Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide. In fall, 1967, Arlo Guthrie released “Alice’s Restaurant,” unintentionally launching a Thanksgiving radio tradition that persists more than 50 years later. The Thanksgiving-themed 18+ minute story-song is beloved by folkies and classic rock fans who continue to search the radio dial for […]
Last week – coincident with the original Walkman’s 40th birthday – I saw all these articles reporting on this supposedly “world’s first” Bluetooth enabled portable Walkman-style cassette player/recorder, named IT’S OK (yes, the brand is in all caps). Reactions to this Kickstarter ranged from snarky to excited, but all the coverage struck me as a […]
Being a radio fanatic, I keep an eye out for unusual radio-themed items. With the holiday shopping season upon us, it’s as good a time as any to share some recent finds, particularly since we haven’t done any Radio Survivor gift guides in awhile. With that, here’s my 2018 Holiday Gift Guide for those in […]
What killed smooth jazz radio? Why aren’t there any commercial classical stations any longer? And, why do radio stations have a “format” to begin with? Matthew Lasar joins us to explore these questions about the fundamental organizing principle of most music radio. Matthew is a co-founder of Radio Survivor and the author of three important […]
I’ve joked about the common trope of “DJs in peril” in popular culture; with numerous films portraying radio hosts as the target of evil-doers. The tables are turned in the video game “Radio Hammer Station,” in which a crew of pirate radio DJs battle “a wide variety of villainous baddies,” including aliens, zombies and “horribly […]
Musician, DJ and radio artist Don Joyce passed away nearly three years ago, leaving behind a voluminous archive of his unparalelled collage radio program “Over the Edge.” The documentary “How Radio Isn’t Done” sheds light on this member of Negativland, his life and his work in recontextualizing the never-ending flow of media messages that flood […]
Radio fans have a major reason to visit San Francisco this year: the SFO Museum just debuted the massive “On the Radio” exhibit in Terminal 3 of the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Until September 30, 2018, travelers can feast their eyes on 27 cases full of historical items related to radio’s past, ranging from […]
I’m delighted to keep stumbling upon video artifacts of pirate radio, like the 1970s Portland public access footage and 1990 shortwave pirate documentary I recently shared. Next up I’ve found a more contemporary documentary from 2014 looking at London’s pirate radio scene. The city has long been a hotbed of unlicensed radio activity, such that […]
Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, the wind up to the holiday season, which means that the annual ritual of tuning in to hear “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” on the radio is just around the corner. As I’ve been chronicling year […]
Over the weekend I stumbled across Resistance Radio and was immediately obsessed with the nostalgic music, rebellious DJs and the geeky radio details. The website reads, The year is 1962. America stands divided and controlled by the Greater Nazi Reich in the East and the Japanese Pacific States in the West. Seventeen years after the […]
