gold mine

I came across, somewhere, archive.org. I think I was looking for a file of the original "War of the Worlds" broadcast so I could clip some bites out of the parts toward the end.

Found the file. Found that it is too big to manipulate on my computer and I'll have to do it on the Smart Half's.

Also found some great historical recordings. Things like Thomas Edison's first recording from 1887. What is so amazing is that the recording was made over 100 years ago. There was great excitement about those wax cylinders and lily-shaped horns, needles the size of Saguaro spikes. That was state of the art in 1887. Old blues recordings from the teens and 20s (later made on amberol cylinders, and then to wax and amberol platters, which in turn went later to more durable vinyl) are fascinating to listen to, especially when compared with modern blues styles. I really DO love the old, old blues. The one-guy-or-lady-singing-with-a -single-accompaniment stuff. On the archive.org site is a recording of Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues". I'd never heard it. I'd heard everyone else's version of it, and I enjoy playing it, but now I can hear how it really went.

I have a CD of oddball sound clips and I used one of them for the end of my show last week. It's an incredible one, I think. A recording of the crash of Soyuz 1, in which you hear Soviet Mission Control (the name escapes me. I know it starts with a Ba sound) and Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov talking back and forth, and then Komarov's realization that he was fucked and was going to be fried in his descent to earth, and then the sound again of the beacon beeps. beep. Beep. Beeeeeep. end of show. hehe.

Well, really, I don't know what people can expect of someone raised on Dr Demento, KXLU and the wild and woolly radio of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s.