The Hacker Quarterly
NOW ON STANDS!
Current issue: SPRING 2024
NOW ON STANDS!
As the grand finale to nearly four months of daily releases of lost content from my radio past, this one is especially grand. Recorded on Saturday, April 14, 1990, this video documents the last couple of hours of a ten day fundraiser (known as a Radiothon) held by WUSB, only the second time we had done such a thing. The money being raised was meant to be used to help move our antenna to a higher location so that our signal wouldn't be lost to a new NPR station on an adjacent frequency.
In addition to being the Radiothon coordinator, I was also the host of the last program before everything came to an end at midnight. That program was "Brain Damage" and the audio for this edition can be found at https://www.2600.com/braindamage/1990/0490.html.
You will see a lot of WUSB staffpeople in the studio and pledge room as we try to make our goal. There's even an appearance by my dog Walter! The festive atmosphere was contagious, both to the staff and the listeners. It was everything radio should be.
After it came to an end, there's even footage of a few of us trying to get to the WUSB offices down the hall in a building that was closed for spring break. This involved climbing under a gate, something we were all used to doing on a regular basis after normal building hours. Just one of a whole host of magical memories.
This is something from our archives that we only recently discovered - and what a treasure it is. From Friday, April 13, 1990, this is a video documentary of "The Voice of Long Island" reunion show that aired that afternoon as part of WUSB's second-ever fundraiser. (You can hear the full audio of that show in yesterday's audio release.) Of course, this will mean the most to those of us who recognize the many people affiliated with the station at that time who make an appearance in the video. But even for those who aren't familiar with them, the unique and quirky family that comprised WUSB at the time will soon feel like old friends. I'm just so thrilled that a video archive exists of this very magical period in our history. And I'm really happy that so many of these amazing people are still involved with WUSB in one way or another.
As the grand finale of all this lost audio being released for the past few months, here's the reunion show for "The Voice of Long Island," recorded on April 13, 1990. If you recall, during my midwest tour earlier that year, I invited my former cohost Mike Yuhas to come to the station to take part in the fundraiser. Well, that was what this special episode of the program was a part of, and it turned out to be historic in many ways.
In addition to re-airings of our "Tripod Family" serial and excerpts from past shows, we had various special guests passing through the studios. But a live "crisis" began to develop as a depressed watermelon threatened to jump out of our record library window if not enough pledges were received. It seemed like everyone in the station showed up for this, even a member of the campus police!
While this is in fact the grand finale of the lost audio releases, we're not quite done yet. Tune in tomorrow for a real surprise.
The final excerpt from my trip to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in April of 1987. These were unedited promos recorded out in the cold for use on WUSB prior to airing the recorded material.
This is an episode of "On The Media" that I was a guest on at New York's WNYC, recorded on June 17, 2011. I explained what was behind Lulzsec and whether or not such hackers should be prosecuted. An interview with Bruce Schneier follows along with the rest of the episode.
An interesting and educational interview with Sharon from the public affairs department of a government office in Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, recorded in April of 1987. We learn how being a white person who's a minority can be liberating and how the Inuit culture values consensus. We also hear how the Inuit were treated differently than native Indians in the rest of Canada. Sharon tells how dog races are different here than the ones in Alaska and we learn the meaning of the words Qallunaat and Qallunaaq. She discusses the reason names are being changed and just what those names mean. We learn some details about everyday life in the region, what Apex is, and the dangers of a whiteout.
If you ever wanted to see the difference between the type of radio I do and the commercial radio scene, look no further than this episode of "The Lazlow Show," recorded on December 11, 2005 over New York's WXRK (K-ROCK), shortly before one of their format changes. There's a lot here that probably wouldn't go over well today, but, again, that was typical of commercial radio. A lot of juvenile humor and stuff that could offend - that was what the people wanted. I didn't hear a lot of what went on before I came on the show while driving into the city in my Smart car with a shitty radio, but it wouldn't have dissuaded me from showing up. These were good guys who were a lot smarter than commercial radio made them sound; Lazlow alone had been invaluable in various hacker and radio causes. This was a challenge that involved being on completely alien turf and seeing a world I easily could have found myself a part of.
It would be a full 103 minutes before I showed up in the studio and once I did, we launched into various tales of hacking and battles with corporate America, along with explaining what 2600 meetings were all about and detailing my arrest during the Republican National Convention the previous year. All in all, it was great fun to see this other world of radio.
On October 24, 1997, I was interviewed on The Rocky Allen Showgram on New York's WPLJ concerning the infamous subway sign hack. This was nothing more than someone reprogramming a sign on an escalator that said "Have a Nice Day" to read "2600: The Hacker Quarterly" instead. It had nothing whatsoever to do with hacking a computer network or the subway system. But it somehow fell into the news cycle and virtually every television and radio station in the city had something to say about it. At least these guys gave me the chance to put it into perspective.
This is a brief but memorable interview with former Big Audio Dynamite member Don Letts on Lister Hewan-Lowe's "Saturday's a Party" reggae program on WUSB that I set up sometime in the spring of 1991. Don was about to release an album from his new group called Screaming Target. There's a little bit of chaos which Lister is somehow consistently able to make work. Don discusses why he had to leave B.A.D. and how the new band is working out so far and gets into a political philosophy back-and-forth with Lister, which is always entertaining. Don was most gracious as always, even when we played the wrong song. To this day, I still listen to that Screaming Target album.
"The Technofile" hosted by Lazlow was a neat little feature that aired on stations around the country. There are two episodes here. In the first one, I do my best to explain the Bernie S. story in the few seconds I'm given. This was recorded sometime in 1995. In a 1997 show, I explain what 2600 is all about, again in a really brief amount of time.
This is an interview I did with Gil Gross on the CBS radio network sometime in 1996. We discuss issues of hacking, where responsibility for security really lies, how the Clinton administration is trying to demonize hackers while outlawing encryption, and why using the Internet for sensitive information isn't always a wise move. More of the show follows.
Here's a little mini-feature on the telephone system found in Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in April of 1987. We hear the sounds of the mechanical step-by-step switch and learn a bit about the new DMS-10 being implemented. Among other things, we learn that the nearest operators are in Montreal while directory assistance is just down the hall.
This is another in a series of interviews with WUSB people as part of the station's tenth anniversary, recorded in March of 1987. This unedited interview with WUSB's David Durst focuses on the "Business Digest" feature he used to do at the station and his current job as a commodities trader, while also sharing thoughts on Stony Brook. We reminisce about the time we saw The Clash in Asbury Park and did an interview with their manager Kosmo Vinyl (a recording of which people have been trying to track down for years).
This is an episode of "Heat" with John Hockenberry that aired in August 1990 over WHAD in Milwaukee and other public radio stations. In it, I'm interviewed along with hacker Joey, lawyer Sheldon Zenner, and prosecutor Gail Thackeray. The main topic was the aftermath of Operation Sun Devil, the widespread clampdown by authorities that resulted in numerous raids and accusations of rights violations. It also helped inspire the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More of the show follows.
This is a promotional recording that I got from the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation during my visit to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in April of 1987. The threat of mass media and also its promise to the native people of the north is outlined pretty well here.
