Every Sunday night before I went to sleep I would tune my radio to the Dr. Demento Show. For those of you who do not know Dr. Demento, he had a two hour radio show that featured… well… basically wacky songs. That was my first exposure to musical artists such Wierd Al Yankovic and Spike Jones.

I use to record his shows onto 8 track tapes. I wish I still had those.

I think my all time favorite was Mr. Wizard who was doing the science experiment with Timmy. Let’s see if we can come up with a top 10.

1. Mr. Wizard and Timmy
2. Dungeons and Dragons – Dead Alewives
3. They are coming to take me away
4. Shaving Cream
5. Existential Blues
6. Space Invaders
7. Fish Heads
8. Pencil Neck Geek
9. Monty Python’s Spam
10. Yoda by Wierd Al

There were a lot of them but these stick out for me. How about you? What would be your top 10?

I have been doing a lot of posts on toys from the 70s lately, so I wanted to switch it up with one of my favorite 1970s broadcast of all time.

This is a Halloween broadcast from WKBW 1520 in Buffalo, New York featuring D.J. Shane Brother Shane. The player will play the show in it’s entirety, 36 chapters, which includes several commercials from that era. I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I have. (You will need the flash player activated to listen to the broadcast.) There are four other stories after the War of the Worlds broadcast which are also enjoyable. I think I may re-post this every Halloween.

(Update: I originally pulled this post until I got permission to use it in my blog. The good folks at WWKB gave me permission to go ahead. Thank you WWKB!)

If you want to skip any part of the broadcast just click the next chapter arrow.

1 Intro-Don’t Turn Around
2 Sattlers Records: 120
3 War of the Worlds: Part 1
4 Turgeon Commercial: 60
5 War of the Worlds: Part 2
6 Keyhole Fashions :60
7 War of the Worlds: Part 3
8 Sattlers Records: 60
9 War of the Worlds: Part 4
10 War of the Worlds: Part 5
11 Turgeon Commercial: 60
12 War of the Worlds: Part 6
13 War of the Worlds: Part 7
14 War of the Worlds: Closing
15 Twin Fair Records and Tapes: 60
16 Vampires
17 McDonalds: 60
18 Keyhole fashions: 60
19 Sattlers Records: 60
20 KB ID
21 The Darkness: Part 1
22 Turgeon: 60
23 The Darkness: Part 2
24 Twin Fair: 60
25 The Darkness: Part 3
26 McDonalds: 60
27 KB ID
28 The Bed: Part 1
29 Keyhole Fashions: 60
30 The Bed: Part 2
31 Sattlers :60
32 The Bed: Part 3
33 Twin Fair: 60
34 The Monkey’s Paw
35 People, Places, and Things: UFO’s
36 Promos

About a month ago I found a 70s radio station on Live365.com called The 70′s Preservation Society. This is THE best internet 70s station I have listened to.

One of the things I like about this station is how they divide up the content between days. For example Tuesday is Classic Rock day (they even have a live request show in the afternoons), Wednesday is Disco, Thursday is Top 40 and etc.

Give them a listen. You can go to http://www.70ps.com/ and click the now playing symbol on the right side of the banner.

Remember when AM radio was the rage?

One of my favorite hobbies are listening and collecting Old Time Radio shows. It was on one of these endeavors that I ran across a “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast. This was not the infamous Orson Welles broadcast but one created by the WKBW radio station in 1973.

The DJ, Shane Brother Shane, started his show which in turn brought back memories of my own childhood at the time. I do not really remember the actual transition from AM to FM or even when we had a radio in the house that received FM. My parents had an old wooden console record player that weighed as much as a small car and was as big as our TV. The record player had a built in radio but it only picked up AM stations.

In my room I had a white alarm clock radio that was also AM only. It was the type that the numbers would flip down like an old rotary card file. As for us kids there was only one station in our area to listen to. That was WLS Musicradio out of Chicago. I think every school bus in Indiana was tuned into that station.

It was a little over a three hour drive to Chicago from where we lived, but WLS’s 50,000 watt transmitter had no problem reaching us. I was exposed to many of the greats like Tommy Edwards, John Records Landecker and Larry Lujack’s Animal Stories.

Once again it is probably me being nostalgic, but radio today doesn’t seem to have the pizazz as it did back then. The DJs of today are all about rude shock comedy, seeing how far can they take things before getting into FCC trouble. Back in the 70s I feel it was all about charisma. Their style and personality kept you tuned in and they had a quick on the spot wit about them.

I found a great interview with John Landecker where he talks about how he got started. They filmed the interview while he was working.

http://www.wlshistory.com/WLS70/

And for a couple of other good sites with lots of WLS history for those of you who want to enjoy some fond memories as I did.

http://www.wlshistory.com/

http://user.pa.net/~ejjeff/jeffwls1.html

I remember as a kid in grade school that mom had the kitchen radio tuned into the local AM radio station every morning. We would listen to Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things” while eating breakfast before school.

Yes… believe it or not families used to sit down for meals… together… at a table… with no TV.