Cassette Tapes of Radio Broadcasts

[Scott2011]

Recently I came across a couple of cassette tapes which contained recordings of radio broadcasts from the '80s and '90s and was wondering if anyone else ever used to record songs or broadcasts off the radio back in the day.

In regards to the tapes I found, the first one I came across was stored in a box with several other cassettes. It contained a bunch of songs my mom recorded off a couple of our local radio stations sometime in the early to mid '80s. Unfortunately, she left out most of the DJ airchecks and commercials (more than likely just to preserve room for more songs), although it did contain a bumper for the now-defunct 1220 WGAR in Cleveland during a broadcast of "The Neil Diamond Special." After one or two of the songs on the tape, you could hear a DJ start to do his monologue starting with a station identification, and at least one of them sounded like he said "1-0" something before the next song cuts in on the tape. Obviously I don't know which station that was, but I'm wondering if it was 105.7 (WMJI) or 104.1 (WQAL) or something like that. All of the songs on that tape were '50s through '70s oldies.

The second tape I have of radio content was one I found at a flea market about a month ago. It contained songs, clips, and commercials from the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" morning show (Jerry Shirley and Mike Trivisonno) on 98.5 WNCX and from "Dave and Lucy" (Dave Perkins and Lucy Grant, with Mark D. Marino [sp?] doing newscasts, Debbie Nichols doing traffic reports, and meteorologist Carl Nichols with weather forecasts) on 99.5 WGAR. The clips from both stations were from December 1990. Among the songs on that tape were "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, "These Eyes" by the Guess Who, "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, "All of Me" by Willie Nelson, "Crazy in Love" by Conway Twitty, "American Boy" by Eddie Rabbitt, a couple of Christmas songs, and others.

I'm wondering if anyone else ever recorded radio broadcasts back in the day without cutting out the DJ bits, bumpers or commercials. What kinds of radio odds and ends do you have in your cassette collection?

 

[billyg]

I WISHED I had recorded "unscoped" recordings of my favorite stations in Oklahoma in the 70's. (KAKC, KELi, KTFX.. and at night KOMA, WHB, KSTP, WLS). But as a teenager living only on the allowance my parents gave me (not much) any blank tapes I had were a premium. I always kept re-recording over them.

I had two that amazingly survived (mainly because I used cheap cassettes) and I made YouTube videos out of them:

KAKC Tulsa, 1974: http://youtu.be/z4pzNeP4NCA

John Landecker WLS 1977: http://youtu.be/M5CBsq9YQEA
Boogie Check - http://youtu.be/Gjwy4DZZgFA
and http://youtu.be/1MlJwj9n69g

 

[Scott2011]

I WISHED I had recorded "unscoped" recordings of my favorite stations in Oklahoma in the 70's. (KAKC, KELi, KTFX.. and at night KOMA, WHB, KSTP, WLS). But as a teenager living only on the allowance my parents gave me (not much) any blank tapes I had were a premium. I always kept re-recording over them.

How were you able to pick up WLS all the way in Oklahoma?

 

[rwells2265]

I WISHED I had recorded "unscoped" recordings of my favorite stations in Oklahoma in the 70's. (KAKC, KELi, KTFX.. and at night KOMA, WHB, KSTP, WLS). But as a teenager living only on the allowance my parents gave me (not much) any blank tapes I had were a premium. I always kept re-recording over them.

How were you able to pick up WLS all the way in Oklahoma?

I guess we can rule out that you're older than, say, 40. ;D

Simple version: AM stations at night are susceptible to bouncing off the ionosphere, allowing them to be heard at great distances. WLS was one of the big rockers at night for many of us who grew up in the '70s and '80s. It was one of a select group of stations that had a specific frequency all to themselves, at maximum power (50,000 watts).

--Russell

 

[Bongwater]

I WISHED I had recorded "unscoped" recordings of my favorite stations in Oklahoma in the 70's. (KAKC, KELi, KTFX.. and at night KOMA, WHB, KSTP, WLS). But as a teenager living only on the allowance my parents gave me (not much) any blank tapes I had were a premium. I always kept re-recording over them.

I had two that amazingly survived (mainly because I used cheap cassettes) and I made YouTube videos out of them:

KAKC Tulsa, 1974: http://youtu.be/z4pzNeP4NCA

John Landecker WLS 1977: http://youtu.be/M5CBsq9YQEA
Boogie Check - http://youtu.be/Gjwy4DZZgFA
and http://youtu.be/1MlJwj9n69g

I recently looked up a history page on the old KAKC...AMAZING station!

 

[Scott2011]

That actually should be Debbie Marshall, not Nichols, with the traffic reports on WGAR. I confused her with the morning show meteorologist, Carl Nichols. My bad.

