seventy-seven double-you aye bee see

When I was a teenager, I was an avid listener of AM radio station WABC in New York City. Day and night, it was loud and clear in Waterbury and my radio was tuned to 770 kc most of the time.

Awhile back, I purchased a DVD titled 1960’s WABC Radio Airchecks. In addition to airchecks, the DVD contains 75 hours of pure nostalgia from 77 WABC including “Actual Broadcasts By Big Dan Ingram, ‘Cousin Brucie’ Bruce Morrow, Ron Lundy, Scott Muni, Chuck Leonard & More,” like the Cousin Brucie theme song sung by The Four Seasons or the old Palisades Amusement Park commercial.

Seventy-five hours is a little much to listen to in one sitting, so I loaded the contents of the DVD into my iPod (by way of iTunes) and I hear random selections during my daily commute.

A 16-minute segment from October 7, 1964, with Dan Ingram spinning the platters was very entertaining and enlightening.

Here are some items of note from the broadcast:

📶   Telephone numbers still used two-letter alphabetical prefices, for example, "PL 5-1516" instead of "755-1516" (in this example, the "PL" was short for "plaza").

📶   Mailing addresses still used one or two-number postal zones instead of ZIP Codes, for example, "Waterbury 6, Connecticut" instead of "Waterbury, Connecticut 06706."

📶   Firestone advertised snow tires: $24.24 for a pair.

📶   During the broadcast, Dan Ingram announced score updates from the World Series. On the air, he admitted rooting for St. Louis (against the hometown Yankees). Can you imagine an on-the-air personality rooting against the hometown team today? (I can’t.)

📶   This broadcast was during the height of Beatlemania and there were two commercials in a row: one for a contest to win a Beatles poster, followed by a commercial for the Beatles' appearance on Shindig! Both commercials used snippets from the Beatles’ hit She Loves You. Following the commercials, Ingram says, “Well, I guess it was inevitable” and the next song you hear him play was She Loves You.

Fun, fun, fun!

WB6ACU on Ringo's New Album

There is an interesting story in today's edition of USA Today about Ringo Starr's new album, Y Not. The article includes an interview with the former Beatle, as well as with Joe Walsh, WB6ACU, who plays lead guitar on Ringo's new album.

In the "I Didn't Know That Dept.," Ringo and Joe are brothers-in-law.

here, there and everywhere

I am reading Here, There and Everywhere by Geoff Emerick.

Mr. Emerick was a sound engineer at EMI's Abbey Road studios in London and was in the control room during the Beatles' recording sessions in the 1960s. He writes all about the experience of making records with the Beatles in this 387-page book.

I am a Beatles fan and have read many books about the Fab Four. This book is probably one of the best because Mr. Emerick does not hold back. He calls them as he sees them and in some cases, what he calls them is not flattering.

Also, he gets technical and describes the recording process in just enough detail to reveal how the Beatles' records were made, but not enough to leave the reader bored with the intricacies of the recording process.

For example, Mr. Emerick mentions how early on, flubs were often left in the final recordings because the quality of the early recordings were such that the listener would not likely hear and notice the flubs. (John Lennon was forever flubbing lyrics because his memory was bad and he could not read the lyrics because he was not wearing his eyeglasses.) Emerick says that the flubs became more apparent when the recordings were later re-released on higher quality recording media like CDs.

Wouldn't you know that in the very next Beatles tune I hear, I notice a flub in the lyrics that I had never noticed before.

I'm driving to work this morning with my iPod playing songs randomly and up came Hold Me Tight. Paul sings lead with John and George singing backup. About 1:10 into the song, Paul sings "It feels so right now..." while the backup sings "It feels so right to..." Can't tell if John or George or both flubbed the lyrics, but there was definitely a flub that was left in the final recording.

Right after playing Hold Me Tight, my iPod randomly played another early Beatles' tune, I'll Get You, but I did not notice any flubs in that recording.

I have read about one-fifth of Here, There and Everywhere and so far, I am enjoying the read immensely. I don't expect to be let down in the remaining four fifths, so I recommend the book highly.

seventy-seven double-you aye bee see

When I was a teenager, I was an avid listener of AM radio station WABC in New York City. Day and night, it was loud and clear in The Brass City and my radio was tuned to 770 kc most of the time.

I recently purchased a DVD titled 1960’s WABC Radio Airchecks. In addition to airchecks, the DVD contains 75 hours of pure nostalgia from 77 WABC including “Actual Broadcasts By Big Dan Ingram, ‘Cousin Brucie’ Bruce Morrow, Ron Lundy, Scott Muni, Chuck Leonard & More,” like the Cousin Brucie theme song sung by The Four Seasons or the old Palisades Amusement Park commercial.

Seventy-five hours is a little much to listen to in one sitting, so I loaded the contents of the DVD into my iPod (by way of iTunes) and I hear random selections during my daily commute.

Yesterday, I heard a 16-minute segment from October 7, 1964, with Dan Ingram spinning the platters. It was very entertaining and enlightening.

Here are some items of note from the broadcast:

* Telephone numbers still used two-letter alphabetical prefices, for example, “PL 5-1516″ instead of “755-1516″ (in this example, the “PL” was short for “plaza”).

* Mailing addresses still used one or two-number postal zones instead of ZIP Codes, for example, “Waterbury 6, Connecticut” instead of “Waterbury, Connecticut 06706.”

* Firestone advertised snow tires: $24.24 for a pair.

* During the broadcast, Dan Ingram announced score updates from the World Series. On the air, he admitted rooting for St. Louis (against the hometown Yankees). Can you imagine an on-the-air personality rooting against the hometown team today? (I can’t.)

* This broadcast was during the height of Beatlemania and there were two commercials in a row: one for a contest to win a Beatles poster, followed by a commercial for the Beatles’ appearance on Shindig! Both commercials used snippets from the Beatles’ hit She Loves You. Following the commercials, Ingram says, “Well, I guess it was inevitable” and the next song you hear him play was She Loves You.

Fun, fun, fun!

A Hard Day's Write

I am a fan of Beatles’ music. I have all their recordings including vinyl and CD LPs, EPs, 45s, DVDs, bootlegs. I even have a few LPs on cassette tape that I acquired when my sister abandoned that format. I also have most of their solo artist recordings.

My collection includes a few rarities… not that I collect rarities; I bought the stuff at the time the stuff was released and some of the stuff became rare over the years. Who would have thought?

Over the years, I have bought and read a lot of books about the Beatles’ lives and music. I am more interested in their music, but most of the books concentrate on their lives.

I received a late Christmas gift from my sister on Saturday, a book titled A Hard Day’s Write by Steve Turner, which is “a lavishly illustrated, rollicking account of the real people and events that inspired the Beatles’ lyrics.”

It is the third edition of the book originally published in 1994. I don’t how I missed it until now, but it is very good and I have been reading it whenever I had free time this past weekend. It is easy reading; you can pick the book up anytime and time-permitting, read the story about a particular song or a particular album.

The book only covers songs written, recorded, and released by the Beatles; it does not cover songs they did as solo artists, although a few of those (like “Teddy Boy”) slipped in as demos by way of the Anthology albums.

Each chapter covers the songs by album (the British versions) starting with Please, Please Me and ending with Anthology 1-3. The Live at the BBC and Anthology album chapters only cover the songs on those albums that did not appear on their earlier albums, whereas the other chapters cover all the songs on each album written by the Beatles.

I recommend the book to any Beatle fan who wants to know more about their music.