Tragic events often reconnect folks who have not otherwise been in touch for some time. So it is with the recent passing of Randi. I had a pleasant visit today from Hank Hayes and Jim Nazium. We spent several hours catching up on the last 25 years of our respective lives over coffee.
Hank and Jim are well known for their famous Brooklyn FM pirate, WHOT. Before they were Hank and Jim, they were Hal Hall and Larry McCrae of WFAT, a famous AM pirate that broadcast on 1620 kHz from Brooklyn in the late 1970s. And even earlier, they were known as John Doe and Perry Harris of WCPR. As mentioned in a recent blog post, it was because of WCPR that I was able to reconnect with Ed Armstrong a/k/a Randi Steele in 1975.
We talked about many things and compared memories of past events. It is a tribute to our collective lucidity that our memories are in general agreement on details and dates of events in which we collectively involved. I filled them in on Randi's memorial in Woodstock which I attended last Sunday evening. I also mentioned that I'd found a forgotten interview in the archives. The two of them were guests on a public affairs segment aired by 99X in 1979.
One question from the host was with regard to the momentum in Congress, at that time, to deregulate broadcast content. These changes, ultimately adopted, led to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the end of requirements for public service programming. The changes also led to more commercials, more often. The response from the the young broadcasters was rather prophetic, considering the state of commercial terrestrial radio today.
I promised Hank that I'd get him a copy of the program. Here it is for your listening enjoyment, too.
Showing posts with label Pirate Radio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pirate Radio. Show all posts
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Monday, October 2, 2017
Just who was Randall Ripley?
I used to know a guy named Randall Ripley. I met him at the Diplomat Hotel in NYC during a phone phreak convention run by YIPL, the Youth International Party Line. They used to publish a newsletter, later called TAP. It was 2600 before there was a 2600.
The setting was a seedy midtown hotel around Labor Day of 1973. Randall had a microphone in his hands but didn't look like the mainstream media. As a 15 year old kid interested in all things tech and media, I let Randall interview me about party lines and loop lines. I then asked what station he was with. He told me that it was a pirate radio station.
Pirate radio! It was in Flushing, Queens. I lived in Flushing, Queens! I had followed the European offshore stations with interest, but now I found that I had a local FM pirate on 87.9 MHz. I was fascinated. That night, I tuned in.
WQLB was part of the Falling Star Network, a network of pirate stations started by Allan Weiner and Joseph Paul Ferraro of Yonkers, NY pirate fame. It had a tramsitter power of approximately 50 watts from an army surplus "TRC" that was modulated by an Eico signal generator. The signal generator was plugged into a crystal socket with a nail. The antenna was a type of circular loop. The studio was located in the basement of his parents' home, much to the chagrin of his mother who always believed that evil was taking place down there. I used to listen to that evil and call in regularly until the antenna came down that November in an ice storm. Randall went by the on air handle of Ed Armstrong.
We used to talk on the phone regularly. I remember one unusual conversation where Randall made a point of asking me if some unremembered person told me he was gay. I think I said yes and also said I didn't care. Randall found a need to insist to me that he was not.
Late in 1974 my family moved from Queens to Staten Island. I lost track of Randall until I next heard his voice on a Brooklyn pirate using the callsign WCPR. The guys who ran WCPR, Perry Harris and John Doe (later Jim Nazium and Hank Hayes), were referred to Randall as someone who could help them with the transmitter that was always on life support, and therefore nicknamed "Karen Ann". I called in, he remembered me, and we exchanged updated contact info. By that time I was in my first year of college, involved with the college carrier-current radio station, and lived and breathed radio.
Shortly thereafter, I was invited out to visit Randall at his house and to see the studio. It had a Gates style board, used 8 track machines as carts, and egg cartons for soundproofing. I wish I had photos! Anyway, it turned our that our interest in radio was supplemented by our mutual interest in marijuana, beer, music, audio technology and leftist politics. A strong and long friendship resulted which, unfortunately, lasted only until 1999. But that is a story for another day.
So who is Randall Ripley and why should you care? Randall was better known to many of you as Randi Steele of Radio Newyork International, WBCQ, and WIOF-LP. Regretfully, Randi's life ended last month, just shy of 63 years old.
Stony Stevenson, one of the several people still breathing who knew Randall longer than me posted this blog entry back in 2012. It is also well worth a read.
Update 10/08/17: Stony Stevenson's final thoughts on Randi were published today. Read his Requiem for a Pirate here.
