Still squeezing out the sparks from my Oil of Dog tapes and have just uploaded a new Oil of Dog segment. Plus the latest upload to the Radio Miscellany section has some vintage CKFM from 1974.

https://youtu.be/6mYcE3BQsOc

***A note to air check traders. Please do not record these air checks and try and trade. I have the original tapes many of which I recorded myself and thus the authenticity can not be in doubt and can be easily traced.

A 24 minute slice of WVBF FM from 1973. The Top 40/AOR Hybrid station from Framingham, Massachusetts. There are speed issues with the tape and it’s a bit wobbly in spots but still makes for a good listen.

This is the fifth vintage WVBF FM air check posted to this site. You can use the search function on the site to find the others  but here’s the fourth.

https://youtu.be/9Ggq6aTVOuo

***A note to air check traders. Please do not record these air checks and try and trade. I have the original tapes many of which I recorded myself and thus the authenticity can not be in doubt and can be easily traced.

Three hours plus of B Mitchell Reed on KMET from June 10, 1975. The station may have been past it’s prime but the creativity and irreverence is still apparent.

Most of the music played is from the  “Johnson Years.“ Now I know where KOME FM got their idea for the LBJ years.

You will hear an interesting and recurrent station ID using a bit from the Firesign Theater. A diverse set of music particularly on the third clip where you will hear The Rainy Daze, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Count Basie and more.  BMR at one point asks listeners to tune in to a competing radio station. Listen to Shadoe Steven`s reaction to that as he takes over near the end of the third clip.

More to come from KMET and other L.A. stations. Watch this space.

https://youtu.be/F7A7Hkwqyfw

Two vintage air checks from The Los Angeles area  featuring KPPC and KMET FM.

KPPC FM was the second progressive rock station in California, the first being KMPX in San Francisco. Both stations were founded by ex San Francisco top 40 jock Tom Donahue in 1967. Donahue brought another ex top 40 legend, B Mitchell Reed, to the station.  KPPC ‘s initial progressive lineup left the station in a dispute with management and many of them including Donahue and B Mitchell Reed soon found a new home at Metromedia station KMET.

Both stations employed a number of well known free form era jocks including Charles Laquidara who worked at KPPC before joining WBCN.

The first clip features DJ Cosmos Topper on KPPC from September 1971 and though the founders of the station had left by this time, the station retained a free form format. You will hear plugs for shows by The Firesign Theater and Dr Demento and both of these acts also worked with KMET.  The history and personnel from the two stations are intertwined.

KPPC’s time as a progressive station came to an end during the fall of 1971 but KMET carried on with the format. The second clip features B Mitchell Reed on KMET FM from  June 1975. The station’s format was beginning to tighten and you can hear mainstream AOR creeping in but there was still some creativity and eclecticism left to make for an interesting listen. KMET, during this era, featured Shadoe Stevens and Jimmy Rabbit who also worked at the a third  interesting LA station KROQ FM.

KMET was broadcasting  a Quadraphonic signal at the time of this air check.

I have more tape from KPPC and KMET that I will upload in the future.

The third clip consists of one song that I found on a a tape that may be recorded off a Canadian radio station sometime in 1973. Can someone ID the artist ?

***A note to air check traders. Please do not record these air checks and try and trade. I have the original tapes many of which I recorded myself and thus the authenticity can not be in doubt and can be easily traced.

Over 3 hours of music taped during the weekend special called the LBJ years on San Jose’s KOME FM. The idea was to revisit the musical past during LBJ’s time as president. Some of the tracks are actually from the period after LBJ. The music is varied featuring a number of top 40 hits, a few songs which were staples on the first wave of progressive free form stations, for example, Groovin Is Easy by the Electric Flag and tracks by Country Joe and The Fish, Frank Zappa, Cold Blood, Love, Moby Grape and others. The music featured is certainly more varied than what you hear on a typical classic rock station today.