 

[radioman148]

I WISHED I had recorded "unscoped" recordings of my favorite stations in Oklahoma in the 70's. (KAKC, KELi, KTFX.. and at night KOMA, WHB, KSTP, WLS). But as a teenager living only on the allowance my parents gave me (not much) any blank tapes I had were a premium. I always kept re-recording over them.

How were you able to pick up WLS all the way in Oklahoma?

I was in Oklahoma for almost a year in the late 60s. WLS came in so well at night that many people down there had a button set for it on their car radios.

 

[johnbasalla]

When I worked at WQLS (now WABQ) in Painesville, Ohio, during the time period of 1985-1986, I recorded on cassette a number of my shows to critique myself and for family to hear and critique if they liked.

 

[RadioFan2J3]

How were you able to pick up WLS all the way in Oklahoma?

WLS was one of my favorites in east central Georgia when I was a young teenager in the 1960s. I probably had pushbuttons set on WLS, WOWO and WABC for night-time music listening.

 

[EddieTheRapFan]

The "FM USA" cassettes I had (unfortunately I lost them but there are MP3 rips of them available on the Internet) had several IDs, commercials and even news/traffic reports from the mid 80s taken from several American stations. It seems every volume was dedicated to a different city. Volume 7, for instance, had IDs and commercials from Florida, and volume 5 was all about Los Angeles. The recorded music on these tapes are covers of famous songs from the time performed by unnamed artists. Some of them are quite good, some are passable and some are just plain bad.

 

[kenb]

I listened to WLS, "the Big 89" from Chicago, in the San Francisco Bay Area during the period of 1960-1967, before moving to Southern California. WLS's sgnal was almost a straight shot West to San Francisco, if you look on a map. It was 50,000 WATT clear channel frequency. During this time period, there were less competing stations on the same frequency. Today, I have no chance to hear WLS, because of an AM station in St. George, UT.
I also recorded reel-to-reel tapes in the 1960's and 70's. Later, I did use cassette tapes to do the same thing. (My dad wouldn't let me buy 45's & LPs, but did let me record on tape.) I put two tape decks together and re-recorded over the tapes, that I left run, and had tapes with back to back hits. I did save jingles, though I wish I would have saved the dj chatter and commercials.

 

[BRNout]

I have a ton of cassette tapes of unscoped radio broadcasts from the early to middle 1980s. Most are from Salt Lake City, but there are a few from other areas as well. I should really go through that box - haven't looked at them in years.

 

[firepoint525]

I suspect that a lot of you were like me back in the '70s, in that you were primarily interested in recording music off the radio, and trying to edit out the dj chatter, jingles, commercials, etc. Only with me, I recorded on 8-track! No I don't still have any of them. But even the music would be interesting now, given that it would be mostly songs that you don't hear on the radio anymore. (I remember that the local skating rink played music that they had recorded off the radio, AT40, specifically. It was funny hearing the way that they tried to edit out Casey's voice from the songs! ;D)

And I listened to WLS as well. And probably recorded from them, occasionally, as their signal was as good as anything more local. I lived in Union City, in northwest Tennessee, at the time, a straight shot south of Chicago. U.S. 45 (which also goes through Chicago) even passes through there.

 

[EddieTheRapFan]

(I remember that the local skating rink played music that they had recorded off the radio, AT40, specifically. It was funny hearing the way that they tried to edit out Casey's voice from the songs! ;D)

Wow! That's some really cheap skating rink I wonder how that did sound and what the skaters though about an announcer suddenly appearing and vanishing for no reason in the middle of the song, hehe.

 

[firepoint525]

(I remember that the local skating rink played music that they had recorded off the radio, AT40, specifically. It was funny hearing the way that they tried to edit out Casey's voice from the songs! ;D)

Wow! That's some really cheap skating rink I wonder how that did sound and what the skaters though about an announcer suddenly appearing and vanishing for no reason in the middle of the song, hehe.

I remember going back there years later and hearing some of the same music that I would have heard back when I was in high school. At least they were playing the 45s! ;D

 

[stevations]

Could you give a more specific site to find FM USA? What years did they record?

 

[Darth_vader]

"Recently I came across a couple of cassette tapes which contained recordings of radio broadcasts from the '80s and '90s and was wondering if anyone else ever used to record songs or broadcasts off the radio back in the day."

All the time throughout grade school and junior high. For many years that was the only way I could have the same kind of stuff the other kids listened to at the time, and not come off looking an absolute dork: my parents (mainly my Mum) were/are staunch right-wing, born-again christian fundamentalists, so of course "rock & rap" was a big-old "no-no" in the household. This meant the tapes "approved" for my sensitive little ears mainly consisted of whatever squeaky-clean worship, classical, worship, easy listening, worship, Disney soundtrack and worship cassettes Fred Meyer's had, as well as other sundry oddities. I wasn't "allowed" to acquire my first "official" rock & roll record until about mid-way through high school, even though I'd been secondhanding or copying them from other kids for years prior and smuggling my contraband home with me. It was a battle.

