A Visit with Hank and Jim

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.

Memorial Service for Randi Steele

A memorial service for Randi Steele a/k/a Randall Ripley has been announced via the "Fans of WIOLP Woodstock 104" group on Facebook. It will be held on Sunday October 8, 2017 at 6:30 PM at Mountain View Studio, 20 Mountainview Ave, Woodstock, NY 12498. Here are directions.

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.

Allan Weiner and Randi Steele on 66 WNBC

Allan Weiner and Randi Steele, organizers of the Radio Newyork International (RNI) pirate ship broadcasts, pay a visit to the studios of 66 WNBC on the 2nd floor of 30 Rockerfeller Plaza in New York City. They are joined by longtime associate JP Ferraro. The date is July 28, 1988 and there are thunderstorms in the area which can be heard as static bursts on this off air recording.

The trio speak about their experiences with the FCC and take calls from supportive listeners. Also of interest are the commercials for NYNEX Mobile, proud that they are adding a new 5 MHz of spectrum to their cellular system; and regular advertisers Sears and K-Mart.

Host Alan Colmes also pokes fun at Randi as a former troublemaker, based upon phone calls that he -- yes Randi was still identifying as a he at that time -- made to radio stations back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is also revealed that Randi worked nights at WNBC back in those days as a producer to Big Jay Sorensen who these days is to be found on WCBS-FM in NYC.

Give a listen and I hope that you enjoy it.

RNI Friday Follies via WRNO, New Orelans

On March 20, 1991 the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision on fetal protection in the workplace in the case of UAW v. Johnson Controls.  What does this have to do with Dan Lewis op de radio?  The release of the decision was instrumental in dating the next show presented for your listening enjoyment.  It was found on an undated cassette tape.

Back in early 1991, Radio New York International made the bold move of providing a 7 day per week broadcast schedule.  I took Friday nights, naming them the Friday follies, and Tina agreed to help with the RNI Information news segment.

This program was somewhat unusual.  It was done live, and instead of doing a 5 minute news segment over the phone, Tina was able to join me in Randi's Flushing studio that evening.  It quite by accident turned into our version of Howard and Robin doing the news for an hour, but it was definitely done in Dan and Tina style.  Tina had a lot of airtime and used it well.  The discussion took the audience through sex, rape, culture, and strange crimes of passion.  NYC crime in the days before Giuliani, Bloomberg and Kelly was a topic, as were the price of luxuries and taxes disguised as user fees and tolls.

What is also unusual is that this was part of the brief 5 evening per week broadcast stint done via the facilities of WRNO in New Orelans, LA.  I was very happy to find this recording and be able to share it.  The date appears to be Friday March 22, 1991 at 9 PM Eastern (0200 UTC Saturday) based upon the release of the Supreme Court decision that week.

At about halfway through the program, Randi is featured in a spot which announced the complete RNI broadcast schedule:

Sunday @ 0200 via WWCR, Nashville
Monday - Friday @ 0200 via WRNO, New Orelans
Saturday - Radio for Peace International, Costa Rica @ 2230 and 0500

Times are UTC but in all instances except the 2230 RFPI transmission, the UTC days were actually the next day.  RNI could never get UTC quite right.  But on the web, anytime is party time, so listen here whenever you want.

Waiting for Operation Desert Storm from the Gloom and Doom Tomb

There were two studios used to produce programming for Radio Newyork International back in the WWCR days.  The NYC studio was in Flushing, Queens and operated by Randi Steele.  It was a fun and energetic place from which to broadcast.

The other studio was in Yonkers, NY and just north of the City.  It was run by Pirate Joe aka Joseph Paul Ferraro.  When we were putting together the WWCR programming it was agreed that two out of four Sundays per month the broadcasts would come from JP's studio.

As it happened, I was the staff member other than Randi who best knew JP and had experience broadcasting out of that studio.  It was the Yonkers location where I had originated live programming for KPF941 during the early part of the 1980s.  So I drew the job of complementing Pirate Joe's programs twice a month.

JP's studio had a quieter, laid back vibe than Randi's.  Randi tended to have a more hyper personality than JP.  I seem to absorb whatever vibe I'm being exposed to and this led Randi to remark that, at least in his opinion, my programming coming from Yonkers sounded like it was coming from a "gloom and doom tomb".  Well, I wasn't looking to do a hyperactive, screaming DJ show anyway.  And more of the serious radio seemed to come out of JP's studio, with lighter fare coming out of Randi's place.

This week, we offer up a classic Dan Lewis RNI Mailbag show from 1991.  The chronic mail delivery issues seemed to have been resolved and Dan dives right in by reading a letter from a listener complaining about what he perceives as RNI's hard core left wing politics.  Alternative agri-fuel gets good attention, too, as an alternative to foreign wars over oil.

The program, done on the eve of Operation Desert Storm, is a time capsule of the early days of 1991 when our nation was on the cusp of going to war, yet again, to police the world.  Here in 2012, there is much to learn from the state of the world in 1991.  Despite the laid back environment, this week's program features a very heated exchange with a listener who wrote and called to support the war.

Please listen, enjoy and hopefully learn.

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