Ask anyone who knows me at all and they’ll confirm it as true: I like old things. My style of dress could be called “1950’s Texaco gas station attendant”, my musical tastes tend to skew south of 1982 (and further), and most of my favorite films were made by directors that none of the movie-going hoi polloi considers relevant anymore.
So it was with predictable glee that I discovered the Web site Reel Radio. Reel Radio catalogues and streams hundreds of “air checks”, which were seemingly random tapings of radio programming to ensure proper signal transmission.
Reel Radio’s collection spans decades of “Top 40” radio, however, and some of them last hours, and include music, advertising, on-air interviews, and DJ banter. The coolest thing (for me, at least) are the air checks from the 50’s and 60’s, ads and all. Nostalgia is king.
Other “old” things I’m presently enjoying includes a moving collection of Ansel Adams photographs, entitled “Suffering under a Great Injustice”, taken from the Japanese-American internment camp at Manzanar, 1943. Adam’s legendary usage of photographic contrast is put to amazing use here; a historical and artistic treasure.
(Update: just found the master list of the entire photographic catalogue contained in the Library of Congress. Methinks I’m going to be spending a lot of time here…)
Finally, something fun: the dMarie Time Capsule. Songs on the charts the day I was born: Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, I’ll Be There by the Jackson Five, and I think I Love You by the mighty Partridge Family.
I wonder if one can tell their fortune from the songs that were hits when they were born. I’d like to get my “charts” done. Arg arg arg. Okay, enough already.