One of the highest honors I can recall is having bits of 2600 read on "Over the Edge," the radio show that members of Negativland were involved in over at KPFA in Berkeley. This episode aired on June 28, 1990 and featured excerpts from the magazine that they called "2600 news," as well as excerpts from a tape some of us had made called "Eat Chicken and Die," portions of which have aired on WUSB and WBAI. This particular episode was entitled "Over the Phone" and it went well beyond our contributions. They had a ton of great sound and they also had this magical ability to connect with their audience, who never missed a beat when calling in to add their input. This is what radio should be all about.
Not only was this one of the best interviews I've ever been a part of, but it was also a super positive and uplifting experience. It was September 5, 1989 and I had just traveled overseas for the very first time in my life, spending six weeks going to England, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, and even East Germany. On the last leg, where I had returned to England as the last stop before flying home, I thought I'd check in on Big Audio Dynamite and see what the band had been up to since the world hadn't heard much from them recently. As it turned out, they had just released a brand new record and I was lucky enough to be able to get an interview with them at their studio.
I've done lots of interviews, but talking to these guys was always just like having a really good conversation - particularly with Don Letts, who I know wanted to talk primarily about the music but somehow I kept steering the conversation back to world affairs or injustice or something else that he had a lot to say about. They were all highly intelligent and engaged in relevant things, which somehow made the music so much more interesting. And yet they also carried this endearing innocence in their observations and creative expression. They couldn't have been nicer or more accommodating which, combined with the release of what I still think was their best album ("Megatop Phoenix"), really helped make this a magical moment.
I apologize for the poor sound quality in some parts - fortunately not the majority. Some of this interview was used in a WBAI special program, aired on September 28, 1989 and available in our archives.
Here's an episode of a show called "Whad-Ya-Know" from February 10, 1990 that I appeared on along with my former "Voice of Long Island" cohost Mike Yuhas. This all took place during my midwest tour that brought me to Wisconsin. I don't know how Mike arranged it, but he was called upon to read disclaimers 33 minutes into the show and I was chosen at the 114 minute mark to throw a dart at a map that wound up selecting Lebanon, Oregon as the town of the week for the next episode of the program. What's also funny about this is that the station I recorded this off of (WHAD in Milwaukee) has the same first four letters as the name of the show. Synchronicity.
This is definitely one of the more interesting interviews I did during my trip to Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit) on Baffin Island in the Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) in April 1987. I spoke with Paulaoosia Kilabuk, a native hunter from the region, who explained how hunting was a part of his life and why money was needed for this tradition to continue. He really gave a different perspective to the controversy that was raging concerning the brutality of the harp seal hunt.
My midwest tour came to an end with this segment. After airing some Canadian border radio announcements, I visited my former "Voice of Long Island" cohost Mike Yuhas in Wisconsin to record a promo officially inviting him to participate in the upcoming Radiothon fundraiser for WUSB. You can hear all of the takes it took for us to get that right. (I didn't realize at the time that Mike was lowering his voice an octave for each attempt!) After that, you can hear me starting my drive back to Long Island from Chicago, possibly on no sleep at all the night before. You'll hear my condition deteriorating gradually as I travel from state to state, always stopping to pick up an out-of-town edition of TV Guide whenever possible.
You may have heard several allusions to disturbing events in St. Louis that eventually led to my canceling that part of the trip. This was a reference to the hacker raids that were currently taking place in that area and in other parts of the country where there were serious violations of rights, leading to lawsuits and the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Much of this is covered in my various WBAI shows of 1990, available in our archives.)
One other item of note concerning this trip: despite my being completely worn out after driving all the way back from Chicago, I tuned into WUSB as I got closer to home and heard that there was nobody in the studio to do a show. So I actually stopped in at the station for a couple of hours to do a fill-in! If a recording of that existed, it would no doubt be a classic.
To close out all the Shoreham nuclear power plant coverage, this is the final edited (and super short) piece I produced for Pacifica on the demonstration and civil disobedience of June 5, 1983, which aired the following day. This was probably the first time I had ever had something broadcast over WBAI.
This is unedited footage from the anti-Shoreham nuclear power plant demonstration that took place on Sunday, June 5, 1983. I did a short interview with Long Island Lighting Company spokesperson Jan Hickman. The turnout was less than expected but that didn't dampen the spirit of the protesters. They were quite open with what they were planning and what motivated them. I had a great interview with Kevin Duggan of the Critical Marks affinity group and got some comments from people in the Narcoleptic affinity group. There was singing, discussion amongst the demonstrators, and an announcement from LILCO. After a final warning from the cops, the arrests began. I was particularly struck by the level of courteousness between the protesters and the police. And, of course, in the end the protesters won. Shoreham never came online.
The "unprecedented access" to the Shoreham nuclear plant we alluded to didn't stop at a mere press conference. We managed to get a tour of the whole plant! I had actually gotten arrested in 1979 (four years ago to the day!) at a previous demonstration against this very plant and now here I was, on June 3, 1983, inside it being shown around with a bunch of other reporters. Isn't life strange?
There's so much to digest here and probably a whole lot of sound that others will understand far better than me. I learned that floors in the plant were measured in elevation levels rather than floor numbers and that the construction workers at the plant really liked to write graffiti on the walls. At one point, you'll hear me trying to social engineer the guide into explaining exactly how the emergency evacuation sirens were activated. You'll also hear the guide's theory on cigarettes and why fish like nuclear plants.
As part of WUSB's continuing coverage of the Shoreham nuclear power plant's troubled history and the efforts of the community to keep it from opening, we were able to get unprecedented access. On the eve of yet another anti-Shoreham demonstration on June 3, 1983, we invited ourselves as members of the media to attend a press conference inside the plant itself! We heard from Long Island Lighting Company spokesperson Jan Hickman, as well as chief operating officer Jack Notaro, associate director of information Darrell Lankford, and members of the Suffolk County Police Department. We also learned of a union protest that was taking place, just to make the events of the next couple of days a bit more entertaining. This is a great look at the other side of these actions and how people in authority plan for them.
Here's a fun assignment I went on for "The Voice of Long Island" with friend of WUSB David Ruderman on January 7, 1982. There was a bit of a scandal in the Town of Islip in a community called West Sayville where a resident was having her garbage rejected for not following the rules. So we drove down there to see the garbage for ourselves - and we were able to make some corrections to the story that had run in Newsday. No Pulitzer, but it was still worth it. (An edited version of this piece appeared on the January 9, 1982 edition of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.
In the third part of my February 1990 midwest tour, we hear some interesting Canadian radio, including a time check and an update on the language controversy in Sault Ste. Marie, a place I was heading to after a stop in Sudbury. Then from a hotel room, I made an infamous telephone call to Radio Tirana in Albania. The reason this was such a big deal was because at the time it was completely impossible to make such a call in the United States, even with operator assistance. All of Albania was on some kind of a blacklist. However, it was possible in Canada and so I jumped at the opportunity. You'll hear the most patient operator in the world, as she stops at nothing to get me connected, first to the right country and then to the right party. In the end, I actually made contact with someone at Radio Tirana who managed to send me something in the mail just over a month later. (Much of that call can be heard on the February 24, 1990 edition of "Brain Damage," available in our archives.)
