Radio

The radio was everything to me growing up. In that weird space between being a little kid listening to Disney records on a red, white, and blue Fisher Price record player to stacks of heavy metal cassettes being blasted through a GE boom box, the radio was my main source of musical nourishment. I was still a little too young to be buying music, but not too young to appreciate a great radio pop song.

My older brother is 6 years older than me, so when I was 8 or 9 and digging on Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel The Noise” my older brother was buying up the cassettes and listening constantly on his Sony Walkman. It was a Christmas gift, and it was one of the high end ones at the time. It had two headphone jacks, so I’d go in his bedroom and we’d play paper football and be listening to Priest’s Defenders of the Faith or ZZ Top’s Eliminator as he beat me time after time at that ridiculous game.

And my parents had a rule that if one of us had an album, then they wouldn’t buy the same one for the other. They assumed we’d share, and that just never sat right with me. There’s something very personal about owning an album, and having to treat it as community property just felt wrong to me. I think it felt wrong to my brother as well since he was always listening to whatever album I wanted to borrow.

Such is life.

So until I could start banking my lunch money and saving it for the $7.99 price for whatever cassette I wanted, the radio was my main music source. And when I got that GE boom box during Christmas 1983 – along with a pack of blank Maxell 90 min cassette tapes – I would sit every Sunday morning listening to the top 40 countdown dubbing what songs I wanted so I could revisit them whenever I wanted to. And while Casey Kasem and Rick Dees weren’t broadcasting live and talking to me directly, the local DJs were. The top 5 at 5 on 97.3 WMEE out of Fort Wayne always had maybe one or two songs I’d like. There was something comforting about the idea of knowing there was a real person talking through the radio speakers, even if it was just giving us a top of the hour weather report. You didn’t feel quite so alone even if you were the only one in the house or the car.

I had this little Nestle Crunch Bar transistor radio my grandpa gave me when I was maybe 7. He was a salesman for Nestle for many years. He’d go to grocery stores and get their latest candy in the candy aisle and would schmooze with the store managers. He was a very good schmoozer. He also had a closet in the basement of their lake house that was FILLED with Nestle candy. I’d fill my stomach to capacity with O Henrys, Alpine White Crunch Bars, and Goobers whenever my mom and I went over in the summer to hang out on the pontoon with my grandma. For a pre-teen this was the optimal situation.

Anyways, my grandpa had these little Nestle Crunch transistor radios he gave out to stores as a promotional item and gave me one. This was my go to radio for checking in with our local radio station, 107.3 WRSW, for school weather delays. Fog delay, snow delays, and snow cancellations were any red-blooded American kids dream scenario. If I knew we were supposed to be getting lots of snow I’d have that little transistor right next to my bed so I could check it right at 6am, as that’s the earliest they would call delays and cancellations. Of course I’d look out the bedroom window just to make sure there was snow coming down.

And even though I was not a fan of sports I have very fond memories of my dad out in the garage with his transistor radio listening to White Sox games, while washing the cars and drinking some beers. And I can remember him listening to the Indy 500 Memorial Day weekends as well. There was just something about hearing the announcers in conversation as the big event was happening that made a space feel warmer and fuller.

Those days are gone. We still have radio stations, but most of the FM/pop radio stations are run by computers or are satellite feeds altogether. One of our “local” stations was nothing more than some broadcast out of Texas with super generic DJs talking about nothing that pertained to us locally. There are some “rock” stations with real, local DJs but the ones I used to be able to get in don’t really come in anymore because they’ve knocked their wattage down so much. I mainly listen to public radio because I feel it’s the last bastion of real American radio. And thanks to everyone going digital you can’t even enjoy a station with a bit of static in it. The radio waves don’t work that way anymore.

Yeah, there’s satellite radio with a million different stations but it’s not the same. Just like comparing a local cable access channel in the 70s that could do whatever they wanted(within reason) to a cable channel. The soul of the whole thing is gone. There’s no connection to me personally. The weird quirks and cheap particle board desks of the local anchors are gone. In their place is a broadcast for everyone, same bland recipe that the masses have to enjoy in continuity. No more local creature feature shows on Friday nights, or guys dressed as clowns showing cartoons and having local kids come to the studio to watch live on air. Media is now one size fits all, leaving the contours of the individual to wither and disappear.

So on your way home from work today, turn off the Bluetooth or CD(if you’re like me and still listen to them) and turn on your car radio. Search through the static and vacant call letters until a voice pops out from the void. Doesn’t matter what it is, but just hover with it for a minute. In that moment there’s another person out there, talking just to you. Feel that connection. Then turn it off. That’s how it used to be.