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Its That Man Again (ITMA)

March 24, 2015, 5:15 pm
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It's That Man Again (ITMA) was a BBC radio comedy show that ran from 1939 to 1949.Despite it's popularity, and it's wartime verve, US networks never carried the program. However, the 1943 film interpretation starring Tommy Handley did see U.S. distribution. But the radio shows were only heard over the BBC network.

The title of the program refers to a the contemporary phrase concerning the increasingly frequent WWII headlines regarding a certain German Führer. The phrase actually originated in a headline in the Daily Express written by Herbert Smith Gunn. One of the show's many running gags was the re-purposing of this phrase to refer to Tommy Handley. The show was a meme-generator. It created numerous short lived catch-phrases including the ironically intended "It's being so cheerful that keeps me going." The character Colonel Humphrey Chinstrap had his own catchphrase "I don't mind if I do." which lived on as well.

The programs sense of humor was sublimely British, possibly the only cultural microcosm more British than Chap-hop, except possibly Douglas Adams.  The scripts were written by the prolific Ted Kavanagh. Kavanagh had been writing for Handley since 1924. They were both longtime BBC contributors, and both had been script-writers. But Kavanagh was the better writer, and Kavanagh knew how to write for Handley.

The program debuted with the cast in the setting of a "pirate" commercial station and kept that for the first 4 episodes from that location. After war broke out the program found new life and relocated to the Office of Twerps, with Handley in the role of "Minister of Aggravation." In 1941 the setting moved to a seedy beach resort and the show name was changed to "It's That Sand Again."The didn't jump the shark, and instead returned to the studio setting. Post-war the program changed settings regularly mostly to absurd ends.


ITMA is remembered as a comedy program that was good for war-time morale on home front.The program came to an end January 6th 1949. Handley was to die just three days later of a brain hemorrhage. Kavanagh published Handleys biography that same year.
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First Radio Beacon in France

March 19, 2015, 8:43 pm
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I can't read of speak French so you'll have to bear with me if I've missed a detail or two in this tale. 1931 was a big year for pilots in Abbeville, France.  The French Air Ministry installed a radio beacon at Abbeville. This was not a marker beacon like the modern units that transmit on 75 MHz. This was a letter beacon. While still in use today, letter beacons are not registered with the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), so even contemporary information is scarce.  But in 1931 this was such hot news that it made it into American news papers, like the New York Sun. More here.

Today some of these letter beacons are grouped in with those spooky shortwave number stations. But it's inaccurate. These have a well known origin in the early development of Air navigation technology of the 1930s. The frequency they occupy is not relevant, it does not imbue them with any mysterious purpose. They are for air navigation, and have been for almost a century now. More here. Abbeville is about eighty miles from Paris. It's population today is only about 24,000.  So you can imagine it wasn't much to look at then either. But try to understand that the first transcontinental air mail flight was only 10 years earlier. That year, 1921 the U.S. Post Office used bonfires to light the runway. A lot changed in 10 years.

This beacon in Abbeville was designed to aid travel from Dover to Paris. It consisted of two antennas  a short distance apart.  One of these sent out a constantly repeated "F" in Morse code" The other sent out a constantly repeated"L" in Morse code on the same frequency. These are similar letters but that is to it's design. A letter F in Morse code is dot dot dash dot, and L is dot dash dot dot. On pilot was quoted as saying:
"It eliminates both instrumental and human error. It is almost like following an invisible road or railway, and removes most of the uncertainty of fog flying. Where before, in thick weather, we were continually asking the control tower for positions, we now need do so only once in a complete Journey. Although both outgoing and Incoming planes use the same road, there is no danger of collision, as they fly at different heights... We fly now in weather which would formerly have held us up. The sole disadvantage is the monotony of listening to the signal."
 If the pilot hears both on the same frequency, the signals intersect to form a continuous straight line between Dover and Paris. As long as an airplane is flying along this line the pilot hears in his earphones a continuous buzzing, caused by the co mingling of the two lines of code. If he deviates form his course he will hear more clearly an L or F. At the time they were already testing a "lamp" that would flash the signal so spare pilots from the buzzing sound in their headsets, and enable them to hear other information.
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KVRE sign off

March 25, 2015, 7:49 pm
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I hope this is real. It purports to be the old sign off message of 1460 KVRE-AM in Santa Rosa, CA. It is definitely the most original and possibly the funniest sign off I've ever heard. It was a must-share. Enjoy.


