY Attorney General Schneiderman. The Attorney General "slammed" the FCC for stonewalling the investigation. [SOURCE] But in defiance of the law, and even the inquiries of other agencies... the Pai seems determined to click undo on half a century of transparency. This sets up a fight that will be "yuge" topic in the midterm elections.

KVAN vs. The Volcano

It is my informed opinion that AM radio station KVAN has endured more engineering and administrative hardship than any other radio station in the contiguous 48 states. It is amazing that the station endured, more so that the license still exists today.... though that's complicated. More here.

The original 910 KVAN-AM in Vancouver, WA in 1939 and was shut down in 1976. The frequency is used today by KMTT.  But another KVAN was on 1480 AM from 1967-1980, in Vancouver which became KARO and is now KBMS.  From 1981-1989 and 1991-2003 a third station used the KVAN calls in Vancouver on 1550 AM. That one is now KKOV.  The fourth KVAN on 92.1 operated from Pilot Rock, OR from 2007-2010, which later became KUMA-FM. More here.

The original KVAN operated on 910 AM in Portland for 20 years. But our tale begins in April of 1955 Camas-Washougal Radio, Inc. applied to the FCC to build radio station at Camas, WA on 1480kc operating at 1 while kilowatt of power, as a day timer. The CP was approved on September 28th, 1955 and call letters KRIV were assigned. IT debuted on air on  February 2, 1956. Then things went down hill for about the next 40 years. So much more here.

On June 2nd, 1956 a severe flood of the Columbia River endangered the KRIV-AM transmitter site. The site was successfully sandbagged and KRIV broadcast 24 hours a day, to keep the community informed with the latest bulletins from Civil Defense and the Red Cross.  In 1958 they changed calls to KPVA for Portland Vancouver Area re-targeting the region for ad sales. They followed that up in 1959 by relocating their studios to downtown Portland in the "Washington Hotel" at 1129 S.W. Washington St. but the transmitter remained at Camas. On May 9, 1960 KPVA became KVAN. The callsign was well-known in the area from it's time on 910 AM. 

In December of 1960 the FCC granted KVAN permission to change city of license from Camas to to Vancouver, but station management screwed up the paperwork delaying the process. It was not until late in December of 1961 that they finally moved the transmitter to Hayden Island, OR. The station got it's delinquent paperwork in order in October of 1965 and officially changed its city of license to Vancouver.The location was literally in the corner of a parking lot Jantzen Beach Amusement Park." The small studio had no running water or toilet. Disc jockey's used an outhouse about 20 yards away. The (ahem) crappy location had security problems too In 1966 they had a series of burglaries knock them off the air repeatedly. 

• April 28, 1966 burglars broke into KVAN and stole some of relay tubes.
• April 30, 1966 burglars returned and this time knocked KVAN off the air for 7 days by stealing four tubes from the transmitter. 
• May 7, 1966 but was burglarized overnight again and had to postpone broadcasting until May 8, 1966. A cart machine and a tape recorder had been stolen, and the transmitter damaged
• On June 7, 1966 KVAN was knocked off the air again for 5 days by burglars, after stealing equipment. 
• On June 11, 1966 KVAN returned to the airwaves but burglars knocked it off the air that evening. 

In 1969 Jantzen Beach Park had closed down forcing a change of venue. Their leased land had been sold out from under them to developers to build a mall. The station shut down for a week in April to relocate to 18608 North Portland Rd. in North Portland. The new studio was located in a trailer again  with no running water or toilet facilities. There was no outhouse this time. DJ's had to use the bathroom at the St. Johns Gun Club & Dog Motel. (The Dog motel and gun club were separate buildings.) The station's transmitter lost it's tower and a horizontal dipole was flown between two trees down by the Dog Motel near Smith Lake. This was rectified in August then the FCC granted an STA operate with a 200 foot flat top antenna at 11665 North Portland Rd. through 11-25-69. This began a long series of special temporary everything...  They were permanently temporary.

