Crap-tastic!

By now you have probably guessed that I'm a sucker for nostalgia. I love discussing history of music, baseball, football, sports in general, television, radio, the US and a lot of other stuff that I'm not thinking of.

In other words, crap.

A few years ago I stumbled onto a program out of Minneapolis called, appropriately, "Crap From The Past." CFTP is hosted by Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber, a one-time resident of Rockland County here in New York. It includes loads of music from the 70's, 80's and 90's, but not primarily the better-known songs. The obscure, forgotten, and dreafully bad are the stars here, along with covers, medleys and more.

I highly recommend checking it out.

Incidentally, Gerber is no dummy. He only has a PhD in optics, and a bunch of patents.

The show has run on various outlets since 1992, and can be currently heard on KFAI out of Minneapolis, or online via their web stream. But what really makes the show so cool is that everything is archived via archive.org.

I'm not a religious listener, but I always find something cool when I do check it out. For instance, as a mad Huey Lewis fan, I was thrilled to hear Gerber play the original (that is, pre-Huey version) of both "Heart and Soul" and "Bad is Bad." As a collector, that was perfect for me.

Recently CFTP ran a great an old aircheck from a Minneapolis station, WLOL. It is December 31, 1983 and time to count down the top hits of the year before 1984 gets underway (a GREAT year for music, by the way). Many airchecks are often "scoped", meaning no commercials and perhaps just the beginning and ends of the songs. This aircheck, however, leaves the songs intact, and you get to hear the commercials as well. For somebody like me, who enjoyed the Top 40 shows of the day, this is nirvana.

The DJ, Jay Philpott, talks up songs (taking them "to the post", which means he talks up to until the vocal begins), does the weather, and gives away tickets to an upcoming Genesis concert!

Oh cringe if you will at the music (I did) but it's a great blast back in time to when I would record songs off the radio for mixed tapes.

Part one is here (and you can download the entire show via MP3's). Part two is here.

Stay crappy!