The setting was a seedy midtown hotel around Labor Day of 1973. Randall had a microphone in his hands but didn't look like the mainstream media. As a 15 year old kid interested in all things tech and media, I let Randall interview me about party lines and loop lines. I then asked what station he was with. He told me that it was a pirate radio station.
Pirate radio! It was in Flushing, Queens. I lived in Flushing, Queens! I had followed the European offshore stations with interest, but now I found that I had a local FM pirate on 87.9 MHz. I was fascinated. That night, I tuned in.
WQLB was part of the Falling Star Network, a network of pirate stations started by Allan Weiner and Joseph Paul Ferraro of Yonkers, NY pirate fame. It had a tramsitter power of approximately 50 watts from an army surplus "TRC" that was modulated by an Eico signal generator. The signal generator was plugged into a crystal socket with a nail. The antenna was a type of circular loop. The studio was located in the basement of his parents' home, much to the chagrin of his mother who always believed that evil was taking place down there. I used to listen to that evil and call in regularly until the antenna came down that November in an ice storm. Randall went by the on air handle of Ed Armstrong.
We used to talk on the phone regularly. I remember one unusual conversation where Randall made a point of asking me if some unremembered person told me he was gay. I think I said yes and also said I didn't care. Randall found a need to insist to me that he was not.
Late in 1974 my family moved from Queens to Staten Island. I lost track of Randall until I next heard his voice on a Brooklyn pirate using the callsign WCPR. The guys who ran WCPR, Perry Harris and John Doe (later Jim Nazium and Hank Hayes), were referred to Randall as someone who could help them with the transmitter that was always on life support, and therefore nicknamed "Karen Ann". I called in, he remembered me, and we exchanged updated contact info. By that time I was in my first year of college, involved with the college carrier-current radio station, and lived and breathed radio.
Shortly thereafter, I was invited out to visit Randall at his house and to see the studio. It had a Gates style board, used 8 track machines as carts, and egg cartons for soundproofing. I wish I had photos! Anyway, it turned our that our interest in radio was supplemented by our mutual interest in marijuana, beer, music, audio technology and leftist politics. A strong and long friendship resulted which, unfortunately, lasted only until 1999. But that is a story for another day.
So who is Randall Ripley and why should you care? Randall was better known to many of you as Randi Steele of Radio Newyork International, WBCQ, and WIOF-LP. Regretfully, Randi's life ended last month, just shy of 63 years old.
Stony Stevenson, one of the several people still breathing who knew Randall longer than me posted this blog entry back in 2012. It is also well worth a read.
Update 10/08/17: Stony Stevenson's final thoughts on Randi were published today. Read his Requiem for a Pirate here.
Monday, June 9, 2014
The Second Night of RNI -- Live from the Radio Ship Sarah
On Friday evening, July 24, 1987, my AM radio was turned on. It was tuned in to 1620 kHz and the cassette was in the deck. It was all a buzz until -- the frequency was abuzz with the sounds of the 2nd test transmission of Radio Newyork International. My friend Randi Steele was at the controls, about to show NYC what free form radio was going to bring to the city. The first transmission, the prior evening, went well, but lacked the professional polish that Randi was about to bring to the airwaves. Not that there weren't audible studio glitches, but then it was free form.
My own recorded air contributions to the short lived RNI-fest of 1987 were never aired. They are probably sitting on VHS cassettes on a dilapidated school bus in northern Maine, perhaps never to be heard, perhaps to end up on Area 51 some day as others have. I was to have been part of the original air team on a part-time basis (wisely keeping my day job). Nonetheless, my contributions to the station are heard two-fold in this transmission. I coined the expression "The Wet One" as a station slogan, and Hayes Hayes delivers on its promise as a station slogan for a shipboard station with his deep, laborious pronouncement. I also provided the recordings of the "original" Dutch RNI jingles that were used as production material.
The station was heard all across the Eastern USA. QSL cards were issued and the legend had begun. While RNI is now simply a name used on WBCQ by a Johnny-come-later, this recording of the promise that Allan Weiner and Randi Steele offered NYC media remains for your listening enjoyment.
My own recorded air contributions to the short lived RNI-fest of 1987 were never aired. They are probably sitting on VHS cassettes on a dilapidated school bus in northern Maine, perhaps never to be heard, perhaps to end up on Area 51 some day as others have. I was to have been part of the original air team on a part-time basis (wisely keeping my day job). Nonetheless, my contributions to the station are heard two-fold in this transmission. I coined the expression "The Wet One" as a station slogan, and Hayes Hayes delivers on its promise as a station slogan for a shipboard station with his deep, laborious pronouncement. I also provided the recordings of the "original" Dutch RNI jingles that were used as production material.