One of my favorite tracks featured comes from country rock pioneers Poco and their first album from 1969. There’s also appearances by LBJ via a medium and some contemporary ads for albums and concerts by The Jam, Poco ( they had veered towards a more commercial sound by 1979) , Jack Scott and others. The station’s regular format still retained some semblance of the free form format.

https://youtu.be/M8oK0fbNWm8

The clip includes segments from the following stations. Low on talk but some great music is included. Most of the recordings were made on my Sanyo reel to reel sourced off a Marantz receiver. Dates of recordings range from the  early 70’s to late 80’s.

1. A brief segment with  The All Night Andre. Best known for his time at CFNY but this clip is from Q107 and the program The Wax Museum which was the predecessor to Psychedelic Sunday
2.  Two short clips from 1050 CHUM. Not 100 % sure who the first DJ is ( Darrel B ?) but the second one is Bob Magee
3. A briefl clip from CHUM FM from the early 70’s and you will hear a bit of David Pritchard and an ad
4. The great and multi-talented Steve Winwood playing DJ recorded off Buffalo’s 97 Rock. I think the program was  syndicated
5. Some Live selections recorded off WMMR FM in Philadelphia. I believe the DJ featured is Ed Sciaky

The second to last music segment in the above clip is a live snippet from this great track by The Flying Burrito Brothers and here is the studio original from their classic album The Gilded Palace of Sin

Listen to 1050 CHUM from the summer of 1975 and WRIT 1340 Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1974.

Clips can be heard in the Radio Miscellany Section

The original version of Searchin`by the Coasters is played  on WRIT and below is a version by the Grateful Dead when the Beach Boys Joined them at the Fillmore East on April 27, 1972.

https://youtu.be/RayLqqOV8gU

***A note to air check traders. Please do not record these air checks and try and trade. I have the original tapes many of which I recorded myself and thus the authenticity can not be in doubt and can be easily traced.

The last post on the site, David Pritchard on CHUM FM from 1971,  was a great example of experimental FM underground radio.  This air check from Chicago station WXFM  is in a somewhat similar vein. During the time of this air check, WXFM was a multi format station and the program Triad Radio aired during weekday evenings from 8 to midnight. The show was on the station from 1969 to 1977 and featured a lot of experimental and progressive rock, particularly of the European variety. Mr Pritchard and Gary Storm’s Oil of Dog (also featured on this site) highlighted some of the same on their programs.

There are other air checks from Triad radio available on the web but this is one of the longer ones and it’s a gem featuring a number of commercial breaks with some very interesting ads and other  content.

The name of the host was Saul Smaizys and he took the program to other stations after the show ended on WXFM.. Here’s Facebook link for the program: Triad Radio

I am very pleased to present an air check of Toronto media legend David Pritchard courtesy of radio super fan Kal Raudoja . I have posted a number of air checks from CHUM FM that I recorded myself. Unfortunately I do not have that much tape from CHUM FM during their peak in the early 1970’s and I was ecstatic when I found out that Kal had quite the collection of these vintage air checks. These are certified radio treasures and I want to thank Kal for sharing them on this site.

This clip consists of various segments that may have been recorded on or around January 4, 1971. David was a fan of experimental electronic music and also an artist in his own right, releasing the album Nocturnal Earthworm Stew in 1976. He sounds way ahead of his time here in 1971 as a DJ performance artist experimenting with tape loops and other techniques.

During the first part of the clip David is playing the debut album by Emerson, Lake and Palmer which had not yet been released in North America.  You will hear him first at 15:35 in between album sides and then again at 34:50 after side two is played. After that the clip consists of various segments and David can be heard sporadically throughout. I’m a purist when it comes to air checks and rarely tamper with the original presentation but I had to make some edits to the ELP, Phil Ochs and Pentangle musical selections.  All of the other audio comes from the original source tape and the quality improves during the second half. Some of the other music fragments found on the tape which I did not edit in any way include  bits and songs by The Jeff Beck Group, Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters and Lenny Breau at the very end with his version of Cannonball Adderley’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.

This is the first of what I hope will be several early 70’s CHUM FM air checks from Kal’s collection. I will let Kal give you some background below about his interest in radio and CHUM FM.

