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!

Surfin’: Analog Ham

This week, Surfin’ dusts off the Victrola to spin some platters (or queues up the MP3 player to play some tunes).

Whitney Houston Haunts My iPod

Whitney Houston died last weekend. I own her greatest hits CD containing 36 tracks, which I uploaded to my iPod years ago.  (My iPod is a sixth generation “Classic” with 160 GB capacity.)

With a total of 14,121 tracks stored on my iPod, Whitney's tracks represents a mere 0.25% of the iPod's contents.

I play my iPod during my 35-minute commute between home and work everyday and I usually listen in "shuffle" mode, which means the iPod randomly selects the tracks that it plays. In shuffle mode, the odds are 1 in 392 that the iPod will play a Whitney Houston song .

Believe it or not, my iPod played a Whitney Houston song every day last week during my morning commute. This morning, the first song my iPod played was a Whitney Houston song.

Weird!

Surfin’: My Field Days

This week, Surfin’ considers the ham radio event of the year, ARRL Field Day.

Big Day at the Big E

I went to the Big E on Monday with my wife and sister.

Sunny with temperatures in the mid-60s, the weather was perfect for spending the day trekking around the fair grounds.

Our normal Big E routine is to visit the Better Living Center, the six New England state buildings, and anything of interest in-between.

Food wise, I wanted to try the clam fritters aka clam cakes that I saw in the Rhode Island building last year, so when my wife and sister got foot-longs at the Frankie's booth at the Connecticut building, all I had was a few bites of the dogs that the ladies were willing to share with me while I banked my calories in anticipation of the clams.

In the Vermont building, I had dessert (before my main course), a delicious slice of apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream. I shared it with the ladies, but I could have eaten the whole thing myself!

Rhode Island was the last building in the New England states lineup and I bought a bag of clam fritters for $6.50.

What a disappointment. Five days later and I am still looking for the clams! My wife joked that I bought a bag of fried dough balls instead of clam fritters. It was an expensive joke, but we laughed about it the rest of the day.

The highlight of the day was the free Mark Lindsay concert (photo above). We found seats in the second row just as the concert began and we had a blast for 45 minutes.

Lindsay performed most of the big hits he sang as lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders and he also sang his solo hits.

There was a lot of energy in the performance and in the audience. It reminded me of when we attended a Paul Revere and the Raiders concert in the 1960s at the old Oakdale theater-in-the-round in Wallingford, CT.

On the way out, I perused a souvenir stand and was surprised to see a set of new Big E postcards for sale. I collect postcards and have a stash of Big E's in my collection, but there has been nothing new Big E postcard-wise in decades. Scoring the new set for my collection was a nice way to end a great day.

Surfin’: The 500 Club

This week, Surfin’ considers the previous 499 installments of Surfin’.

Surfin’: A Town Without Pitney

This week, Surfin’ scours the Internet for yet another musical ham.

Surfin’: Searchin’

This week, Surfin’ searches the FCC database and finds more musical hams.

More Musical Hams

Don Peterson, VE5DP, e-mailed me about two other ham singers: Ronnie Milsap, WB4KCG, and the late Chet Atkins, WA4CZD.

Also, I checked the Famous Hams and ex-Hams Web site of N2GJ and W2SG and found another well-known ham singer: Lance Bass, KG4UYY.

Surfin’: Short Bits

This week, Surfin’ is full of short stuff that is not big enough to be tall stuff.

musical hams

The rack that housed the majority of our CD collection bit the dust. So I moved all the CDs into five cardboard boxes for the time being and moved the rack into the garage to await trash collection day.

While I was boxing the CDs (in alphabetical order according to the name of the artist), I realized that I had tunes by two hams (or one ham and one former ham): Patty Loveless, formerly KD4WUJ, and Joe Walsh, WB6ACU.

Makes me wonder how many other hams performed on the 500 CDs in the collection.

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.

Surfin': Still Finding Woodstock

This week, Surfin' unveils more ham radio connections to the three days of peace, music and mud.

Surfin': Finding Woodstock

This week, Surfin' finds a Woodstock connection to ham radio.

mystery of the iPod

I am on my third iPod. I outgrew my first two because I had more music then they could hold.

My new iPod is a 160-Gbyte Classic, which I bought refurbished from Apple as a Christmas present to myself. I believe that 160 Gigabytes should hold all my music for a long time.

Although, I have added a few new tunes to my new iPod, it basically contains the same collection of tunes that I had stored on my old iPod.

Normally, I let the iPod randomly select the tunes it plays. What is interesting (my iPod “mystery”) is that I am hearing tunes on my new iPod that my old iPod never played.

Seems to me that my old iPod would randomly play a subset of the tunes it had in storage. Although the subset was probably immense, I did hear the same tunes repeated over time, but it obviously did not randomize everything because almost everything I hear on my new iPod is stuff I never heard on my old iPod.

Is my new iPod randomly playing a new subset of tunes or is it doing a better job of randomizing the collection?

By the way, for what it’s worth (or BTW FWIW), I have over 8,700 tunes stored on my new iPod. Also, my old iPod was a 30-Gbyte model.

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.