The final episode of "Transmitter Test," the Tuesday evening show that aired from 6 to 7pm and never quite found its niche. The actual reason it was canceled was due to the fact that my other radio show ("Off The Hook") over on WBAI had been rescheduled for Tuesday nights, making it impossible to continue doing this one. (Ironically, this very slot would be inherited by "Off The Wall" in 2003.) This episode aired on September 26, 1995 and included former program director Christina, who had also been in attendance for the last episode of "Brain Damage" that aired earlier in the year. Everyone was fixated on the O.J. Simpson trial which was reaching its end. We talked about an upcoming WUSB garage sale, radioactive dishes, and what exactly a bulk eraser was. We got a call from WUSB's Scott Warmuth, who was at a commercial radio station and we questioned Michael (the current program director) on when certain shows were on. I rewound an entire edition of "Pacifica News" on the air and wondered if that might have been the only time such a thing had ever been done. We discussed some of the new shows on television and I put forth the argument that "Babylon 5" was the best program out there. We held out for one last call (and got one from WUSB's Steve Kreitzer) and said our final goodbyes.
Another feature from Baffin Island in April 1987 where I decided to climb a very big hill one evening after Toonik Tyme festivities in Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit). There's a lot of stream of consciousness here and even some back announcing of tracks which we may or may not have ever used on the air. We end the piece with the sound of sled dogs howling in the distance.
On April 30, 1986 at 8:30pm, we aired a special on the crisis at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This was one of those moments when WUSB was at its finest, presenting late breaking news with our own unique perspective. We used a variety of news sources, including shortwave, to try and get the truth out. I did live interviews with Stony Brook professor Les Paldy and Nora Bredes of the Shoreham Opponents Coalition, who theorized as to what this sort of accident could mean for the world. We played some Radio Moscow material and noted how they didn't even mention the accident for the first 24 hours after it happened. We took listener phone calls, including one from Stony Brook professor Ted Goldfarb, and discussed what such an accident on Long Island might be like.
In the second and last part of WUSB's visit to the mysterious Fisher's Island on April 9, 1983, the four of us (myself, WUSB chief engineer Frank Burgert, and friends of WUSB David Ruderman and Alan Belitsky) explored the streets and described the scene around us. We found several girls who were inside some kind of a store with no customers and talked with them for a while (apologies for the truly awful audio quality here). We learned what it was like to grow up in a remote place like this and discovered that Robert Redford had a house on the island. We walked along a rocky beach for a while and discovered what appeared to be an old munitions bunker. We all got really excited thinking we might have seen an eagle (although it's more likely to have been an osprey). After reading some interesting graffiti, we were able to get a ride back to the ferry, where we had time to play with a Fisher's Island payphone before boarding. On the ferry back to Orient Point from New London, Connecticut, I reminisced about the first time I had ever heard of Fisher's Island and also expressed some curiosity about some other islands we discovered that existed off the coast of Fisher's Island: the Dumpling Islands. Maybe next time. (Much of this material aired on the last recorded regular episode of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.)
In the second part of my midwest tour in February 1990, I headed from Syracuse to Buffalo, where I visited with a couple of friends, including WUSB's Mary Anne Devine, who I convinced to come back to Long Island for the radio station's upcoming fundraiser. Afterwards, I crossed over into Canada (recording the entire border crossing which took all of a few seconds). In a radio first, after getting gas, I recorded an entire car wash. I was on my way to Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, the latter being currently embroiled in a language controversy. Some local radio discussing this is included.
On July 5, 1990, I was extraordinarily fortunate to not only see Negativland at The Knitting Factory in New York City, but to interview a number of their members after the show. It was more of an ongoing conversation than an interview, with Mark Hosler dancing around the room with various noisemakers. You simply could not get more Negativland than this. We talked about all kinds of things from why there's no "e" in Negativland" to the fake press release the band issued and how their record company handled that. We discussed the various talents and quirks of members of the band (how Don collects audio and Weatherman never tours) and shared stories about radio, which it turned out we all had a great passion for. In fact, members of Negativland had been involved for years with a show called "Over the Edge" on KPFA in Berkeley, California. I filled them in on some of what the hacker world was up to and we theorized about where "Twin Peaks" was after its first season. We literally talked until the venue threw us all out. One of the best interviews I've been a part of and some of the most interesting people I'd ever met.
This is a highly entertaining showdown that took place on a Bridgeport, Connecticut radio station. While doing an early episode of "Brain Damage" on WUSB, one of our listeners decided to start a fight between myself and another talk show host on a commercial station. I don't know how it all got started, but I do remember being challenged to insult the city of Bridgeport, something I was more than happy to do. The next thing I knew, I was facing off against WICC-AM talk show host Dave Feda trying to make things as bad as I possibly could. This was all broadcast on his show on September 21, 1988 and talked about on both stations for some time afterwards. He had a great sense of humor, not to mention a ton of loyal listeners who immediately hated my guts. This was probably the only time I'd ever done something like this, but it was great fun, and I learned that I had a real knack for turning audiences against me in short order.
In this second-to-last edition of "Transmitter Test," broadcast on September 19, 1995, Scott Warmuth was in the studio sharing some radio jingles he got his hands on. Things got a little contentious when a listener known as Mr. Radio called in and Scott accused him of selling WUSB tapes. We spent a good deal of time reminiscing about the old days on the radio station, discussing a pirate station known as WJQR in New Jersey, and we came to a realization about one of the shortfalls of WUSB's new signal.
Here are several miscellaneous WUSB items. First, a promo for my "News of the World" program from 1987 before it was assigned a timeslot. Then, the famous WUSB Sea Shanty ID, one of the first that was aired when the station went FM in 1977 (created by WUSB's Mike Girardo and the WUSB Chorus). Finally, a promo for a rebroadcast in 2006 of the radio play I wrote back in 1985 about a meltdown at a local nuclear power plant: "Shadow Over Long Island" (available in our archives).
Here's another feature that came about as a result of the 2600 expose on the phone company's touch tone fee, basically a fee they charged for absolutely nothing. This aired on New York's WMCA-AM as part of the Keeve Berman early morning show on June 30, 1987. Some of Paul W. Smith's morning show follows.
On Saturday, April 9, 1983, I took a unique trip to a place called Fisher's Island. I was accompanied by WUSB chief engineer Frank Burgert along with friends of WUSB David Ruderman and Alan Belitsky. Fisher's Island is a very strange part of Long Island in that you can only get there by going to Connecticut first. While it was in Long Island's 516 area code, it had a Connecticut zip code and was actually much closer to that state. I had discovered it by accident once while exploring phone exchanges and finding one that sounded really far away even though it was in the same area code. We documented the entire trip, starting with our missing the Orient Point ferry that would have gotten us to the Fisher's Island ferry in time. Overcoming such hurdles made the trip more interesting. We eventually made it and began exploring this tiny, isolated island. We had seen newspaper articles about a new bowling alley that had just opened up, so that was our first destination upon arrival. We were fascinated by the fact that someone on the island was named William Faulkner and wondered if he could be the person right in front of us at the bowling alley. We later found out that it indeed was. (Much of this material aired on the last recorded regular episode of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.)
Here's another aircheck, this one from my Tuesday evening show on March 23, 1982. You'll hear a reference to "Long Island Bandstand," a program featuring new local musicians that I co-produced with WUSB's Arnie Pritchett in my first years at the station. This evening was particularly interesting because it featured an interview with WUSB news director Barry Ragin who was covering an anti-Reagan demonstration in New York City. WUSB's Dave Goodman joins the conversation midway through.