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Which Royals Listened to the Radio?

March 27, 2015, 5:10 pm
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The description accompanying this image read "the royal family listening to an early radio transmission in exile. The date is given as "around 1920."  It does not indicate which royal family. But I think we can narrow that down. WWI began in 1914 and ended in 1918, WWI didn't begin until 1939... so if the date is even somewhat accurate it falls between the two major European conflicts. how do we resolve that?

Well it's clearly not the Romanovs, or the Farouk clan from Egypt. These are Europeans. With theat constraint, and assuming the date is +/1 2 years, my guess is that this is the family of Archduke Felix of Austria-Hungary. Felix was born in 1916 so he would have been 5 or so when this picture was taken. But depending on the exact year of the photograph he could have been any one of these similar looking kids. I favor the mopey looking one to the right of the radio set.

He had a rough time leading up to 1920. On November 21st, 1914 the Emperor of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and Felix’s father, Charles I, succeeded as the new Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. But he never succeeded in taking power. He held the whole coronation fandango, but by October of 1918 Austra and Hungary were splitsville. He wisely abdicated that year.

The fragmenting of their nation led to the exile of the royal family. Originally exiled in Switzerland the Imperial Family were taken to the Portuguese island of Madeira in 1921. It's unclear if this picture was taken in Switzerland or Portugal. Either would be close enough to the estimated date. More here.
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From Gangbusters to Seth Parker's Hymnal

March 30, 2015, 8:05 pm
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It's one of my more peculiar radio books. Seth Parker was not  a clergyman. He was a character played by Phillips Haynes Lord a man who was once a high school principal. (More on that momentarily.) He was best known for the Gang Busters radio program that was broadcast for over two decades. But for a time he also impersonated his own grandfather and creating the character Seth Parker, a folksy clergyman focused on old time religion and music. As Seth Parker, Lord ended up on NBC. Didn't Lenny Bruce get arrested for that?

His work in the Gangbusters began later, starting in 1935. The program ran into 1957, it was huge. He got to do Gangbusters movies in 1942 and a TV show in 1952. They spun off a series of DC comic books based on the radio serial. Seth was a superstar. Yes, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The show was an early cop drama, complete with sound effects, fast action and true crime stories directly from J. Edgar Hoover. No really, Hoover actually supplied them with source material from FBI files to encourage them to lionize the FBI.

But back to the grandfatherly thing. Lord was born in 1902, so he was
about 27 when he began impersonating a senior citizen in 1929. He had been a high school principal in Plainville, CT for 2 years before growing bored and running off to New York to try his hand at script writing. He sold some scripts for "Seth Parker's Singing School". It took off and the character "Seth Parker", a clergyman and rual philosopher based on his real-life grandfather, Hosea Phillips, had to become real... or at least real enough for radio.

Thought recorded on a sound stage in New York, he purported that the show originated in the Jonesport, Maine area. NBC ran the show six days a week under the name Sunday Evening at Seth Parker's. He published Seth Parker's Hymnal in 1930, his Album that same year, then Seth Parker and His Jonesport Folks in 1932 then a Scrap Book of "backwoods philosophy" in 1935. Lord wrote the show and played the title role until it was discontinued in 1939. Notice the overlap with Gangbusters. There was also a period when he was a cop by day and a preacher by night... at least on radio.
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Send Radios to North Korea

March 31, 2015, 7:02 pm
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I appreciate trouble-makers. Historically they have caused more change than all the passive petition collectors that have ever been and all across the entire internet today. Trouble-makers agitate, like a pebble in your shoe or a hangnail. They get noticed, and things happen. More here.

