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What songs do you like hearing via skywave

S

spt87

For those who listened to AM radio via skywave - maybe you know what I'm talking about. There are some songs I remember hearing on far off stations that for some reason the effects of skywave (like a bit of fading) I found added some appeal. Throw in AM Stereo and a bit of platform motion during fades added to the effect.

Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells
Evil Woman by ELO
The Rain, The Park and Other Things by The Cowsills
Let It Ride by BTO (this one was the first song I ever heard in AM Stereo listening to 84 WHAS in a Pontic Trans Am with its factory, Delco radio so that sticks in my mind)

Looking at my list a couple of those would be classified as "psychedelic" so a bit of skywave effect maybe adds to that vibe.

I listened to music AMs as much as possible during the early to mid 1990s, especially at night, since I saw the writing on wall. When I hear these songs today I think of 1190 WOWO and 84 WHAS in particular which were probably the last two AMs doing pop/rock music formats (nothing against WSM with their country format that is still going).
 
Skywave? Probably nothing on Ancient Modulation save for maybe a few local, low-power stations here and there. Here in Phoenix, we have KAZG 1440, which runs a mighty 52 watts after local sunset (5 kW days).

Try WTWW 5085 on the 60 meter band during the evenings if you have shortwave. They air several hours of oldies at night. They shut down abruptly every night, between 0500 and 0600 UTC (10 and 11 PM PDT/MST).
 
spt87 said:
Let It Ride by BTO (this one was the first song I ever heard in AM Stereo listening to 84 WHAS in a Pontic Trans Am with its factory, Delco radio so that sticks in my mind)
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WHAS played "Let It Ride" in 1973? I know they went to a sort of uptempo AC format around that time, but weren't they still somewhat "chicken rock"? I was in Syracuse, NY, then, and a similar uptempo AC, WHEN, didn't touch "Let It Ride," or any BTO song; BTO was left to the city's then-dominant Top 40 station, WOLF.
 
WOWO could rock harder than top 40 WMEE in the 70s.





CTListener said:
WHAS played "Let It Ride" in 1973? I know they went to a sort of uptempo AC format around that time, but weren't they still somewhat "chicken rock"? I was in Syracuse, NY, then, and a similar uptempo AC, WHEN, didn't touch "Let It Ride," or any BTO song; BTO was left to the city's then-dominant Top 40 station, WOLF.
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When I was a kid spending the night at the home of relatives, one of my cousins was playing a radio tuned to a distant station late one night, and I could hear it where we were sleeping. "Jump into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson came on.

What a great skywave tune. Straight-ahead rock and roll, extended guitar solos, throbbing bass line (the bass player actually detuned one of the strings while playing), and Nilsson's late-night screaming preacher delivery, complete with tons of echo and reverb. Sounded like it was coming from another planet.
 
in the 70's I used to keep my radio on WLS in Chicago overnight while sleeping and get woken up and scared by hearing the Old Style Beer commercials they ran with the horn, and skywave probably played a factor in that.

Later on in the 80's and 90's when I was listening more to CCM radio the Memphis area stations that carried it were all on AM and all but one had weak signals where I lived in West TN about 60 to 70 miles away, and I guess it was skywave that had an effect on their signals, especially in the Fall and Winter, and I liked how that sounded in some cases.
 
I remember those days!

I used to hear Top 40 AM radio stations at night when I was growing up. Especially stations like CKLW 800 out of Windsor-Detroit and CKLM 1570, A French top 40 radio station out of Laval, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal.
 
CTListener said:
WHAS played "Let It Ride" in 1973? I know they went to a sort of uptempo AC format around that time, but weren't they still somewhat "chicken rock"? I was in Syracuse, NY, then, and a similar uptempo AC, WHEN, didn't touch "Let It Ride," or any BTO song; BTO was left to the city's then-dominant Top 40 station, WOLF.
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Not 1973 - early 1990's. Probably 1991ish. WHAS discontinued AM Stereo a few years before they dropped their music format so that somewhat helps me narrow in on the year. It was the death of WWKB's local programming in Buffalo around 1987 that got me into listening to these far off stations. When KB went down I sensed the writing was on the wall for the AM programming at the time. WHAS had more of a classic hits format in the 1990's especially on the weekends.
 
anotherguy said:
in the 70's I used to keep my radio on WLS in Chicago overnight while sleeping and get woken up and scared by hearing the Old Style Beer commercials they ran with the horn, and skywave probably played a factor in that.