The station was heard all across the Eastern USA. QSL cards were issued and the legend had begun. While RNI is now simply a name used on WBCQ by a Johnny-come-later, this recording of the promise that Allan Weiner and Randi Steele offered NYC media remains for your listening enjoyment.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Ed Armstrong and Marconi on KPRC
I was quite surprised this evening to hear a KPRC broadcast from 30 years ago being aired on WBCQ. I tuned past 7,490 kHz and heard some vaguely familiar segues and then the voices of Ed Armstrong (aka Randi Steele) and Marconi (aka Dan Lewis) coming out of my radio. Allan Weiner, owner of WBCQ, found some old reel-to-reel tapes in storage that had not seen the light of day for 30 years and decided to put them on the air.
The pogram will resume at 10 PM Eastern (0200 UTC) on 7,490 kHz and on the web. Join me as we travel back 30 years in time to Pirate Radio Central in New York City.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Stereo 9 FM and the 1980 DNC in NYC
For the first half of the 1980s, some of the most innovative radio heard in New York City was heard after 1 AM on 91.9 MHz, on those nights when Stereo 9 FM took to the air from its Flushing, NY location. This station had a directional antenna pattern from its Chanel Master FM yagi antenna. Most of the time it pointed east toward Long Island, but sometimes it would point westward to Manhattan. The station was run by Ed Armstrong -- who later became known as Radio Newyork International's own Randi Steele.
I first met Ed Armstrong at the young age of 15. I was attending a phone phreak convention at the Hotel Diplomat near Times Square in NYC. A guy came up to me with a microphone and we started to talk. When I asked him what radio station he was with, he was a little cagey. Right away, I knew I had chanced upon a real life pirate broadcaster.
As it happened, I lived in Queens, well within earshot of Ed's 1973 pirate station, WQLB. WQLB was part of the Falling Star Network run by Allan Weiner and Joseph Paul Ferraro. But WQLB's antenna was damaged during an ice storm in November of 1973 and never returned to the air -- at least under that name...in the late 1970's, Ed returned to the air with a new idea. And so Stereo 9 FM was born.
32 years ago today, the Democratic National Convention came to New York City for its 1980 presidential nominating convention. Stereo 9 FM was there to cover it, in true stereo. We used two EV 635A microphones mounted on a bar...it was quite a sight to see. One of those two microphones is still in service today in my studio.
This off-air recording from August 10, 1980 features Marconi (aka Dan Lewis), Ed Armstrong (aka Randi Steele), and Mr. Tim interviewing folks (including Betty Boop and Dana Beale) outside of Madison Square Garden. This was pirate radio at its best. It's somewhat disheartening that many of the issues that faced us in 1980 are very much with us today, unresolved 32 years later.
The fade down and up around the 30 and 60 minute marks are not edits, but where the cassette tape used for the off air recording was changed.
Listen here.
I first met Ed Armstrong at the young age of 15. I was attending a phone phreak convention at the Hotel Diplomat near Times Square in NYC. A guy came up to me with a microphone and we started to talk. When I asked him what radio station he was with, he was a little cagey. Right away, I knew I had chanced upon a real life pirate broadcaster.
As it happened, I lived in Queens, well within earshot of Ed's 1973 pirate station, WQLB. WQLB was part of the Falling Star Network run by Allan Weiner and Joseph Paul Ferraro. But WQLB's antenna was damaged during an ice storm in November of 1973 and never returned to the air -- at least under that name...in the late 1970's, Ed returned to the air with a new idea. And so Stereo 9 FM was born.
32 years ago today, the Democratic National Convention came to New York City for its 1980 presidential nominating convention. Stereo 9 FM was there to cover it, in true stereo. We used two EV 635A microphones mounted on a bar...it was quite a sight to see. One of those two microphones is still in service today in my studio.
This off-air recording from August 10, 1980 features Marconi (aka Dan Lewis), Ed Armstrong (aka Randi Steele), and Mr. Tim interviewing folks (including Betty Boop and Dana Beale) outside of Madison Square Garden. This was pirate radio at its best. It's somewhat disheartening that many of the issues that faced us in 1980 are very much with us today, unresolved 32 years later.
The fade down and up around the 30 and 60 minute marks are not edits, but where the cassette tape used for the off air recording was changed.
Listen here.
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