Radio: Oh, the humanity! E-mail
explosionBy Jim Lundstrom

There was a time when radio mattered. It still matters, but in a much more muted way than it did in its pre-TV golden age. Important radio still happens

National Public Radio and its state affiliates have carved out an important niche with a sophisticated mix of groundbreaking radio such as “This American Life” and “Fresh Air” with elements of old-time radio in the form of game shows such as “Michael Feldman’s Whadda ya Know?” and variety shows such as Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Community supported radio and college stations around the country continue to surprise and entertain listeners with important programming and eclectic music selections.

Before we had instant access to nearly every media through the internet, commercial radio was where you would first hear the new 45 by your favorite band or singer. I remember almost falling out of the top bunk bed when hearing the power of Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love” for the first time while listening to a local AM station through a single earphone plugged into a small transistor radio. Ditto the transcendental moment when The Who’s “I Can See for Miles” came on for the first time through the same earplug on the same radio while I was pedaling along Lake Superior on a beautiful, clear-skied day when you could literally see for miles.

Ask any Boomer who grew up in the Midwest about Clyde Clifford and Beaker Street, the late-night broadcast emanating from the 50,000-watt KAAY in Little Rock, Ark., for 11 years beginning in 1966. For many it was their first taste of underground and/or psychedelic rock.

Fox Valley musician Bobby Evans remembers Beaker Street.

“I remember coming home from a gig after a high school dance, sitting between two fathers who were driving us ( I was 14, 15?), fooling with the AM radio and hearing KAAY Little Rock, Ark., and a song about smoking rope (i.e. hemp, for the young people, still used as a euphemism for marijuana). Then they played the whole side of an album (again for the young people, an analog storage device for music used years ago). If I remember right it was John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, The Beano Album. We all thought that was pretty cool and after that we always waited for midnight when we were cruising to listen to Beaker St. Theatre, where they played the cool stuff or the non-hit tracks off of an album. But very soon after that WIBA in Madison started Radio Free Madison on FM, which had a better sound.”
English listeners had Radio Caroline, a pirate radio station that was broadcast from a ship in the North Sea. I was a listener while living in England from the mid to late 1970s. I remember the station played stuff you wouldn’t hear on the “Beeb” and it used a section of The Beatles’ “The End” from Abbey Road as its station identifier: “And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make.” That seemed a very powerful message for a radio station to adopt.

The story of Radio Caroline – or at least a film version of that story – hit British screens earlier this year as The Boat That Rocked, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman as an American DJ on Radio Caroline. It hits American screens Nov. 13, but retitled Pirate Radio. Be interesting to see what sort of reception it gets over here where Radio Caroline is virtually unknown.

orsonAlmost 20 years after leaving England, driving through a dark and stormy night on Maui, I heard another “pirate” radio station, complete with creaking masts and shipboards in the background when the obviously Maui Wowied DJ made an infrequent appearance. When he played cuts from the newly released Porno for Pyros CD Good God’s Urge, which has a South Pacific element to it, it all fit and became a beautiful moment.

Now, courtesy of the internet and some software, anyone can run a pirate radio station from their computer (pirateradio.com).

We leave you with a few famous and infamous radio moments.

The Hindenburg Disaster: WLS-Chicago newsman Herbert Morrison reporting on the Hindenburg Disaster, when the German zeppelin had an accident while mooring in Lakehurst, N.J., and burst into flame, killing 35 of its passengers and one person on the ground. Morrison’s live recording of the May 6, 1937, accident, in which he utters the line, “Oh, the humanity!”  was broadcast the next day, May 7. Hear the entire 36-minute broadcast here: otr.com/hindenburg.shtml.

The War of the Worlds broadcast: Directed by Orson Welles for Mercury Theatre on the Air, this broadcast was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds (1898), and was performed as a Halloween special on Oct. 30, 1938. The live broadcast of Wells tale of a Martian invasion was presented as if it were an interruption of previously scheduled live music, freaking out thousands (some accounts some more than a million) across the country. Yes, some listeners thought they were hearing a real Martian invasion of New Jersey. Admittedly, some of those hysterical people thought it was Germans attacking, not Martians. You can find downloadable versions of the original broadcast here: mercurytheatre.info.

“We Shall Never Surrender” speech, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: Author/orator/politician Winston Churchill offered the British people the morale boosting speech on June 4, 1940, two days after the fall of Dunkirk, with the immortal words, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Hear the entire speech and others by Churchill here: archive.org/details/Winston_Churchill.
FDR’s Day of Infamy speech: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his 6 ½-minute Day of Infamy speech via radio to the nation on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A formal declaration of war against Japan was passed by Congress within an hour of the speech. Hear it here: radiochemistry.org/history/video/fdr_infamy.html

Foot in Mouth No. 1: Hometown boy Sen. Joseph McCarthy took every opportunity he could to sound off on the radio, usually about the commies and jackals his booze-addled vision was making him see everywhere. While there are several remarkable McCarthy moments that added up to his downfall, he really went overboard in a nationally broadcast speech from the studio of KFAB in Lincoln, Neb., on Aug. 24, 1951, when he said, “Everyone who hates communism loves McCarthy. Everyone who loves communism hates McCarthy.” Fighting words if you’ve ever heard them. Good luck trying to find that particular mp3, but other examples of radio McCarthyisms can be found here: freeinfosociety.com/media_index.php?cat=8&type=3

Foot in Mouth No. 2: At a time when the Cold War seemed to have heated up to levels rivaling the early 1960s, President Ronald Reagan – the so-called Great Communicator – said the following during a microphone test before his regular weekly address on Aug. 11, 1984: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing will begin in five minutes.” Aw, shucks, folks, just kidding! Lot of people didn’t think that was fitting behavior for a president.