When I decided to visit Baffin Island in April of 1987, Frank Pearce was the guy who helped me arrange the whole thing. He was the general manager of the Baffin Island Tourist Association and was also a big part of the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce. In this interview, he discusses why tourism is important to the area and gives a good explanation on how the 13 communities throughout the massive region are set up. It was really interesting to learn that the people in Yellowknife (the capital of the Northwest Territories) were considered "southerners" and basically out of touch with how things worked in the far north. We discussed the controversial seal hunt that was making headlines everywhere - and how people from outside this part of the world might not be getting the full story. Frank went out of his way to connect me with interesting people in Frobisher Bay (now called Iqaluit) and allowed me to see it for the unique place it was.
This is a news item that aired on Long Island's WGSM-AM on June 10, 1987 concerning a controversy I was involved in with New York Telephone. We at 2600 had started a campaign to abolish the touch-tone fee since it was basically a fee for nothing. (The tone was generated by the customer; all the phone company had to do was not ignore it. Instead they were charging a fee to accept it.) This feature was part of the Bruce Herbert afternoon show. The piece on the 2600 campaign airs at around 24 minutes in. (WUSB alumnus Doug Bell appears in an unrelated story at around 21 minutes in.)
Another episode of "Transmitter Test," which aired on September 12, 1995. This week, I finally reveal the true purpose of the show and welcome Brother Nick back onto the program after his "suspension" for what happened the last time he was on. I then proceed to accidentally read an angry letter from station management and participate in other station gossip. We were still getting used to our expanded signal range from the new transmitter site.
Here's a bit of fun some members of the WUSB news department put together one day in 1982: "Reagan Sleeps Tonight" sung to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." This was produced by WUSB's Barry Ragin and Dave Goodman.
This is part of an episode of "World of Radio" with Glenn Hauser, as aired on WPKN-FM in Februrary 1987. This particular episode was significant to me because it mentioned my "News of the World" series that had just started airing on WUSB. To be acknowledged on this program was a tremendous honor, as it was the gold standard of anything having to do with shortwave or ham radio at the time. (Some extra WPKN programming is included here.)
A portion of the final episode of "Planet Three," the program I had been doing for several months in the Friday night/Saturday morning midnight to 3 am slot. This aired on January 31, 1981 and the theme of the evening, which should be painfully obvious to pick up, is "goodbye." You'll hear a computerized voice repeating that throughout, along with all sorts of musical farewells. (That computerized voice came from a mysterious 800 number I had discovered, which simply answered "Hello, enter user number" and would say "goodbye" when you couldn't enter a valid one. It was highly unusual for the time and none of us were ever able to figure out what it was.) There were also a number of allusions to John Lennon, who had been killed the previous month, a particularly traumatizing occurrence for anyone involved in music at the time.
Considering not a single word was ever spoken throughout the history of this program, the whole thing must have seemed really strange to the casual listener. The show ended with an apropos excerpt from "The Wizard of Oz" and our usual spacey outro. And for the first time, the words "Planet Three" were played in a non-backwards form and an underwriting announcement that really made no sense was also shared. The announcement said that "Planet Three" was made possible through "an arrangement with Kilkenny Design Workshops, Butler House and Castle Yard." Kilkenny Design Workshops was an Irish research and development center that was found at random in a phone book, with Butler House and Castle Yard being two nearby locations. It was designed to confuse the hell out of anyone who actually looked into it.
The following week this timeslot would be taken over by the show that eventually would be named "The Voice of Long Island," all episodes of which are available in our archives.
This is an interesting interview I did with Inuit Broadcasting Corporation representative Elisapi Davidee while I was visiting Baffin Island in April of 1987. We discuss what viewer reaction to this network has been like, where IBC reaches, its history, what sorts of public affairs issues are covered, viewer response, and its future.
Here's another unedited excerpt of WUSB people trying to get a legal ID from a musical star. In this case, it was Willie Nile, who was performing on the Stony Brook campus on Friday, October 3, 1980. We spent a good deal of time searching the Union building to track him down. (At one point you'll hear me mention that I hadn't even started to work on "Planet Three" yet, that being the audio collage program I was producing at the time on Friday nights.) In the end, we got the ID and another Stony Brook concert was history.
On April 26, 1984, The Clash came to Stony Brook (in their second incarnation) and, while we couldn't get an interview, a bunch of us at WUSB got them to record an ID for us. This is only a couple of minutes long, but it captures the thrill involved when people from a college radio station interact with superstars for a brief moment. It's pretty funny how Paul Simonon just couldn't get "Stony Brook" right and Joe Strummer had serious doubts that we were "the most dangerous station in the nation." They were both super nice to us and wound up putting on a great show.
Another Tuesday evening edition of "Transmitter Test," this one recorded on September 5, 1995. Again, we admonished anyone still listening and also gave an explanation of the chaos that ensued last week. The station was now broadcasting from a new antenna site (resulting in some static in the background). WUSB's Scott and Rob joined the conversation and we discussed why the new transmitter site was called Bald Hill. Listeners were instructed not to call in and so we got phone calls. Conversation included everything from Greek salads to advertising jingles and comics.
This one is a bit weird. On the morning of April 28, 1987, I was in my hotel room in Frobisher Bay (now called Iqaluit) on Baffin Island when the phone rang. It was my Tuesday morning radio show back home on WUSB. Since I couldn't be there that week, guest host Chris Crowley called me and I did my best to describe where I had been for the past week. Thing is, this is not the recording as it went out over the air since that was never recorded. This was the recording I made on my end, so you only hear my responses to the questions being asked over the phone. And even that is incomplete because my tape recorder started malfunctioning a few minutes after I began. Definitely not the best radio moment, but a memory nonetheless.
This was the first chapter of my Midwest tour, which took place starting February 3, 1990. In the first leg, I was driving from Stony Brook to Syracuse to visit a friend. On the way, I encountered some super-hazardous icy weather. The sound quality here is really terrible, but it brings back some fun memories for me. For you, it might prove torturous.
One of my favorite series was the mysterious "Planet Three," a three-hour concoction of audio clips, music, and overall weirdness. I had inherited the Friday night/Saturday morning midnight to 3 am slot in the autumn of 1980 after another show that had occupied that slot ended. (It was called "The Better Than Dead Air Show" which was a fun program I was involved in with a couple of other people at WUSB. No recordings are known to exist.) Sadly, there are only two surviving excerpts from "Planet Three" and this is the first, broadcast on January 24, 1981, one week before the series finale. The trademark of this show was that I never spoke a word except for an ID that aired at the end and occasionally some backwards speech that revealed the name of the program.
This episode featured the sounds of Republicans as they were starting to take over the country, along with some memories from the 1960s. (One of the musical bits played here would eventually become the theme to another series called "Chatterbox," available in our archives.)
(There's even a bit where some prank calls (possibly live) were broadcast. Technically, they weren't calls since our local crossbar switch had a bug in it that occasionally allowed people to get connected together just by picking up the phone at the same time. You can hear the confusion as something like that was transpiring along with feedback that we were somehow causing.)