• Oct. 7, 1969 CP to change transmitter and studio location
• Nov. 12, 1969  FCC extended STA thru 1-11-70
• Jan. 8, 1970 FCC extended STA thru 2-6-70
• April 29, 1970 FCC extended STA  thru 7-6-70
• June 30, 1970  FCC extended  STA thru 9-30-70
• July 6, 1970  FCC extended  STA thru 9-6-70
• Sept. 4, 1970  FCC extended STA  thru 10-1-70
• October 9, 1970  FCC extended STA to 12-15-70
• Nov. 2, 1970 FCC extended STA and temporary site thru 2-4-71
• Jan. 27, 1971 FCC granted CP to replace expired permit
• February 4, 1971 FCC extended STA thru 4-4-71
• April 1, 1971 FCC extended STA thru 5-4-71
• April 30, 1971 FCC extended STA thru 7-2-71
• June 29, 1971 FCC extended STA thru 10-1-71
• September 30, 1971 FCC extended STA thru 1-1-72
• December 27, 1971 FCC extended STA thru 4-1-72

It got worse. According to eminent Gerald Gaule, Portland Radio historian and broadcaster: "On March 15, 1972 the FCC announced that Wallace E. Johnson, Broadcast Bureau Chief recommended to FCC Hearing Examiner Millard F. French that the application of Cathryn C. Murphy for license of KVAN Vancouver, Wash. should be denied. Chief Johnson stated: "In the past, the Commission has been faced with licensees who have been seriously deficient in the operation of their stations and the Commission has also been faced with licensees whose candor has been found wanting. But we can safely say that never in the annals of this Commission has there been a licensee so deficient in the conduct of the affairs of her station as Mrs. Murphy. Nor has there been a licensee so lacking in candor. This total lack of candor by Mrs. Murphy and willingness to submit false statements in order to escape embarrassing inquiry by this agency require the ultimate conclusion that she does not possess the requisite qualifications to be licensee." The 50 page Recommendation showed that since 1960 Mrs. Murphy had been cited for 133 violations of Commission rules."  Highlights include:

• The license renewal application was filed after the station license had expired. 
• False representations were made about current public affairs and news programs 
• False representations were made about public affairs and news programs 
• An unauthorized change was made in the location of the transmitter. 
• False testimony was given at a hearing about the location of the transmitter. 
• Failure to provide program and operating logs for the station. 
• Misrepresented true facts in an affidavit filed with the commission. 
• Testified falsely regarding the matter at a hearing. 

The KVAN license was taken away from station owner Cathryn C. Murphy, and transferred to her own mother! Ada C. Brown. In general mom did a better job running the show than her daughter. In January of 1974, the FCC granted KVAN a permit for the transmitter move that had occurred five years earlier. Then in August of 1976, the FCC granted KVAN a CP to build a four tower array, so it could broadcast 24/7.  Then in June of 1979 mom sold it all, lock stock and barrel to Patten Communications Corp. The format flipped from acid rock to Top 40 overnight. The following January KVAN became KARO. But the nightmare wasn't over.

Less than 6 months later, on May 18th, 1980 Mount St. Helens erupted. Volcanic ash was sucked into the 5kw Continental transmitter knocking the station off air. Geographically KARO was the closest radio station to Mt. St. Helens. Due to the proximity of the volcano and the eminent danger it created, the FCC granted KARO another STA to broadcast at 1kw non-directional nights from their Smith Lake studio site at 11197 N. Portland Rd. for a two year period. Dave Bischoff, Chief Engineer said it was the fastest STA he ever saw. More here.

Husband Substitutes on Housewives' Choice

Let us open with a quote from Annie Nightingale, the legendary British pirate radio DJ. This time it was the the Telegraph [SOURCE] but back in 2015 the Guardian published the same quote [SOURCE] with the same headshot in another story.

"Even though I had contributed to Woman's Hour, one of the reasons that I, as a woman, was initially rejected as a potential Radio 1 DJ was that DJs were intended as “husband substitutes”. BBC exact words. I kid you not."

That line has been quoted and re-quoted in recent years, but wasn't the first time I had heard that BBC was quite so patronizing to the ladies. The 2004 text book Media Studies: The Essential Resource by Philip Rayner, Peter Wall and Stephen Kruger quote the same line from Ms. Annie and explain further the mindset of the time.

"...the male DJs functioned as 'husband substitutes' to the identified female listeners. From this idea, both BBC and commercial radio D|s built up a culture where is seemed the art or presentation was to flirt with the female listener who was characterized as 'Doreen' the housewife."