Needless to say, most of those lame-o "approved" music tapes were covertly recorded over (unscoped) from the cool local "devil's pop/rap" station (KKRZ, at that time) or the local "devil's oldies" station (KKSN) on my cheap little $20-at-K-Mart Emerson boombox. I know I still have a few of them kicking about. In hindsight, I think pirating music off the radio may have actually saved me from growing up to be even more screwed-up than I am now, much to the record industry's chagrin!

 

[Bongwater]

"Recently I came across a couple of cassette tapes which contained recordings of radio broadcasts from the '80s and '90s and was wondering if anyone else ever used to record songs or broadcasts off the radio back in the day."

All the time throughout grade school and junior high. For many years that was the only way I could have the same kind of stuff the other kids listened to at the time, and not come off looking an absolute dork: my parents (mainly my Mum) were/are staunch right-wing, born-again christian fundamentalists, so of course "rock & rap" was a big-old "no-no" in the household. This meant the tapes "approved" for my sensitive little ears mainly consisted of whatever squeaky-clean worship, classical, worship, easy listening, worship, Disney soundtrack and worship cassettes Fred Meyer's had, as well as other sundry oddities. I wasn't "allowed" to acquire my first "official" rock & roll record until about mid-way through high school, even though I'd been secondhanding or copying them from other kids for years prior and smuggling my contraband home with me. It was a battle.

Needless to say, most of those lame-o "approved" music tapes were covertly recorded over (unscoped) from the cool local "devil's pop/rap" station (KKRZ, at that time) or the local "devil's oldies" station (KKSN) on my cheap little $20-at-K-Mart Emerson boombox. I know I still have a few of them kicking about. In hindsight, I think pirating music off the radio may have actually saved me from growing up to be even more screwed-up than I am now, much to the record industry's chagrin!

You were one notch away from turning into "Carrie".......

I was the kid who clandestinely made tapes for kids such as you were. Even supplying headset stereos for those who weren't even allowed to listen to music without supervision for secret enjoyment....

 

[Darth_vader]

No no, I was the one who clandestinely duped tapes *from* other kids for *my* use. I'd sneak into the A/V room after school got out (really just a storage closet full of TV sets, 16/35mm projectors and a bunch of CD players and tape decks [Califones, of course!]) and work my magic in there. As far as Mum knew, I'd be in the library studying or messing around with the ancient 68K MACs they still had then, either playing with the district's network or this new-fangled "Internet" thing they had just gotten access to the previous season!*

It wasn't until about 2000 that I got my hands on one of those tape decks and my Dad's old Technics CD player and started doing that stuff at home. And even then my options for source material were still pretty pathetic.....

(Who's "Carrie"? Fischer?)

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* That, I still for the life of me can not figure out. They had no problem with me messing around with the "devil's Internet", and feasting my eyes on godd-only-knows what sorts of unfathomable abominations; that was okay. But to have a cassette tape of the Beatles in my possession, oh no. Call the family preacher over, we need a spiritual cleansing, stat!

 

[rwells2265]

No no, I was the one who clandestinely duped tapes *from* other kids for *my* use. <snip>

(Who's "Carrie"? Fischer?)

I think he means Sissy Spacek's character in the movie of that name. Her mother was an off-the-chart religious wacko (although of the Catholic persuasion). Lamentably, I am fully aware of your type -- the fundamentalist parent(s) who made China look good with all the "censoring" they did. I knew a good number of kids, too (mainly in a part of Arkansas where I lived for several years in the early '80s) who were "musically repressed", and we're not talking about the all-too-common anti-heavy metal backlash aimed at those bands with 'devil' symbolism ... this is down to "Billy Joel is satanic."

This town had what would today be called a megachurch, and its pastor regularly held what he called "music seminars" -- playing records backwards, preaching against any popular music recorded past, say, 1955, and - sometimes - bonfires. When Footloose came out, it hit a little too close to home.

The big thing I noticed from this Orwellian policing of music: when these kids went off to college, they went CRAZY. As in, stuff which makes "thrash-metal" sound like Kenny G.

* That, I still for the life of me can not figure out. They had no problem with me messing around with the "devil's Internet", and feasting my eyes on godd-only-knows what sorts of unfathomable abominations; that was okay. But to have a cassette tape of the Beatles in my possession, oh no. Call the family preacher over, we need a spiritual cleansing, stat!

The hypocrisy I observed was glaring ... it was okay to listen to COUNTRY music. Dad could listen to Conway Twitty singing "Even with your hair up in curlers, I'd love to lay you down", but if you put on so much as a Bob Seger ballad, then it's World War III.

As with anything, moderation is the key. It's the role of a parent to set the rules. Too lax, and ... well, we see the result all too often in our society. But being nazi-grade strict might be worse.

--Russell