In early August of 1995, I did an interview with Stephen Dunifer, the founder and chief engineer of Free Radio Berkeley, an unlicensed FM radio station in Berkeley, California. He was super knowledgeable about radio and how to do it right. At the time, his station had quite a following in the Bay Area, but he was clear that he didn't want to cover a larger region. This is where I first became acquainted with the concept of low power community radio. In a few years, low power FM (LPFM) would be a legal option for new broadcasters.
I did a series of interviews with WUSB people as part of the station's tenth anniversary. This unedited interview with WUSB's Steve Kreitzer was conducted while driving in a car on the way to New York City in March of 1987. We talk about Steve's first days at the station, including his first show in December 1980, as well as the ill-fated Bob Marley concert at Stony Brook. We also reminisced about broadcasting basketball games with WUSB's Ray Stallone and an on-air prank that involving charging elephants.
Here's an aircheck from a Tuesday evening music show I did on October 27, 1981. Airchecks are generally of lower quality and only capture the part of the show that was in progress when the microphone switch was turned on. This was a pretty typical Tuesday evening show.
The second edition of "Transmitter Test" aired on August 29, 1995 and started to turn into an actual program. The show's intro incorporated voices from a number of WUSB personalities. We still were telling people not to listen for the entire hour, but we now at least were having conversations. This was the first show where I used the name Emmanuel on WUSB. This hour was spent talking with WUSB's Brother Nick "off-air" while the transmitter was being tested. Not being on the air allowed us to be more honest and I finally revealed the actual reason I stopped doing "Brain Damage."
Back in Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit) on Baffin Island in April 1987, I did an interview with the local cable TV licensee, who also had opened the first video store in the area. This was a really enlightening discussion that revealed how the programming was received, what was involved in making it all legal, and what types of stations were carried. While hearing how things used to work is really fascinating, it's even more so when people back then start to reminisce about how it used to be even earlier.
This is a news feature on 1984's Alternative Presidential Convention that was produced in March 1988 by WUSB's Dave Goodman. (This was actually left for me as an answering machine message which is why it sounds like a phone call.)
Every so often, something momentous would happen in New York City and I'd feel compelled to take the train into town with a tape recorder to cover it. On December 7, 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev made an historic trip to the city as part of a visit to the United Nations. I spent much of that afternoon trying to track him and his wife Raisa down in various parts of town, including outside the Soviet Mission. What was amazing here - and at so many other events - was how none of the other reporters on the scene really knew just what was going on. It was a fun experience overall, some of which aired on the December 10, 1988 edition of "Brain Damage" (available in our archives).
This is the last excerpt of one of my Friday afternoon shows, broadcast on November 29, 1985. Apparently there had been a show the previous week, but no known recording of that exists. In this week's Stoneyhaven news, we hear about Thanksgiving and a story from years past. In the real world, there are updates on the aftermath of Hurricane Gloria and a bunch of local items, plus an attempt to find the Coca Cola bottling company in Osaka, Japan. (The end of the call is cut off, however.)
It's the final known edition of "News of the World," this one airing over WBAI on May 18, 1989 at 1 pm, a full two years after its WUSB incarnation. I was now using Emmanuel Goldstein as my radio name and this would only be my third show on that station, following the "Off The Hook" pilot in 1988 and another edition of "News of the World" on March 13, 1989 (both of which are available in our archives).
This version of the program had a revised intro and an expanded length. As with the first episode on WBAI, this edition was done live. Unlike that broadcast, this one aired in the afternoon. An explanation of what the program was all about, along with a warning about possible controversial content and an explanation of shortwave are all included here. In this edition, we hear from Radio Austria, a a feature that was sent to us on tape from a South African program called "Mirror on Africa," United Arab Emirates Radio, and the BBC World Service.
This was tied into a WBAI fundraiser and we offered copies of the shortwave listening guide "Passport to World Band Radio" as premiums. It got an enthusiastic response.
Now here's an incredible piece of history, most of which has never been aired. On May 1st, 1987, I was lucky enough to be able to see Big Audio Dynamite at Irving Plaza in New York City. It was the day after I returned from my trip to Baffin Island so the contrast couldn't have been more dramatic. I was able to get backstage and have a brief interview with Don Letts and Dan Donovan from the band before the show. I don't know what it was, but we just clicked and were able to have some really good conversations about music, the world, life, etc. Don was particularly interested in my hacker connection and I got a great thrill seeing Mick Jones looking over a copy of 2600. I would realize over the years and during other times we hung out that these guys were so much more than a band; they were truly interesting people who had a fascinating world view and were a joy to talk to.
I was there with someone else from WUSB (whose name I completely forget and I feel awful about that) and we were able to secure legal IDs, not only from members of B.A.D., but also from Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys who happened to be backstage as well. But the way he talked to my colleague was awful and disgusting, which made that probably one of the worst IDs ever recorded by anyone. So, in a very brief period of time, we went from intelligence to idiocy. And that was the music scene.
Another forgotten series of mine was a short-lived show called "Transmitter Test," which aired at 6:00 pm on Tuesday evenings (that's right, the exact day and time that "Off The Wall" would one day occupy). It was my first show on WUSB since "Brain Damage" had come to an end that January. The first edition of this series, which aired on August 22, 1995, consisted mostly of low frequency music with occasional test messages along with other musical selections and public service announcements. The whole thing was preceded by a warning not to listen. The show was still finding its way.
This was something I had wanted to do since I was a kid and heard those Dickie Goodman "break-in" singles on the radio, you know, where a "reporter" would ask a question and the answer would come in a line from a hit song of the time. I put this one together with the help of WUSB's Bill Senikowich and Barry Aaronson right after Ronald Reagan took office in January of 1981.
This is a very short piece but a significant one. I was still a senior in high school and (as I often did) I was exploring the FM radio dial when I found a brand new station at 90.1FM. This was what was being broadcast on that day in early June 1977, a few weeks before WUSB in Stony Brook signed on as an FM station for the first time officially. Little did I know the life altering effect that place would have on me when I started attending college there several months later. (The voice on this broadcast is that of WUSB's Frank Burgert who, as of this writing, is still the station's chief engineer.)
This was a produced piece that summed up the various recordings which came from the March 1987 Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) conference in New York City. It's not clear where (or even if) this piece aired, but it was the end result of all of the recordings of this event that I had made.
Another Friday afternoon show, featuring an update on the goings-on in the fictitious community of Stoneyhaven, Long Island. On this program, aired November 15, 1985, we had a special visit from my former Voice of Long Island co-host Mike Yuhas, who joined the fun by being interviewed as a local exterminator. The issue of the week in town was an explosion of house flies, no doubt something that was based on reality. I also tried to find the Coca Cola bottling company in Brazil as part of that weekly tradition.
This was a fun little project we ran from the radio station for a little while: the WUSB weather hotline. We discovered that the new campus Rolm phone system allowed a virtually unlimited number of people to call in to a prerecorded announcement, which would repeat indefinitely. This allowed us to set up our own weather hotline where we could share all kinds of other info. This particular recording was made in June 1987, shortly before WUSB's tenth anniversary, and was clearly recorded right on the street.