Later on in the 80's and 90's when I was listening more to CCM radio the Memphis area stations that carried it were all on AM and all but one had weak signals where I lived in West TN about 60 to 70 miles away, and I guess it was skywave that had an effect on their signals, especially in the Fall and Winter, and I liked how that sounded in some cases.
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That reminds me - I used to leave WHAS on all night and fall asleep to it. I'd wake up having a weird dream that was related to what being aired on the station.
 
blackgold said:
CKLM 1570, A French top 40 radio station out of Laval, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal.
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Do you remember how they used to edit (or mix) the song intro back onto the end of the song, and then the jock would do his backsell over that before going into a break? That's the only station i ever heard do that, it really kept the energy going. They also had a fantastic jingle package.

You must be in the northeast. CKLM was 50kw on 1570 but I think they shot it almost all eastward at night. Reknowned Mexican border blaster XERF ruled most of the US on the same frequency with its 250kw signal just across the border from Del Rio, TX.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Do you remember how they used to edit (or mix) the song intro back onto the end of the song, and then the jock would do his backsell over that before going into a break? That's the only station i ever heard do that, it really kept the energy going. They also had a fantastic jingle package. .
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When was that?

On the occasions I visited Montreal in the later 60's to buy music, I'd always listen to CJMS to make sure I got copies of all the newest songs; it was a very good Top 40 operation.
 
When there were still classic country stations in my area, they seemed made for skywave--hearing those old songs flicker in and out gave it a spooky ambience. All time greatest skywave song? "Help Me Make It Through The Night".
 
In the '80s and '90s, I used to listen regularly to WWVA's live Jamboree USA on Saturday nights. Some nights, that 1170 blowtorch came in like a local; other nights, it was plagued by fading. I vividly remember listening to a concert in 1991 and hearing something quite unusual during the fades: a repeating announcement from the "USA Radio Network" notifying affiliates of when the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings would be resuming. No IDs, no other programming, just the announcement, which shouldn't have been going out over the air to begin with. Too bad it was 1991 and the internet wasn't a thing yet for all but military folks and academics; otherwise I'm sure I could have found out what the station running the announcement was by asking here.
 
Another example of skywave affecting my listening was with WCFL 1000 in Chicago in the mid-80's when they had a CCM format. I could get them great some nights but other nights it would get crowned out by what I think was a Cuban station. I happened to think about that because of a You Tube video that was recently posted of an aircheck from that time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wieivXINJDk&t=1247s
 
This may not be an exact answer to the question, but I especially remember leaving the American Legion for an event I don't remember in Ohio and listening to "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult on WCFL. I heard some songs on skywave in my SWL days....
"Showdown" by ELO didn't seem to get much domestic airplay but I remember it from overseas stations. I remember listening to "Records 'Round the World" on the BBC World Service
 
Radio Luxembourg!

In the mid 80s, while serving onboard a US Submarine as a Radioman, on the mid-watch when things were slow, I would connect our new (at the time) Watkins-Johnson Tuner/Scanner to the HF-Tip of our Floating Wire Antenna and scan for radio stations in the Short-Wave and Medium Wave bands. I could always count on "Radio Luxembourg" to come in loud-and-clear! Their Top 40 format kept us up to date with current music while deployed. Many hours spend listening to this station while underway!
 
There's a lot of nostalgia among the older crowd for things they remember growing up with. But the fact is, the only reason people put up with the atrocious quality of music over AM skywave signals back then is because there were few other options for music discovery or a connection to the outside world.

I would never deliberately choose to listen to music like that now. It was just a necessary means to an end. For the sake of nostaligia, I prefer to play a record on a turntable. It's amazing how good they sound 40-50 years later. That's how the music of that era deserves to be heard.
 
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