The NKSC likes to smuggle contraband items such as USB keys, DVDs and radios into the isolated nation of North Korea. They are a mixed bad of political activists, volunteers and North Korean defectors.  Your donations assist their anti-totalitarian exploits.





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The Nightbird

April 1, 2015, 7:05 pm
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Alison Steele was a New York DJ on 102.7 WNEW-FM. ON air she was known as "The Nightbird". To understand her career you need to hear her voice. Writers who miss all kinds of details of her career still manage to dwell on it's particular qualities: sultry, smoky, soft, sexy, syrupy, and "could melt butter" get repeated over and over. It's all true, but there was much more to her life than her provocative delivery.  In 1976 she became first woman to receive Billboard Magazine's "FM Personality of the Year" award. Did I mention the Jimi Hendrix song "Night Bird Flying" was inspired by her?

A Brooklyn native, at the age of 14 she broke into the biz running errands for a TV station. While Steele was at the peak of her career she was also a single mother. At the age of 19, she married orchestra leader Ted Steele, (of the Chesterfield Supper Club) who was twenty years older than her. It didn't last, and she had to add young single mother to her list of responsibilities.

In 1966 she got her big break. The FCC issued a rule making that but an end to the long time practice of AM/FM simulcasts. WNEW-FM decided to debut "Sexpot Radio" and hired an all female airstaff. the idea crapped out in under 2 years and Steel was the lone survivor. They segued into a free-form progressive rock station and she had to learn what the hell that meant. Management wasn't helpful to say the least. They buried her show in a 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM shift.  It was only when they discovered she was rated number one in the slot the moved her show back to start at 10:00 PM.  As for the voice?  Well she played it up. In a 1971 interview she was quoted as saying
"I'm a night person," she said in 1971, when she was with WNEW, where she worked on AM and FM for about 14 years. "I think it has a mysterious quality. I never get lonely up here."

She left the station in 1979 and worked at a few other New York area stations: WNEW-AM, WPIX, and even CNN as a correspondent. She was an announcer on the TV soap opera, Search for Tomorrow and even was the voice of an in-flight audio entertainment channel on board Trans World Airlines. Her last gig in radio was on WXRK from 1989 to 1995 where she was on Monday through Friday from 2 to 6 AM, like the shift that made her famous. She only left the show due to illness, in 1995. She died that year of stomach cancer.
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WCCC Signs Off

April 2, 2015, 4:38 pm
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On August 1st 2014 WCCC-FM 106.9 signed off.  the station didn't cease to exist, but it might as well have. They station was sold to the Educational Media Foundation, who has aired nothing but satellite-fed soft christian schlock since that moment.

The last song they played was "Walk" by the band Pantera. The station had signed on in 1959, and went through innumerable changes. At first they were owned by a jeweler, Bill Savitt; later by a record label, Elektra records. Greater Hartford Communications bought the station in 1974 and they were from that date on, a rock station of one form or another. (except for a painful all talk experiment in the mid 1980s) Did I mention it was where Howard Stern had first big market break?

But that time has passed us by. It has been 6 hard months and the new Hartford ratings book shows the new WCCC with below a 0.1 share. They do not even appear on the ratings book. As if they don't exist. But I swear, once not long ago there was a station in Hartford and it was worth listening to. Below you can hear their last somber minutes.


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Rabbit Eggs

April 3, 2015, 4:08 pm
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It's a three day weekend for some people.. not me but good for you if you have a 3-day weekend. Me... I need time to cook. See you Monday.


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Radio Heliopolis

April 6, 2015, 7:36 pm
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Heliopolis is a slum in the district of Sacoma, in the southeast area of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It's population is about 100,000. This is far from the only slum in Brazil. Currently about 6 percent of the Brazilian population live in slums.  that's 12 million people.  Like many other slums in Brazil, it was built illegally;btu over time it was urbanized and began offering legitimate utilities like wifi.  More here.