This is a brief excerpt from a high school computer class in Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit) on Baffin Island, recorded in April of 1987. I realize this may be like listening to paint dry for some of you, but there are a few interesting tidbits captured here. I was introduced as a special guest and got to answer a few questions about New York and life in the "south" from kids in a remote part of the north, as well as discuss the importance of computers and the challenges of life here.
Another episode of "News of the World," and the last WUSB version of that program that we could track down. In this edition, aired on Tuesday, June 2, 1987, we hear from Radio Moscow, Armed Forces Radio and Television Network, and a feature that was sent to us on tape from a South African program called "Africa South."
There's a little bit of room noise in the background. Also, the end of the previous show and the beginning of the next one are attached to this recording.
This is an interview I did with a teacher at the elementary school in Iqaluit (still referred to as Frobisher Bay at the time) on Baffin Island in the Northwest Territories (now part of Nunavut). We talk about how computers are important in such a remote place. Like we heard in the church service segment, kids were encouraged to be themselves, so there was a lot of background noise, but everyone was involved in a project and enthused by it. You can heat the interactions between the teacher and individual students. It was amazing to see how they were quickly mastering the technology. This was recorded in April 1987.
Now this was a bit of fun at WUSB that I really had very little to do with. Radio host Gary Pecorino and others put together a periodic experimental music presentation entitled "Radio Art Noise" that would go on for five hours with all kinds of weird sounds. This is a small portion of the second one that aired on Sunday, September 8, 1991 and you can hear my voice way in the background towards the beginning while other people are talking. This is the kind of thing that noncommercial radio is all about.
A good portion of a panel discussion on college radio that took place at the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System's March 1987 conference in New York City with WUSB general manager Norm Prusslin, music critic Wayne Robins, free form radio host Vin Scelsa from WXRK (K-ROCK), and WUSB program director Steve Miller. The discussion focuses on the importance of local radio and what college radio stations shouldn't have to worry about.
A Friday afternoon show with an update from Stoneyhaven, this one recorded on November 8, 1985. I gave an update on the election results, talked about the Stoneyhaven train station and its uniqueness, and reported on a conflict with the arthritis club. Haley's Comet was in town and I tried to find the Coca Cola bottling company in Bombay.
I'm so happy to have found this because people never believe you when you say you once interviewed The Ramones. This was recorded on February 14, 1981 with myself and WUSB's Bill Senikowich. Johnny and Joey were fun to talk to, not at all stressed about the concert they were about to perform at Stony Brook. They told us what it was like to work with Phil Spector, when recording for the new album would begin, how there's a different mentality in England, and the overall slowness of progress. They even recorded some IDs for us. And, of course, when we walked them over to the gym to set up, we were completely mobbed by fans. (It was never easy to hide if you were with Joey Ramone.)
This is an aircheck from one of my first music shows that aired on Friday nights from 8 to 11pm. This one was broadcast on December 28, 1979. As it's an aircheck, it was recorded on a low quality tape machine that only turned on when the microphone was activated.
It's another edition of "News of the World" which had become a regular series that aired on Tuesday nights at 8:30pm on WUSB. This was the first show of the series which aired on January 27, 1987, six months after the original pilot. In this episode, we hear an introduction to shortwave, as well as broadcasts from Radio Deutsche Welle (including the interval signal), Radio Moscow, the BBC World Service, Radio Sofia (including the interval signal), and a feature that was sent to us on tape from a West German program called "Germany Today."
This was a bit of fun I had making a Laurie Anderson promo at WUSB with Mike Yuhas and Dave Goodman in June of 1982. That weird sound midway through, incidentally, is a bulk eraser, a scary device that could completely erase a tape with the push of a button.
Back on Baffin Island, I attended a unique church service on April 26, 1987 in Iqaluit. You hear everything from the church bells to the music to the lyrics of the psalms and the sermon in Inuktitut. What I found most remarkable was how the kids were able to just act like kids throughout, running up and down the aisles, playing, and making plenty of noise. Nobody minded or was in the least bit distracted. I'm not usually a churchgoer, but I found this really fascinating, enlightening, and pleasant.
Here is a small piece of a real bit of history. In 1984, I discovered that 209 people were running for president. I thought it would be fun to invite them all to the same place, that place being the Stony Brook campus where WUSB would broadcast whatever transpired. And so, on October 6, 1984, the Alternative Presidential Convention took place in the Stony Brook Union auditorium with more than two dozen candidates in attendance. We broadcast the whole thing for hours on that Saturday and held seminars with some of the candidates afterwards. The whole thing got a ton of media coverage from all around the world and what was particularly noteworthy was how civil everyone was, despite the huge differences between the platforms represented.
We managed to salvage excerpts totaling nearly 90 minutes from this event, which was moderated by Dave Goodman of WUSB. The candidates presented here include: William Allen Katz from San Antonio representing the Pan American Party; James Yager calling in from prison in Alabama; Bob Lamb from Carbon, Texas; former Hungarian diplomat Stephen Koczak; Grady O'Cummings from Brooklyn; Peter Swider from Michigan; Bobby Shofner from Las Vegas; Cyril E. Sagan of Pennsylvania; and Joseph W. Kelly from Texas.
It's another Friday afternoon show featuring the people of Stoneyhaven, this one from November 1, 1985. In this edition, the parallels between Halloween and Election Day were explored, focusing on the trick or treating escapades of one kid along with a particularly ugly election campaign season in the fictitious community. (The latter was probably inspired by that year's Suffolk County Legislator race between Steve Englebright and Helen Lefkowitz.)
One of my housemates bursts in later in the show and I make an attempt to find the phone number of the Coca Cola company in Madrid, causing a bit of confusion. The show had been preempted two weeks earlier, due to the airing of "Shadow Over Long Island" (available in our archives) and there was no news from Stoneyhaven the previous week due to my being in a strictly music mood.
On July 19, 1985, I appeared on the WEEI Evening Review with Rod Fritz to participate in a feature on hackers. WEEI was at 590AM in Boston. This broadcast took place right after the seizure of our computer bulletin board in New Jersey that summer and this show gave me the opportunity to try and get the word out about that. It didn't do much good, as on this very program an opinion piece by John Rodman repeated the very myths I was trying to dispel, namely that our BBS was somehow moving satellites in the sky. Also appearing on the show were computer security expert Jay BloomBecker and Dave Hackel from Arthur Andersen.
This interview with Stony Brook professor Ernest Dube, recorded in 1987, was an incredible experience. He was in the midst of a huge controversy as his tenure had been denied due to his criticism of Zionism in his Africana Studies classes. Rarely have I spoken to someone more knowledgeable and open about the topics they were involved in. I felt very small in his presence, but he was nothing but welcoming and gracious in his home in Manhattan. This guy was way ahead of his time and he had a lot of support from the student body, not that it did him much good in the end. We hear a lot of complaints about people getting "canceled" in university settings these days, but it's been going on for a long time for those who speak out against oppression or the status quo. He didn't deserve to have been treated the way he was.
I'm not certain if this was ever used for an article or a radio feature, but it's certainly worth hearing.
Here's the only surviving portion of one of my WUSB Tuesday morning shows, this episode from September 16, 1986. I really don't know how I was able to pull off this shift, as I'm most definitely not a morning person. I tried to get into the spirit though, with a whole Tuesday vibe added in. And, at least in this particular edition, I had a lot of fun trying to track down the KGB.
