Read This Blog!

I started college in September, 1971, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Soon after arriving, I got interested in the campus radio station, WRPI 91.5.

I started out wanting to be a news announcer; WRPI had a small news department, and they were happy to have me join them. Well, I think they were happy — when I first auditioned, the News Director gave me a hard time about my Southern accent. He was probably joking, but somehow I managed to lose the accent within a couple of weeks (I have no idea how I did it), and I became a regular news announcer.

Or, to be more accurate, a news reader. We were urged to avoid Rip’n'Read newscasts, but our sole source of news was the AP teletype, and there wasn’t much room for creativity there. I did learn the secret news-only phone number for the Weather Service at the Albany Airport, and I got pretty good at copying down data from them very quickly, but that was about the limit.

So I decided to broaden my horizons and got involved in both the engineering and the programming sides of the station. I didn’t get deeply involved in engineering (that would have required learning how to solder, among other things), but I did get my FCC Third Class Radiotelephone License with Broadcast Endorsement, making me legally qualified to run the station. I also went through the internal qualification process to take an airshift, first as an engineer for another announcer, and then as my own engineer. So I had my Very Own Show on WRPI, late in the afternoon. I got to choose the music, run the station, and respond to the audience (well, that last didn’t take much time…it wasn’t exactly prime shift).

WRPI had two classes of announcers: Format and Non-Format. The Format was the master list of songs which were available for use, printed fresh every week — when you played a song, you crossed it off, so that it wouldn’t be overused. The Format also dictated the rotation between classes of music; we were heavy on “Folk Rock” (groups like Steeleye Span, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention) and “Progressive Rock” (groups like Yes, Genesis, and Jade Warrior), with the odd bit of “other” (including the fourth movement of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, which I played fairly often). Although I had qualified as a Non-Format announcer, my show was during Format hours, and I stuck pretty much to the guidelines of the Format. The evening was Non-Format time, and some of those announcers could get fairly esoteric — here’s a promo for a Saturday Night Special featuring the Mothers of Invention.

When I wasn’t working at the station, I was usually listening to it (and if I wasn’t listening to WRPI, I was listening to the classical stations in the area, WAMC and WMHT).

After leaving school, moving to Florida, going to work, and getting married, music played less of a role in my life; if the radio was on at home, it was usually on WTMI, the Miami-based classical station. I’d sometimes listen to WSHE, which was the local progressive rock station, but not all that often.

There was a perennial controversy during my years at WRPI — the staff and volunteers wanted to play Good Stuff, and the student government (which funded us) wanted us to play the same music they could hear on WTRY, the local Top 40 outlet. We won the battle, and so WRPI presented a choice, not an echo.

And now that I’ve been listening to the 70’s on 7 as today’s XM Bootcamp exercise, I’m very glad that we won — because this is definitely not the music I want to remember from the 70’s!

I knew it was going to be bad last night, actually. Just before going to bed, I tuned the radio to Channel 7 so I’d be ready — and I was immediately greeted by “Stayin’ Alive” (which I’ve heard again today). Today started off in the same vein: Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park” was part of my complete breakfast. And I’d managed to forget “I’ve Got A Brand New Pair Of Roller Skates (You’ve Got A Brand New Key” until today. Sure, there have been a few good songs (but I can’t remember any at the moment), but the balance is definitely on the side of dross.

And now that I’ve looked at the channel’s home page, I think I’d better turn it off NOW, before they live up to their threats and play Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun”!

I spent the day On Broadway. I enjoy listening to show tunes, and so I expected to enjoy today’s bootcamp experience, and I wasn’t disappointed. The channel has a live announcer in the morning and is automated the rest of the day — I was happy with both modes of operation.

The main problem with this channel, like many others, is trying to use it as background music while working. I kept finding myself wanting to listen to the music, and even turning up the volume from time to time — which didn’t work out well when I had to be on the phone. This would be a great channel to listen to in the car, though!

Tomorrow, it’s the 70’s; I’m planning to work from home and I don’t have many conference calls, so I may be able to turn it up a bit…which I’ll probably regret when they start playing disco!

It was a mostly relaxing weekend, which was a Good Thing between busy weeks at work. No major purchases to report, either, though I do want to find a dealer with silver and red ‘04 Priuses sometime so I can see what those colors actually look like. Not that I have any imminent plans requiring that knowledge or anything like that.

