Cassette Tapes of Radio Broadcasts

[EddieTheRapFan]

Could you give a more specific site to find FM USA? What years did they record?

I'm sorry for taking so much in replying!! These records were made between 1985 and 1987, and include news, traffic reports, jokes, call ins and many ads recorded from stations like KIQQ and WHQT.
There was another record series, FM Europe, which included European disco songs coupled with Italian and Spanish ads. I have no problem on uploading some bits of it if anyone wants to listen more of any of these two compilations.

 

[JeeperOne]

I WISHED I had recorded "unscoped" recordings of my favorite stations in Oklahoma in the 70's. (KAKC, KELi, KTFX.. and at night KOMA, WHB, KSTP, WLS). But as a teenager living only on the allowance my parents gave me (not much) any blank tapes I had were a premium. I always kept re-recording over them.

How were you able to pick up WLS all the way in Oklahoma?

The same way I was able to pick it up from my home in Denver, CO - Broadcast Radio DX ;D

Picked up quite a few stations that way. The most common ones were WLW 700, WLS 890, WOAI 1200, KSTP 1500 among others. Sometimes I got stations like WCCO 830, WBAP 820 & KFI 640 among others. Once in awhile, I would get KSL 1160 (Sometimes even over the local station on 1150)

When I spent a year in Utah, I once pulled in KOA 850 from home (But it was pretty weak compared to the SLC local on 860 though )

Back in the day, not only was possible - IT WAS FUN !!!!!

Cheers & 73

 

[roadrunner]

Tonight out of total boredom, I got into one of my old boxes and pulled out a cassette of WKDF from 1998 when they did the "Velveeta Lounge" at noon and some other Nashville stations.
I thought I was one of maybe three people in the world who recorded id's, jingles, and morning shows etc. I did it all through the 80's...have some Chicago, South Bend, Milwaukee, Indy, Louisville and dx'ed some from Michigan one day in May of 1987? ...pulled in all these stations on FM from
Colorado, Wyoming, and other places thousands of miles out west!
Lived in Kalamazoo MI for a while and it was radio heaven back in the early 90's.
Where those tapes are, who knows, but it was fun.
I have some good ones other people have done on youtube.
Right now I'm just listening to a "mixtape" I did for myself 15 years ago, some radio mixed in but mostly just 80's and 90's songs (listening to "What You Need" by INXS right now).
I used to love sitting by the radio with "record/play" pressed with the pause button on and releasing the pause button when a song was almost over.
Glad I'm not the only one out there who's done that!

 

[TheFonz]

Recently I came across a couple of cassette tapes which contained recordings of radio broadcasts from the '80s and '90s and was wondering if anyone else ever used to record songs or broadcasts off the radio back in the day.

In regards to the tapes I found, the first one I came across was stored in a box with several other cassettes. It contained a bunch of songs my mom recorded off a couple of our local radio stations sometime in the early to mid '80s. Unfortunately, she left out most of the DJ airchecks and commercials (more than likely just to preserve room for more songs), although it did contain a bumper for the now-defunct 1220 WGAR in Cleveland during a broadcast of "The Neil Diamond Special." After one or two of the songs on the tape, you could hear a DJ start to do his monologue starting with a station identification, and at least one of them sounded like he said "1-0" something before the next song cuts in on the tape. Obviously I don't know which station that was, but I'm wondering if it was 105.7 (WMJI) or 104.1 (WQAL) or something like that. All of the songs on that tape were '50s through '70s oldies.

The second tape I have of radio content was one I found at a flea market about a month ago. It contained songs, clips, and commercials from the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" morning show (Jerry Shirley and Mike Trivisonno) on 98.5 WNCX and from "Dave and Lucy" (Dave Perkins and Lucy Grant, with Mark D. Marino [sp?] doing newscasts, Debbie Nichols doing traffic reports, and meteorologist Carl Nichols with weather forecasts) on 99.5 WGAR. The clips from both stations were from December 1990. Among the songs on that tape were "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, "These Eyes" by the Guess Who, "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, "All of Me" by Willie Nelson, "Crazy in Love" by Conway Twitty, "American Boy" by Eddie Rabbitt, a couple of Christmas songs, and others.

I'm wondering if anyone else ever recorded radio broadcasts back in the day without cutting out the DJ bits, bumpers or commercials. What kinds of radio odds and ends do you have in your cassette collection?

FYI there is an entire hobby devoted to this kind of thing called Aircheck Collecting. Check out the Aircheck Collectors board on this site.

 

[rageradio]

I collect airchecks also. I have a really large collection of live radio mixshows from Houston nightclubs

 

[Scott2011]

It's been a while since I've posted anything on this thread, but I've picked up a few more tapes of radio content since I started this thread. Last year I found a tape of a program on 98.5 WNCX in Cleveland called "What's New with Tony C" recorded sometime in 1990. While WNCX is best known for their classic rock format, this show focused on the newer rock songs of that time. Tony also interviewed a local band at a couple of points in his show. On another tape, I found part of a broadcast of a program called "Songs of Faith" on the former FM 100 WKSW (now known as 99.5 WGAR) recorded in December 1981. Interestingly enough, even though WKSW still had its country music format at that time, hardly any of the songs on "Songs of Faith" sounded very country-ish. Neither of these tapes had any commercials on them (ads were cut out from the WNCX broadcast, and there were no ads to begin with on the WKSW Songs of Faith broadcast), but both had the DJ bits left in (in the case of WKSW, the DJ is heard talking about a couple of community events and giving a weather forecast). Both of these tapes were found at garage sales.

Just yesterday, at another garage sale, I picked up four more tapes of songs taped from the radio. Not as much luck finding actual airchecks or commercials on these tapes though. However, one of the tapes started with a song introduction from the American Christian Music Review program with Linda O'Brian. The label on the tape read "Texas country radio," and doing some research on this program, I found this had to have been taped from Real Country 97.5 KFTX in Kingsville, Texas, since that is the only station in Texas that airs ACMR. The rest of the tapes, which according to the labels were recorded in 1994 and 1997, didn't really have any DJ dialogue and didn't have any commercials. In some cases, after a song would end, the DJ would start talking for a quick second, and then get cut off. All of these tapes were of country music.