In 1992 the station began as a series of horn speakers installed on poles. Because there were few phones in the neighborhood, requests came on written slips of paper hand delivered by neighborhood kids. In 1997 they got a transmitter and began broadcasting on 102.3. Interference complaints prompted them to move to 98.3 FM. The station slowly built up to a staff of around 200 people. The station even had a LGBT-friendly mid-day program "Afternoon Gossip" hosted by station manger Geronino "Gero" Barbosa. Local council woman Sonia Francine had her own music program, The station won an award from the Art Critics of Sao Paulo Association, and was the topic of a documentary produced by Itau Cultural Institute. More here.

But there was a problem. That transmitter still wasn't legal. In 2004, Anatel ordered the closure of Radio here. Heliopolis. But they returned, determined as ever. Then on July 20th, 2006  federal police officers and the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) shut down Radio Heliopolis following an order search and seizure order issued by the 9th Federal Criminal Court. Their equipment and computers were seized and the station managers Joao Miranda and Geronino Barbosa de Souza were interrogated. The station looked doomed. The laws in Brazil date back to it's military dictator ship under the regime of Getulio Vargas. For obvious reasons their enforcement is poorly received by many groups. But the current government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made a habit of being flexible. Between the years 2002 and 2003, over 7,000 pirate radio stations were shut down by the Federal Police. To resolve this problem the Lula government formed an inter-ministerial group to study community broadcasters. More

Radio Heliopolis was off air for months while quiet negotiations were made. In October of 2006they were granted provisional permission to return to the air on 97.9 FM.  Ultimately it was decided not to penalize that station. They would be forced to decrease its power from 50W to 25W, and lower it's antenna height to reduce interference. In March of 2008 the stations' operation was authorized by the Ministry of Communications with a new frequency of 87.5 where they remain today. More here.
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French Ray-O-Vac Radio Operating Manual

April 7, 2015, 7:49 pm
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So this is pretty cool. I got myself a copy of a 1925 Ray-O-Vac Radio Operating Manual and Broadcast Station Directory. The manual contains a number of battery advertisements, and describes the proper use and care of said radio.

There are not a lot of radio directories from this era. The renowned Barry Mishkind keeps a list here. But this Ray-O-Vac list appears to be unique. Interestingly lists it's own AM radio directory including the U.S., Canada and Mexico.The book adds up to 64 pages squeezed into a 21MB pdf. I have scanned it for your arcane reading pleasure.

Download it 

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Stop Me If You Can You Top This

April 8, 2015, 8:10 pm
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The man known as Senator Ford was actually Edward Hastings Ford, a vaudeville comedian and no Senator of any kind. Born in 1887, the man lived to the ripe old age of 83 and so far as I know, never even ran for office. He added the prefix "Senator" to his name in his 20s just for a hoot. But he was a radio man for a time. He gets credit in most radio books for starting the comedy radio program "Can You Top This?" on WOR-AM.  As usual, it's a lot more complicated than that.

First of all, as comedy shows go it was more like Whose Line Is It Anyway, and less like the Daily Show. It was a joke-telling show. Mr. Ford was permanent member of the show's panel of joke-tellers, along with Joe Laurie Jr, and Harry Hersfield. These guys were the kings of vaudeville comedy. Joe Laurie Jr wrote an excellent auto biography in 1953, Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace. Hersfield was a comedian, author, cartoonist and columnist for the New York Daily Mirror.

Harry Hersfield was a cartoonist first. he went to art school, and was a manager at MGM. His entry to radio seems to be another radio comedy program "Stop Me If You've Heard This One" which debuted on NBC in 1939... a year prior to Can You Top This? It was out of this Quaker Oats-sponsored program that the classic Can You Top This? line up sprang.

The premise of "Stop Me If You've Heard This One" was that listeners submitted jokes to the program. The show's list of guest panelists included Cal Tinney, Peter Arno, Harry McNaughton, Lionel Stander, Ward Wilson, Harry Hershfield and Jay C. Flippen. Their job was to recognize the joke and interrupt host Milton Berle to finish telling the joke. Somehow this resulted in guests getting prizes. That part loses me. But before the series ended in February of 1940, Hershfield was replaced by "Senator" Ed Ford. That was the genesis of the new program.