We did make a quick trip to Costco and bought a blister pack full of phones to replace our existing cordless and answering machine; the old cordless had a wonderful “out of range alarm” feature which beeped if you walked far enough from the base unit for the remote to lose signal. Unfortunately, the alarm also sounded if the base unit lost power, which was not a good thing at 3am. The new cordless units put a message on their display if you try to use them and they don’t have a signal — that seems to be more reasonable behavior to me.

I finally made it home — then we made Shabbat and had dinner — and now I’m sitting in front of the computer reflecting for a few minutes before shutting down and relaxing.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been back at work for a week — vacation seems like it was a long time ago. It’s almost as hard to believe that Monday was a quiet day, and Tuesday wasn’t really busy…because it’s been run, run, run full out since then!

XM Bootcamp has been interesting, too; I was surprised by how much I liked the 60’s on 6 and the 40’s on 4. I expected to enjoy the 50’s on 5 more than I did; Laugh USA didn’t surprise me at all.

Now, it’s time to turn to other pursuits; tomorrow, we start Torah study again (Proverbs, which should be interesting) after a one-week break while the Rabbi was out of town (we finished the Twelve Minor Prophets just before the end of the year — we really zoomed through Joel, too!). Sunday morning is busy, too. And we have some paperwork to get done before Sunday. But other than that, this should be a quiet weekend — and I’m quite ready for it!

Today, XM Bootcamp visited Laugh USA, XM’s family-friendly comedy channel. Jeff and I listened to a bit of it this morning during breakfast, but once I got to work, I didn’t even try — listening to comedy requires paying attention, and my attention was otherwise required by work.

In fact, work required so much of my attention and time that my firm resolve to leave early and go to the YMCA fell victim to the “needs of the business”; instead, I was hard at work when it came time to leave. I can’t say I’m hard at work at this particular moment, typing this blog entry, but I’m not quite finished for the day yet, either…just one more paper to read….

Next week’s revised Bootcamp schedule starts out promising with On Broadway on Monday [was Cinemagic when I first wrote this item] and the 70’s on Tuesday; I’m not as enthusiastic about the rest of the week, though. But that’s all next week’s problem — for now, let me wish you all a Shabbat Shalom.

I kept my receiver glued to the 60’s on 6 most of the day, even though it was somewhat distracting at times, especially during CQ USA when I was trying to call in to make my request (it’s hard to type and dial the phone at the same time!). I remembered almost all of the songs I heard during the day, but there were a few I don’t recall, which was a pleasant surprise.

Not everything I heard was high-quality music (I’m thinking especially of Mrs. Miller’s rendering of Downtown) [RealAudio from Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits, courtesy of Frank's Vinyl Museum]), but it all made me feel good.

Tomorrow, it’s clean comedy from Laugh USA — yet another channel which probably doesn’t mix well with doing work.

I guess I need to figure out the best way of putting XM in my car…that’ll be my fourth XM receiver. I got notification today that the rebate for my second receiver (a Sony PnP, which they’ve discontinued for good reason) will be processed in due time — I’ll have to remember to check with them if I don’t get it in another five weeks. If I do get the rebate, the receiver will have turned out to be free (actually, I’ll make a small profit on it)…but rebates are notorious for problems.

I’m cheating a bit so I can talk about the 60’s on
6 now instead of waiting for morning — tomorrow is going to be a
busy day at work. So I’ve reconfigured my settings to pretend that I’m
in the Eastern Time Zone (the official time zone of both XM Bootcamp and IBM) — but in a way,
that’s appropriate, because I am pretty sure that I spent the
entire decade of the 60’s in the Eastern Time Zone.

It was
during the 60’s that I really started to listen to radio — the main
station I listened to was WLEE, 1480 on your radio dial, in Richmond,
Virginia. In some ways, I didn’t have any choice about listening to
them — not only did they have the best music of the day, and some of
the best jocks (I remember Shane quite well), but they beamed their
awesome 5 kilowatt signal right at my house, so they leaked in when I
was trying to listen to other stations, too!