It's hard to picture this today, in a world where the hashtag #metoo is trending. But Housewives' Choice was a BBC radio record request program that broadcast every morning at 9:00 AM from 1946 to 1967 on the BBC Light Programme. (The program was cancelled when the Light Programme was replaced by BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 in 1967.) The creator and producer was Pat Osborne. The program even then was a bit culturally tone deaf. But in an era of the BBC broadcasting monopoly, they could afford to be 20 years behind the times.

So when the BBC was husband shopping who did they buy?  They actually changed hosts every week or two so they had to replace their 'husbands' often. Who were those weekly 'Husband Substitutes'? In the end there were over 250 hosts... so it's a mixed bag. You can see a complete list here.  Presenters included:

Neal Arden - Born in London he moved to Southern Rhodesia in 1928 and served in the British South Africa Police. In 1930 he returned to England to pursue an acting career. His screen debut was in the 1934 film version of Princess Charming. In 2005 he published his autobiography, A Man of Many Parts.

Sam Gabriel Costa - He was a popular singer of the British dance band era and a voice actor on the show Much Binding in the Marsh.  His BBC radio career began with appearances on the It's That Man Again (ITMA) program. He also had an excellent mustache.

Kenneth Horne - Unlike most hosts Horne's bread and butter was comedy. He is perhaps best remembered for his work on three BBC Radio series: Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (1944–54), Beyond Our Ken (1958–64) and Round the Horne (1965–68). Pre-war he was quizmaster on the bi-weekly BBC radio show Ack-Ack, Beer-Beer.

Roy Rich - Well known in the UK as one of Britain's first DJs,

Franklyn Engleman - A BBC radio personality popular in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly known as the host of Down Your Way and Gardeners' Question Time.

Bryan Michie - A BBC radio announcer and host of Gramophone Omnibus in 1940. He tried his hand at acting in the late 1930s to no avail. More here.

Godfrey Winn - A journalist and columnist for the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Express newspapers. He got into radio as a war correspondent 1939. His book Home From Sea published 1943 recounts his life in the Royal Navy. He frequently hosted the BBC Radio show, with David Jacobs

Bob Danvers Walker - An English radio and newsreel announcer best known as the off-screen voice of Pathe News cinema newsreels during World War II.

Robert MacDermot - Hosted the program in it's first week back in 1946.

George Elrick - Mr. Elrick probably hosted the program more often than any other host. Born in Aberdeen in 1903 he was a drummer and vocalist with one hit single "The Music goes Round and Round" back in 1937. In 1948 he was first invited to host the program. He published an autobiography, Housewives' Choice - The George Elrick Story in 1991.

Eamonn Andrews -  He began as an amateur boxer and became a sports commentator for Ireland's state broadcaster Radio Éireann. He later hosted the game show What's My Line? He later presented the long-running Sports Report on BBC's Light Programme.

Edmundo Ros - This Trinidadian-Venezuelan musician, vocalist, arranger and bandleader is better known for his tropical night club LPs than his radio career.

Despite the  branding, the program was very popular, receiving a reported 3,000 requests a week according to the 1950 BBC Year Book. Housewive's Choice was succeed by the short-lived show "Family Choice" which was carried on went both Radios 1 and 2. It was cancelled by 1970.  More here. It's worth nothing that four women did host Housewives' Choice. Of them, three were on the BBC staff. They all featured on the program in the late 1940s and all were also associated at one time or another with the show Woman's Hour.

Barbara McFadyean - She first presented a weekly program of "gramophone records of all kinds", in 1943 with announcer Joan Griffiths on the BBC Home Service.

Joan Griffiths - The original host of the Women's Hour was a man, Alan Ivimey.  Listeners complained for the first 3 months so he was fired. Joan was hired on to replace him. New topics included equal pay, menopause and the Lives of Famous Women Novelists.

Jeanne Heal - Before Housewives Choice she hosted Designed for Women. She later hosted her own talk program Meet Jeanne Heal. She went on to do documentaries for the BBC. More here.

Vera Lynn - Hosted the program three times and once for a month in 1963. She is alive today and 100 years old. [SOURCE] A vocalist who sold more than a million records by the age of 22, she performed often for the troops in WWII. In February 2017 she released her latest album, and holds the record for being the oldest living artist to achieve a top 20 UK album.