Nine months later, Ford, Hershfield and Wilson became panelists on Can You Top This?The show ended up running from 1940-1954; a total of 14 years! Later Joe Laurie Jr replaced Wilson. Of the trio Ford was sort of a straight-man. He was droll and witty even dour.Just like the prior program listeners contributed jokes. But here the panelists just tried to top the listeners. The format was simpler and it worked.  NBC picked up the show in 1942 and ABC even tried unsuccessfully to move it to television in 1950. CBS tried to reboot it in 1970 also for naught.

In 1947, the Mutual Network tried to revive  "Stop Me If You've Heard This One." But their panelists weren't as strong: panelists Tinney, Lew Lehr, George Givot and Morey Amsterdam. It didn't last. They should have invited Senator Ford. He died in 1970 of lung and throat cancer.  His personal papers were donated to Stonybrook University near his home in Greenport, Long Island, NY.  More here.
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The Blue Sky Boys - Turn Your Radio On

April 9, 2015, 7:33 pm
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If I had a country oldies station I'd start every day with this tune. There are a lot of songs about radio, some of them pandering, and some of them worthwhile, but none so classic as this one from 1940.



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2,500 POSTS

April 10, 2015, 7:35 am
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2,500 
POSTS!
As of this week, Arcane Radio Trivia has posted 2,500 posts. I think that deserves the night off. Also, the highly notable 10-year anniversary of this blog is coming up in May. I am planning a retrospective BEST OF ARCANE RADIO TRIVIA week. Many thinks will be heaped upon friends contributors and peers alike. Try to prepare yourself.



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Ham Radio Vs. Marijuana Growers

April 13, 2015, 7:51 pm
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According to AARL, the average age of a ham radio operator is over 50. They don't say how much over 50 and some nations have admitted their median ham age is almost 80. You would think that mature demographic would have some non-recreational interest in medical marijuana. But that has not been the way things have gone. Marijuana growers and ham radio operators have actually become mortal enemies. The AARL even posted an article on identifying these growers, and how to deal with the problem from both a legal and technical point of view here.

the conflict stems from a simple fact about grow lights. Like many forms of fluorescent light, they produce RF interference (RFI).  In the last decade, digital high-intensity discharge (HID) ballasts have largely replaced traditional coil magnetic ballasts. The HID ballasts typically operate on 110-270V circuits. The target target output frequency from the ballast is 50-120Hz. But your household electricity typically operates on 60Hz.  not the obvious problem. Fluorescent tubes are non-linear devices, and generate harmonic currents in the power supply. The arc within the lamp can generate RFI as well, which can be conducted through power wiring!  More here, here and here.

The RFI is usually in bands between 1.8 MHz and 30 MHz and it's strong enough you don't need special gear to detect it. You can find a bad grow light with a handheld AM radio. These aren't 40 watt bulbs either. Grow lights are usually High pressure sodium (HPS) or metal Halide (MH) and easily 1000w per lamp. Lab tests at the AARL have revealed that many grow light makes and models violate FCC part 15 and/or part 18. The units often operate on a timer making it even more obvious what the source of the RFI is. Even for marijuana growers in Colorado, this presents an unexpected legal problem with the FCC instead of the FBI. I found an article on policeone.com that details the ease at which police can now find indoor growers.
"One narcotics officer from the San Francisco Bay Area turns his car radio to 560 AM when he checks out potential indoor grows. He’s checked out seven indoor marijuana grows since learning about the RFI issue. All seven times, the car’s radio showed significant interference from the ballasts inside of the grow location. "
This unnamed police officer is finding marijuana growers, not with helicopters, thermal cameras, NSA stingray transcripts, automatic number plate recognition, video surveillance, or phone taps but with the stock AM radio in his cruiser. Notably, the AARL, still primarily focused on ending RFI, listed in that same article how a grower might reduce the RFI affordably with simple AC line filters and toroids.
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World's Highest Radio Station

April 14, 2015, 6:56 pm
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The etching reminds me of that iconic photograph "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" probably taken by  Charles Ebbets in 1932.  There postcard above dates to 1923. The idea behind the drawing seems lofty but there were already photographs of men on it's aerials published in Farm Mechanics Magazine later that year. They got it done. The caption here reads as follows:
"Dominating Brazil's beautiful capital and affording a magnificent panorama of the city and it's harbor, Mount Corcovado has hitherto served no utilitarian purpose. But a wireless plant will soon stand on it's summit, over 2,000 feet above the city. This sketch gives an idea of the hazards of the construction and the view offered from the world's loftiest radio station."

