Songs from the radio.

Something I have been thinking about for the past few days is how I am old enough to remember when we recorded songs off the radio. Heck, I am old enough to remember when we recorded songs off the radio on reel-to-reel. After Lady Red's great post and our new venture into being a music blog, I thought I would go ahead.

An odd thing about some of those songs we recorded is that sometimes something would happen during the tape such as a burst of static. I would listen to the tape so much that for years that burst of static was part of the song; I would hear it even if it were not there. For example, my brother recorded “All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards off of AFN in 1964.

On my brother’s tape, there was a burst of static just as the chorus sang “Soon he’ll be there at your side.”  I listened to that tape so many times that fifty years later  I still hear the static.

Some of those songs may have been recorded in passing; minor hits never to modulate a plate again.  An announcer on AFN used a song to close his show once. My brother recorded it, and I had no idea what it was. Years later I dubbed the song down onto cassette figuring I would never l discover the title or the artist. In the mid ‘90’s I was at the old Tower Records in Seattle. I saw a CD of the Ventures greatest hits. I am not a big Ventures fan, but they only wanted three dollars for it so I bought it. When I got home I was going through the CD, and guess what I found, the mystery song:

Sometimes my brother would record a song then record over it, leaving only a short snippet. One case was a song where my brother left two bars from the beginning of the song. It was distinctive, but not enough for me to know whether I liked the song or not. In the early ‘90’s I bought a various artists CD of oldies. I know some of the songs, but not all of them. As I played the CD, this song came on:

There was no mistaking that beginning. Another mystery solved.

About four years later my brother did it again. This time he left two lines and some “ba ba bas”from the middle of the song. In the ‘80’s I bought one of the albums from Rhino’s Nuggets series.. This song came on:

Eureka.

Back when I was in radio, we would record what were called airchecks. Generally, these were done on cassette recorders that would come on when the microphone was turned on. Because of this, I may have a tape of myself introducing a song but not have the song. As some of the songs were somewhat obscure I probably would never hear the song again.

Enter You Tube:

Viola!

Another song I have on an aircheck that is not played anymore (with a little extra to set up the joke):

Where would we be without You Tube?

Maybe it’s the Joe Friday in me, but I love finding something I thought I would never find.