And I did try to listen
to other stations back then — my mother bought me an old Hallicrafters
SX-25, which I used until its very longwire antenna got hit by
lightning and a bunch of smoke came out, ruining the receiver. But by
then, I’d gotten interested in broadcast band DXing, using a mighty
Radio Shack TRF — it worked pretty darn well, too. Eventually, I
joined the International Radio Club of
America, and even almost bid to hold its national convention (but
was talked out of it at the last minute, which hindsight shows was a
Good Thing…I guess, though, that that was my first touch of smoffing).

But when I wasn’t DXing, I was listening for the music — not just
to WLEE, but also to classic rockers like WABC, New York (it came in
just fine in the evenings, and I even tried to listen during the
daytime), enjoying (if that’s the word) Cousin Brucie. I remember the
jingles well.

So listening to the 60’s on 6 is definitely a trip
down Memory Lane for me — the songs are all familiar; the announcer has
the right sound; even the jingles are right. I’m waiting for the
all-request show later on to see how much it feels like WLEE’s
“Soundwave” — I remember many evenings when I’d dial the first six
digits of their request line, then dial the last digit but not release
the dial so that I’d be able to be the first caller when they opened up
the line. That just doesn’t work with Touch-Tone phones!

And, of
course, the radio dial in Richmond has
changed over the years — the WLEE call is still there, but on a
different frequency (990 — when I was growing up, that was WANT, the
soul station), and with different programming and ownership. And the
WLEE towers are gone — I bet I’d have an easier time DXing from my old
house these days.

As Shane would say when signing off…[drop voice
three octaves here:] “HEAVY!”

Today’s episode of XM Bootcamp takes us to a decade with music I remember — the ’50s. I’ve only been listening for a few minutes, and I’ve already heard songs on both sides of the Rock&Roll divide (Frank Sinatra’s “The Lady is a Tramp” was the first song I heard; Freddy “Boom-Boom” Cannon’s “Palisades Park” was the second) — to my ears, there’s a lot more variety here than there was while I was listening yesterday.

And the announcers are more visible (I guess that should be audible, shouldn’t it?) than on the ’40s channel — it reminds me of listening to WLEE when I was in elementary school.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of teleconferences and meetings today, so I won’t be able to listen as much as I did yesterday (and ’50s music isn’t quite as easy for me to use as background music as ’40s was), but this is a channel I was already visiting from time to time anyway.

[Later...]

Yep, I was right about ’50s not being work-friendly — I eventually turned it off so I could concentrate. The music kept drawing me in; it’s going to be worse tomorrow when Bootcamp moves on to the ’60s (just in time for Elvis’s birthday, too).

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get Trackbacks to work, with some success, but now I have a mysterious “paramTable” at the top of my page. Maybe posting a second item will solve that problem…we’ll see.

Nope.

Time to try a Google search, or to learn to live with it.

Ha — found it! The &123;newsTitle&125; macro in the NewsDay template on the Advanced Prefs page was the culprit. I removed it, and away went “paramTable”.

It’s been a long time since I updated my blog — work has been keeping me very busy, and it will probably continue to do so for the forseeable future (which, when you think of it, beats the hell out of most of the alternatives).

But I’m going to try to get back into the blogging habit this year, if for no other reason than to have a place to write about interesting books, wines, and so forth.

So I’ll start by talking about the latest toy I picked up —
XM Satellite Radio. Actually, three of them — two for the house and one for the office (and I hope to put one in my car some time, though I may wait for my next car, which I hope won’t be an imminent purchase). It’s much more pleasant than any of the local AM or FM stations — for two reasons so far: there’s a greater variety of music, and there isn’t a deluge of commercials (many of the channels I listen to are commercial-free, in fact).

There is, of course, an active fan site, and I’ve been spending time there; currently, they are encouraging listeners to take part in
XM Bootcamp II, sampling all of the channels over the next few months. I’ve signed up and am currently listening to today’s offering, the 40’s on 4. And I’m enjoying it — mostly upbeat music, not so intrusive as to keep me from being able to work while listening. It’s not just one song after another — they also give occasional news reports from the 40’s, and other announcements to give you the feeling that you are listening to real radio from the 40’s. Fun!

I don’t expect to listen to every day’s choice (I have no interest in the Christian channels, for example, and some of the rap and rock channels are not suitable for an office environment), but so far, so good.