Back on Baffin Island, this is some local CBC Eastern Arctic radio (CFFB) in the Inuktitut language from early in the afternoon of April 24, 1987. Along with a call-in and music program, the CBC national and local news in English appears at 23 minutes in. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it strangely relaxing and couldn't stop listening when I was there. It would be incredible to get a translation of what was being talked about back then.
Here are some more highlights from the March 1987 Intercollegiate Broadcasting System conference in New York City. Included here:
Interviews with a CBS Records college radio promoter, an IRS Records college radio promoter, a member of the band Street Angel, and an excerpt from the onsite "radio station" WIBS.
An interview with composer Frank De Vol.
An interview with an unknown promoter.
An interview with an unknown FCC guy.
Fun times.
Here are some more excerpts from WUSB's first call-in show, "The Saturday Night Circus," alternately hosted by Ed Goldberg and Paul Harris.
The first excerpt, dated January 14, 1978, features my friend Al calling in to Paul Harris using a weird accent and reviewing various people who died in 1977 (both Al and Paul say "1978" instead of "1977" several times).
The second excerpt, dated January 28, 1978, was a real milestone for me, as I joined the cast of the show (at least Ed Goldberg's version) and became the official newscaster, using the name Eric G. Corley. Ed gave me the opportunity to critique my own first newscast and chief engineer Frank Burgert puts in an appearance.
In the third excerpt, dated July 1, 1978, some sort of change had been implemented by Paul Harris that resulted in my not doing newscasts during the show anymore, a fact I mentioned during a call-in segment to Ed Goldberg where I didn't seem to know how to get off the phone. There was also a rumor that the show might be canceled soon (which the date of the next excerpt indicates didn't happen).
The final excerpt aired sometime in December of 1978 with Paul Harris calling in to Ed Goldberg from the WUSB holiday party where "Blind Lemon Jefferson" and the entire staff sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
In this Friday afternoon slot, aired on October 11, 1985, the news from Stoneyhaven focuses on one resident's ill-fated drive that resulted in his car breaking down on the approach to the Verrazzano Bridge. (This is based on a true story that had recently happened to me while I was attempting to visit my former "Voice of Long Island" co-host Mike Yuhas in Philadelphia.)
Only around a half hour of this week's show was recorded. Also, at the beginning you'll hear a promo for the radio play "Shadow Over Long Island" (available in our archives).
So after that disastrous newscast at the end of 1977, I decided to actually come back. I could only get better, after all. (I also modified my name from E.G. Corley to Eric G. Corley.) All three of these newscasts came on the heels of massive snowstorms. (You'll also hear a few seconds of another undated newscast at the very beginning.) But it was the second broadcast that was particularly momentous due to late breaking news of a fire in the Union building where the radio station was housed. We put together a live update and taped an interview with a student government staffperson, while exposing the fact that there weren't any fire extinguishers in the building other than in the radio station. And then we went on to focus on power failures on Long Island caused by the storm, interviewing Long Island Lighting Company spokesperson Jan Hickman, just like a professional radio station would! That newscast was a pivotal moment for me because it was the complete opposite of the previous year's disaster and it proved that in radio you could always have another chance.
Other newscasters featured here are Howard Altman and Frank Burgert.
In order, the newscasts presented here are:
January 18, 1978 (early evening)
January 20, 1978 (special report)
February 8, 1978 (early evening)
In 1988, on a Wednesday morning at midnight, WUSB broadcast something known as the Negativland Teletour. I had absolutely nothing to do with this other than enthusiastically supporting its broadcast. The band would put together a unique program for each noncommercial station that called them. You'll hear a sound check with WUSB's Chris Crowley before material from luminaries like The Weatherman (along with a legal ID) and Crosley Bendix, including a negative review of the radio dial in northern California, "Nesbitt's Lime Soda," and "The Playboy Channel." Some WUSB programming follows, including a "Brain Damage" promo!
"News of the World" was a series I put together as a celebration of shortwave radio and the many different voices that could be heard over that medium. This was the pilot episode, aired on Tuesday, July 22, 1986, and it features broadcasts from Kol Israel, Radio Prague (including the interval signal and famed broadcaster Hana), Radio Moscow (including the interval signal), and the Voice of Free China in Taiwan. (While this episode aired on WUSB, there were others that aired on WBAI. One of them is already in our "Off The Hook" archives for March 13, 1989, which was my second program on that station.)
This was a terrific WUSB custom in our early days. Various staffers would put together clips from songs and other releases, both old and new, and challenge listeners to name as many as they could. This would be timed to coincide with our anniversary on June 27th. This was one of the classics, released in 1981. See how many clips you can name!
The second "Day of Outrage" took place on January 21, 1988 in Brooklyn. It was basically a crowd of protesters marching through the streets trying to disrupt subway service and making their presence known. Fighting back against racist attacks and closing crackhouses were a couple of the main reasons for the protest. My narration of the march's progress gives you a sense of the day. You might notice my voice getting somewhat sped up towards the end as my battery ran low (causing the recording speed to slow down and sound faster when played back at a normal speed). And while I'm in a bodega buying new batteries, you can hear a TV set playing back a live report from the very same demonstration! You can't get more New York than that. (Excerpts of this recording were aired on the January 30, 1988 edition of "Brain Damage," available in our archives.)
We're back in the soon-to-be-renamed Frobisher Bay in what was then the Northwest Territories. When I visited that remarkable place, I was determined to capture as much as possible. So I recorded their local radio station (CFFB), part of the CBC Eastern Arctic service. What I stumbled upon late in the afternoon of April 24, 1987 is a perfect example of the value of local radio as a host named Curt Petrovich encouraged listeners to call in and do raven calls live on the air. The response was incredible as people - not only in this small city but in tiny communities all over northern Canada - seemed eager to show off their wildlife imitation skills. I only wish I had been able to record more of it. Also included are news and sports updates, as well as a local blizzard warning.
It's another Friday afternoon show, this one from October 4, 1985, two weeks after the last one. (Hurricane Gloria had hit the previous Friday, making a show on that date impossible.) Both the actual show for the Long Island area and this week's Stoneyhaven story are focused on the aftermath of the historic hurricane.
(An interesting sidenote: the radio drama "Shadow Over Long Island" (available in our archives) had originally been scheduled for a repeat airing on this date after debuting the previous Sunday on both WUSB and WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Since airing a mock radio drama about a local nuclear meltdown immediately after a hurricane had hit the area seemed a tad irresponsible, we delayed everything by two weeks, which opened up this timeslot.)
OK, prepare for some fun. These are my actual first times on the air as a staffperson, using the absurdly pretentious name of E.G. Corley. These newscasts all aired in December of 1977. They're either evening (5:42pm) or late night (11pm) casts. The evening ones tended to be taken more seriously. Late at night there was less supervision. On the 12/9 broadcast, you could tell I was trying not to laugh. The 12/15 news report gives the wrong date at the beginning, which was super confusing for us trying to get it right in the present. But the biggest catastrophe came on the last newscast of the year, when a story about the late Guy Lombardo proved to be too much. After that disaster, it didn't seem like there was much of a future in radio for me.
Other newscasters featured here are Howard Altman, Keith Namm, and Bob Benuhan.
