A Radio Mystery

 

"Cal Lockwood" spins the 78's from 77° latitude (Instagram)

If my memory is functioning (which is debatable these days), we return to 2021.

You know, from the bowels of hell during the pandemic.

It was that February when I got an email from Mick, friend of the blog.

"Have you ever of this or even listen to it??? So f****** cool......," he wrote.

It included a link to Arctic Outpost Radio AM 1270.

"Spinning the 78's," the link said. "From the top of the world."

I was intrigued.

So I clicked on the link. What I found absolutely fascinated me.

It's literally a radio station that can be heard online via TuneIn, Radio Garden, and other audio streaming sites. The station -- running without any host interaction and minimal station liners -- plays classic music dating back to the early 20th century.

A review of their website says "Playing great shellacs from 1902-1958.  Big Band, Jazz, Swing, Vintage Country, and Blues. As always, completely commercial free."

I've heard tons of things that fit in their description though I did catch an instrumental version of "Yesterday" once. That song, of course, wasn't released until 1965 by The Beatles.

But, never mind any inconsistencies. Arctic Outpost Radio is a wonderful jaunt through this stretch of musical history. There is no rock and roll or pop to be found unless it is a cover that fits in the genre. There are vocalists but don't expect to hear Frank Sinatra and the like.

Plus it's not limited to any one continent. I've heard music from all over the world.

This is stuff you've likely never heard in fact. 

For instance, as I write, a song called "Je Länger Ich Dich Anseh', Je Lieber Hab' Ich Dich" (English: "The Longer I Look at You, The More I Love You") is on. I had to go to Shazam for the title and hit Google to discover it was apparently composed by Willy Rosen and the performance was from 1929.

Rosen, I further discovered, died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 at the age of 50. Oh, what sad, awful things research can reveal.

Music has such a wonderful and, yes, horrific history to it. Listening to Arctic Outpost Radio isn't simply for background noise. There's a deeper dive to be found occasionally.

For me, these are wondrous tunes that I imagine would have intrigued my father, for instance, especially the Big Band music. He raised me on so much of that. I will always remember listening to an AM station down in Florida, WWBA (Radio six-eight-oh, the jingle would say).

So there's a nice connection as I listen to "Steppin' Pretty" by Andy Kirk & His Twelve Clouds of Joy, recorded in 1936.

Complicating things is that the station is purely a jukebox of music with an occasional liner, including a top-of-the-hour legal ID noting the basics of "Arctic Outpost Radio, AM 1270, Longyearbyen."

We're not getting news along with traffic and weather together for the Svalbard archipelago.

Longyearbyen, if you don't know (according to Wikipedia) "is the world's northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000 and the largest inhabited area of Svalbard, Norway."

So, I suppose if you're in Longyearbyen, you can pop Arctic Outpost Radio on your AM radio.

Maybe.

But then there's more. The station liners will occasionally mention "Your host, Cal Lockwood."

Cal has an Instagram page. He also has a Twitter (X) account. Neither has been touched since 2020.

There's even merchandise but it's just a men's and a women's t-shirt and a coffee mug. The mug features a sketch of Cal, who's wearing sunglasses because of course, he is.

But since I've been listening, I've never heard Cal. Is that him in the station liners? I have no idea.

Apparently, it is him on the liners. On the Instagram page, he posted a video in which he thanked listeners and cued up another record. That's the same voice that is heard during any of the breaks in the music.

It's all incredibly fascinating.

Furthering the intrigue, Arctic Outpost Radio and Cal Lockwood have a following in Portugal. It seems, in the early days of lockdown, comedian Bruno Nogueira told his followers about the stream that he was listening to on a video podcast.

Nogueira encouraged his audience to give Lockwood a listen and visit Cal's Instagram page. Within days, Lockwood's followers jumped from three -- yes, three -- to 40,000.

It now has 54,000.

But Lockwood remains a man of mystery and though another Portuguese comedian, Nuno Markl, exchanged messages with the DJ, he has mostly vanished.

In fact, a story on Icepeople.net says there is no record of Cal Lockwood in Longyearbyen. However, if you read the story, there is indeed a station playing this music on 1270 AM.

However, Cal seems to be walking anonymously among the population of 2,368.

Or it's all a hoax.

Who knows?

Honestly, I don't know and I sort of don't care. I love love love the idea of this all being legit, even if Cal Lockwood is truly a nom de plume. OK, let him use a radio name and protect his identity. He can be Batman for all I care.

I don't need to find out that Cal is really Mick, running songs off his computer from Long Island.

We needed things like Cal Lockwood and Arctic Outpost Radio during the loneliest and saddest days of the pandemic.

Sometimes, we still do.

I'm listening, Cal.

Keep jazzing things up.

And thanks for adding to the still wonderful world of radio.

Radio, someone still loves you.