Thursday, May 22, 2008

A Great Music Montage and Other Airchecks

Thanks to "Crap From the Past", I stumbled onto a music motage made largely by former WLOL DJ Jay Philpott. Starting in 1964, it carries to 2006, and it's got almost everything that a Top-40 listener would have heard, be it in Minneapolis (hence the heavy doses of Prince) or in New York (for me most notably on WABC or WNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNBC).

The montage is near the bottom of this page. It lasts an hour and is about 50MB if you choose to download it. I did...and it's worth it. With the exception of 1964 to late 1968, it's my life in music.

And yes, Huey Lewis is in it. At least three times ("The Heart of Rock and Roll", "The Power of Love" and "Stuck with You", plus "We Are The World"). I might not have recommended it otherwise.

(MINOR UPDATE) I just finished listening to the whole thing. It's awesome, but jeez - you go from the opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night" to "You're Beautiful" (by James Blunt)? Isn't that just a tiny bit of a dropoff? Oh, and if you allow youself to get wistful, it can get a wee bit emotional. I'm just sayin'. I could elaborate, but I think you know what I mean.

In fact, this whole page has a lot of great airchecks; many that are relevant only to Minnesota listeners, but quite a few that are of national and historical significance, such as:

- The attack on Pearl Harbor.
- The announcement of the death of FDR.
- Coverage of the assassination of JFK, largely from CBS News. This is especially fascinating in that you can hear the dawn of contemporary news as it's happening. Reporters are stumbling, filing eyewitness reports via phone, bulletins being handed to anchors. I was also stunned at the number of things that turned out to be false (such as Vice President Johnson being wounded). It's amazing radio.

Speaking of airchecks, I have to evenutally add a few fun ones for your listening pleasure to the ol' blogster. For instance, you can delight in listening to the artist formerly known as "Robbie" Adams doing his DJ thang on Majic 105 in September, 1990. As you can probably guess, I have a lot of airchecks that I've accumlated over the years.

In fact, have a listen to these:
- The 2002 WGCH Sports Montage - Created and edited by me. I played it during our last "Press Box" talk show in 2002, as a tribute to the many people who worked their butts off during arguably our best year in sports on WGCH. I used the theme music for each of our entities to break up the segments.
- 2007 Greenwich-Shelton State Championship - For reasons I can't comprehend, it says "Southington" on the files, but I know it's the entire broadcast of the Cardinals' state win against the Gaels.
- Greenwich versus Naples, November 9, 2007 - At long last, one of our biggest games in the history of WGCH is available for your downloading pleasure.

I'll add more when and if time allows.

If you know of any good sites to listen to classic moments of notice (sports, history, great DJ's and more), post a comment and I'd be happy to have a listen.

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