In order, the newscasts presented here are:
December 2, 1977 (late night)
December 9, 1977 (late night)
December 14, 1977 (evening)
December 15, 1977 (evening)
December 16, 1977 (late night)
December 23, 1977 (late night)
December 28, 1977 (evening)
December 30, 1977 (late night)
In the autumn of 1986, I visited my friend Gregg at Clemson University in South Carolina and we recorded a bit that involved us sneaking around to get a glimpse of the revered Clemson football team. Supposedly even trying to watch them practice could get you into a heap of trouble so we couldn't resist. Bits of this were aired on my Tuesday morning show.
This is an unedited report from November 5, 1985 on Election Day, as County Legislator Steve Englebright is reelected. Multiple takes as we tally the early returns in the race pitting Englebright against challenger Helen Lefkowitz, a race particularly marked by mudslinging. In an interview with Englebright, he gives his thoughts on the campaign, compares this night to the election returns of two years ago, and tells us what to look forward to in the next two years. He discusses the fight to keep the Shoreham nuclear plant from opening and the continuing challenge to protect the pine barrens and drinking water. We hear about what has been accomplished since 1983 and learn what the Ratepayers Against LILCO line is and what it stands for. This segment ends with a victory speech by Englebright.
We're back on Baffin Island in April 1987 interviewing a fascinating guy named Ron Mongeau about how Macintoshes were brought into this remote region and how they lent themselves to the Inuit culture. Ron was executive director of the Baffin Regional Council and he was really enthused about how people were skipping over the typewriter phase and going straight to computers. We learn what a syllabic language is, how Inuktitut fonts were developed, and what was involved in bringing computers into the region, as well as what the Inet 2000 system is and the creation of the first BBS.
Back in 1979, a year before he was tragically taken from us, John Lennon was the focus of a special program hosted by myself and Gary Pecorino. This is one of my earlier non-news on-air endeavors and it aired at midnight. Apart from playing and analyzing the music, we read some excerpts from Lennon's writings, played bits of the Beatles Christmas records, and showed how a witty conversation confused an ambassador. (There are a few audio issues.)
In 2007, we put together a bunch of features to celebrate the 30th anniversary of WUSB. This is the only surviving one, and it features an excerpt from an edition of "The Voice of Long Island" where pandemonium broke out over the air. (The full show is in our archives.)
Oh yes, the Friday afternoon shows. I thought these had all been destroyed. This was the period in 1985 where I was into telling stories on the air about a fictitious town in the area and its assorted citizens. Nobody else was doing anything like that, right?
Stoneyhaven came about through the old Tripod Family serial that aired on the Voice of Long Island back in the 1980s. I expanded that world a bit and came up with a new story each week. On this first edition, aired on September 20, 1985, the subject matter included the start of school and the local newspaper. A good bit of the rest of the show is also included here.
Each year (and to this day) the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System has a conference in New York City. These are some excerpts from March 1987, including: a brief interview with free form radio legend Vin Scelsa, who at the time was working for New York's K-ROCK under his own terms; a WUSB 10th anniversary ID by music critic Wayne Robbins; and a brief interview with IBS conference coordinator Jeff Tellis, who discusses some of the history behind this event.
The first of a bunch of features from Baffin Island, a place I decided to go in April of 1987 when I became curious about what happened if you just kept driving north. It turns out you'd never get to Baffin Island since it was so far north you could only get there by plane. What I found was an incredible community in a place called Frobisher Bay (in the process of being renamed to Iqaluit to reflect its Inuit culture). I arrived just in time for an annual festival called Toonik Tyme, a brief recording of which is contained here.
This is an unedited report from Tuesday, November 8, 1983 on Election Day, as newly elected County Legislator Steve Englebright is interviewed. Topics include the future of the Shoreham nuclear power plant, the southwest sewer district, property taxes, what to do about LILCO, and how Ferdinand Giese failed as the previous legislator for the area.
On Monday, June 27, 1977, WUSB officially went on the air at 90.1FM. (The station had existed as a carrier current outlet at 820AM for a number of years prior.) This is the first half hour of that momentous broadcast day. Station Manager Norm Prusslin introduces the station. Also appearing are Dr. John S. Toll, president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook; Ishai Bloch, president of the Student Polity Association at Stony Brook; and Richard Koch, program manager of WUSB. Controversies come up almost immediately, as well as a preview of what to look forward to. After some closing words from Norm, the official sign-on takes place, followed by a WUSB news promo and the "WUSB 5:42 News" with Paul Harris, Frank Burgert, and Dave Fink. Some of the news stories of the day include a vote to strike against the Long Island Railroad Saturday, protests against Caroline Kennedy getting a job at the New York Daily News, the fight for decriminalization of marijuana, and the future of "Star Wars" on television. An anti nuclear power Friends of the Earth PSA was also part of this broadcast, along with a sports report, a Chuck Mangione legal ID, and the beginning of the "WUSB Concert Series."
In March of 1984, I was involved in the first year of 2600. I was also in the thick of a major hacking case involving a company called GTE Telenet. The FBI had raided WUSB and my friend's house because those were the two locations that I was connecting from (I had yet to have my own computer). After months of limbo, I was getting impatient and wanted the case to move forward. So after determining that half a year after the raids (October 1983), there had been no effort to improve security (the default password remained "A"), a friend and I visited Robert Krulwich over at National Public Radio to share the story with him. These "Morning Edition" pieces were the result. And shortly after they aired, I got the indictment I was pushing for.
While the practice newscast we posted two days ago was my first attempt to be a radio staffperson, it wasn't the first time I tried to be on the air. That distinction belongs to a beloved call-in show that aired in the early days of WUSB called "The Saturday Night Circus." It was alternately hosted by Ed Goldberg and Paul Harris. My friends and I would spend the night trying to get on the air and do something memorable or funny.
In the first excerpt (an Ed Goldberg episode dated October 15, 1977), my friend Al is doing a pretty good job talking about the recently argued Bakke case on affirmative action (the topic of the night), but, as was often the case, the call had ulterior motives and soon took a turn. Following that was my first-ever attempt, where I called myself "Star God" (seriously, WHAT was I thinking), went nowhere, but my second call was actually on topic. However, I was in the same house as my friend Al who had other plans and a phone extension. There are a bunch more calls included here.
The second excerpt is a Paul Harris episode dated October 22, 1977. His shows had a very different flavor and he tolerated less nonsense, as I was about to prove. My friend Al had an amazing conversation about Lenin, Stalin, Marx, and the Bolsheviks as parallels to The Beatles while I made a ridiculous argument about how driving faster was a great way to save gas (based on an actual argument a kid in one of my classes had made). I didn't make it very far.
Over the years, we've recorded all sorts of monumental events and talked to people from everywhere. Most of the time none of this makes it to air. On June 12, 1982, there was a huge march and rally against nuclear arms in New York City. My friend Sue wound up talking to a ton of people, far more than I had patience for. This is a nice sampling of the people in attendance.
Well, everything has to start somewhere, and this happens to be the very first recording of me attempting to be a member of the staff at WUSB. The assignment was to record a practice newscast at home. So here, I gave myself the on-air name of E.G. Corley (what was I thinking) and read the sports for October 23, 1977. And somehow it wasn't bad enough to get asked to leave.
