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!”