Mount Corcovado is actually 2,310 feet high and sits in southeast Brazil overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Today it's better known for the somewhat creepy concrete statue "Cristo Redentor" of Jesus Christ that sits atop the peak today. The statue was unveiled on October 12, 1931. But this too has a peculiar connection to radio history. In the opening ceremony, the statue was lit by a battery of floodlights turned on by radio control by Guglielmo Marconi, stationed 5,700 miles away in Rome (supposedly). So what happened between 1923 and 1931? 

First of all, prior to 1923 the summit wasn't exactly bare. Even in 1918 there was a rail road that went to the summit strictly for the benefit of tourists who wanted to take in the view. There was already at least one radio station SPY, whose call sign is ungoogleable today.  A third easily confused set of calls "SPE" was assigned to Praia Vermelha. So let's go back further... Brazil declared its independence from Portugal in 1822. They didn't get that in writing until 1925 but let's not mince words. To celebrate 100 years of independence they planned a centennial exposition, and they wanted to launch a new radio station over Rio de Janeiro as part of the event. They awarded a contract to Westinghouse, who shipped down the necessary equipment, men and materials and hauled it up the mountain on that aforementioned cog-wheel tourist railroad. More here.

Two 125 foot masts were erected and a 153 foot, 6-wire aerial for the 750 watt station. It was assigned the call letters SPC and operated on 450 meters. The inaugeral broadcast opened with a speech by President Pessoa. A telegraph line was run so it could broadcast speeches and operas from the city below. The station was originally planned to be temporary but it was so popular that it's life was extended. It was broadcasting as late as April of 1923. RadioWorld, Wireless Age and many other radio publications marked the debut of the station. More here.

But since 1920 a religious group called "Catholic Circle of Rio" had it's eyes on that peak. The group organized an event called Semana do Monumento "Monument Week" to collect money for the building of the statue. Construction supposedly began in 1922. It makes it difficult to account for the SPC broadcasts described in April of 1923. Regardless, the station was decommissioned by that Spring at the latest.
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The Radio Art of Tetsuo Kogawa

April 15, 2015, 8:01 pm
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In this performance by Tetsuo Kogawa, the artist plays a radio, and some other capacitive components in a theremin like manner. This was performed for Musikprotkoll at Dom im Berg, Graz, Austria. It was originally broadcast by Kunstradio. Kogawa has been doing similar performances for over a decade. More here.


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The Bond Bread Broadcasts

April 16, 2015, 5:33 pm
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That sticker was on the cover of a 1933 copy of the Bond Bread cookbook. Bond bread is no longer baked, but 75 years ago it was more popular than Wonderbread.

Bond bread was first baked in 1915 by company-founder William Deininger in Rochester N.Y. It was marketed as an alternative to cheap loaves made of processed filler. The production of bread, sold under the trade name of "Bond Bread," accounted for over 90 percent of its sales and production averaged nearly 1.5 million loaves per day. It survived the great depression and by 1954 it was being sold in 26 states— almost a national brand. 
But still competition drove it out of business. A Canadian firm, Denison Mines, Ltd bought it out in 1963, in turn selling it to Goldfield Corp. In 1965. The new owners changed the name to general Host, and managed to get into serious trouble by 1968.   In of that year a federal grand jury indicted them and other baking companies on charges of illegally conspiring to fix bread prices in the Philadelphia metro.  they got caught red-handed again in 1972, that time in New York. The company got out of baking the the Bond division was shut down.

