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.