What we have here is an example of progressive rock/ free form radio at it’s weirdest, wackiest and best. This was before the “suits” and the still-wet-behind-the-ears MBA’s got their hands on rock radio formats and removed any innovation, spontaneity and personality dj’s. This was when radio dj’s were able to play whatever they pleased, and say whatever they wanted, especially late at night. Frank Zappa made a point of listening to CHUM FM whenever he was in Toronto and even HE was freaked out by the zanyness!

I’ve been lucky to find three large collections of CHUM FM airchecks on reel-to-reel audio tapes, all dating from the early 1970’s. The largest collection came from Dave Pritchard himself. I met him about 20 years ago and, to make a long story short, he lent me his collection of his own air checks for me to log and catalog. Needless to say I did not hesitate to help him out and with his blessing made cassette copies for myself to expedite the logging process using my trusty Sony Walkman.

Another collection was from someone who made a point of recording the British “Goon” shows on CHUM FM. He used extra thin, long 7″ tapes and may have used timers, since he caught regular CHUM FM broadcasts at the end of some shows and even much longer shows when the Goon show was cancelled here and there. Fortunately he didn’t erase anything.

The other collection was from a guy called Steve Buck who was into the late 1960’s and early 1970’s music and radio scene and recorded all kinds of great stuff like Dave Pritchard’s Beatles documentaries, The Ugly Ducklings “live” on CHUM AM , interviews with the Paupers and the Quiet Jungle and many CHUM FM air checks.

Fortunately I’m of the generation that was on board when CHUM AM became Canada’s first 24 hour rock and roll radio station in May 1957 AND was on board when progressive CHUM FM went on air in 1968. I was also lucky to get familiar with reel to reel tape recorders at an early age since my father had bought one in 1955 and I was required to learn how to operate it for various reasons. As well as buying records back then I also started to record songs, and then realized that recording not only songs but also the dj’s, newscasts, jingles etc. (ie air checks) would be neat and nice to keep. I was recording air checks 20 years before I even knew there was such a word as “air check”.

My claim to fame was recording what now appears to be the first known CHUM AM air check from July 1957 and catching the CHUM and CKEY newscasts of the Buddy Holly plane crash from February 1959. The latter has been used in many documentaries.

I distinctly remember in the summer of 1968 word around town of a new radio station playing interesting songs not being played on AM stations. A friend was enthralled about hearing the long version of You Keep Me Hanging On by Vanilla Fudge and I with the long version of Light My Fire by the Doors. I didn’t even know there were long versions of these and many other songs. The only long rock and roll song that I had known until then was Going Home by the Rolling Stones which I still love. Other long songs that I’ve loved since, were things like In A Gadda Da Vida, Time Has Come Today,Black Magic Woman, Magic Carpet Ride, Jump in the Fire, Baby Please Don’t Go ( Beacon Street Union), and my all-time favorite, I Heard it Through the Grapevine by CCR. Anyway, in the summer of 1968 I remember talking to someone on the phone and telling them about all the great  music on the new CHUM FM. Hearing the long version of Light My Fire made me an instant fan of CHUM FM!

Since our family didn’t have an FM radio at the time I went out and bought a cheap table model radio with FM on it and had it playing in my room in the background most times. My main interest was to hear songs you wouldn’t hear on AM radio and of course songs with long instrumental breaks.

Anyway, our plan is to post some more CHUM FM air checks here and for me to post some on YouTube and on my own website which is at : http://radio50s60s.com/ . My first YouTube posting may be a great aircheck of WKNR FM (Detroit/Dearborn) from the summer of 1968 on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival, with dj Jerry Taylor. Great songs and a great ad for the THE Pink Floyd concert July 12 and with the WHO on July 13! Tickets were $2.00 and $4.50 respectively! My main goal is to find any CHUM FM airchecks from 1968 and 1969 and will pay or trade from my vast collection of air checks from the 1950’s to the 1980’s.

Kal(Kalev) Raudoja