Bond Bread spent a very short time involved with radio. The Bond Bread broadcasts only ran from 1934 to 1936. It aired on the CBS network on Sunday nights at 5:30 PM. The 30 minute program was a variety show featuring family-friendly artists like Crumit & Sanderson.  They sponsored other schmaltzy programs by Guy Lombardo and inexplicably the Lone Ranger in 1940. It was a short-lived marginal program heard on stations like WABC, WNAB and others.

In the 1940s Bond moved into advertising on kids Western TV shows. They also sponsored Bond Bread Newscasts on WDAS hosted by Nathan Fleisher, a Yiddish news commentator. The last time Bond Bread made big radio news was in 1949. A set of protracted bread and beer strikes in New York forced Bond and other bread companies such as Tasty to cut back their radio advertising. WMCA copped to losing $10k in weekly billings, and WNEW for $4k.
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Fight Section 215

April 17, 2015, 3:52 pm
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I try not to inundate my readers with politics. But when it comes to net neutrality, and surveilance of the internet I feel there is a large overlap with our mutual interest in an open and free internet. So with that in mind.. here is a message from our allies at Google.


A frequently misused section of the Patriot Act is coming up for Congressional renewal, and we have a chance to stop it. Visit https://fight215.org to finally destroy this instrument of mass government surveillance. This plan is focused on removing a single particularly egregious portion of the Patriot Act. It's worth your time.
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The Last Pirate

April 20, 2015, 7:09 pm
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There are three kinds of pirates.  You have your maritime piracy i.e. your standard issue swashbucklers, there are pirate DJs and pirate radio stations, then there is the third kind of pirate... ye olde pirates o' the copyright infringement. Bootlegs go way back before CDs. But by comparison to digital media, bootleg acetates were very rare and bootleg vinyl was never common. But before the rise of digital downloads, and after the fall of vinyl there was a short period of time when media could be downloaded and burned to CD-R and sold as a bootleg copy. The digital files made for perfect copies (assuming adequate bit-rate.) Few consumers had the knowledge and access to do it themselves. This "bumpy plateau" existed from about 1995 to 2005. It started about when Radiohead released "The Bends", peaked at the debut of Apple advertising tagline "Rip Mix Burn" and died abruptly  in 2005 with the launch of Megaupload. More here.

Once knowledge, tools and bandwidth became ubiquitous, the need for the physical media just evaporated. The transition period was prolonged partly due to that "access" scarcity and partly because record labels, publishers and studios didn't innovate in that arena. They resisted streaming, downloading, mixing, remixing, sharing.. change of every kind. They pretended that change wouldn't come and they were wrong. Enter Simon Tai.

There were IRC (Internet Relay Chat)groups online that specialized in ripping and distributing music. Some specialized in pre-release music. These were fewer in number because they had to rely on a relatively small pool of people who would provide that content. One of them famously is Dell Glover, a middle manager at a Polygram pressing plant who leaked innumerable pre-release albums to a group called CDA (Compress 'da Audio.)  They (RNS) Rabid Neurosis and DMA (Digital Music Audio) were among the earliest online music piracy groups. More here. Most members still remain anonymous. Most of the names we know today we only know because they were eventually arrested.

One of the most famous was Simon Tai. He was a member of RNS, and his online handle was RST and he was very involved with RNS. Tai was from Southern California, and attended the University of Pennsylvania, in 1997. With his campus T1 connection he discovered RNS and was invited to join. He was no lurking member. Tai had assess to a river of pre-release albums because he was a college radio DJ at WQHS.

Tai had a strong interest in rap music. On air he used the name DJ Taiga, and when he was a Senior at Penn he became music director. In that role he made connections with record promoters and label reps. He checked the mail daily and when something good came in, he ripped that album and uploaded it to RNS. But Tai got out at the right time. When he graduated he stopped uploading to RNS. While other members had their homes raided, their possessions seized and went to prison Tai was spinning records. By 2005 DJ Taiga was already a successful club DJ in Philadelphia. The skills he honed at school parties had become the core of his day job. He'd gone legit. In 2006, Taiga relocated to New York City where he continues to perform as a popular club DJ today. More here.
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