We have the K-Tel Time Machine dialed into the year 1980 for one of the best K-Tel compilations ever! Rock 80, featuring some early New Wave hits. Listen on Saturday, 1:30 pm and Sunday 4pm -- Eastern Time.
Friday, January 19, 2024
Monday, January 8, 2024
New Year, New Music
As we start a new year here at Vinyl Voyage Radio, we have some new music on tap this month. New music can be heard at any time, with double the doses on New Music Thursdays!
Good Grief
Magic Al
Alive and well
Ryan Terrigno
Signs
Jacob Perez
Grand Haven
Mike Leslie
I Hope I Find You Somewhere
Mournful Whispers
Non-Swimmer
Flo Parker Bombosch
Mythical Bird
Parade
Girl Love
Girl Love
Beautiful Endings
Eric Hunker
Nothing Sweeter
Julie Arsenault
Drift
Shelly Fraley
Cabin Fever
Megan Diana
Mindset
Kat Orlando
Pink
Ainslie Wills
So Long Noodle House
Hot Apple Band
Domino
Ella Thompson
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Vinyl Christmas has begun!
It is here: the 11th annual Vinyl Christmas, streaming now until December 27.
We have thousands of tracks, all taken from vinyl albums. If you are old enough, you may remember the albums that were sold by hardware stores like True Value and Ace Hardware. Plus, Firestone and Goodyear also famously sold albums, too.
These albums are great and we have several dozen in our collection. Our newest edition is this one from True Value:
This one is from 1978. The first True Value "Happy Holidays" album came out in 1965. So this is a Christmas tradition at its best. Here is an ad for the Goodyear album, Great Songs of Christmas, which sold for $1 in 1969:
Monday, December 18, 2023
11th Annual Vinyl Christmas
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
The SOTW - "The Night Owls"
On the platter is a 45 rpm disc from 1981 -- The Little River band with "The Night Owls." I don;t know about you, but this one brings me back! Listen on wednesday, 11am and 11pm (Eastern).
this song reminds me of the short-lived "Night Owls" digital TV program that aired in select markets in the early 80s. I wrote about this 10 years ago. Check it out below the picture.
(From February, 2013)
Today, as I was playing some songs on the radio, I came across the Little River Band's 1981 hit, "Night Owls." The video for this song was a common sight on late night video programs and in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV. But I was reminded of something else:Nite-Owl on Channel 32 in Chicago.
Does anyone else remember this? Nite-Owl was a program that dominated the early hours on WFLD-TV in Chicago and consisted of news, weather and sports all provided by funky computerized block graphics played with a soft-rock soundtrack of popular hits and muzak from the time. I was in junior high and found myself staying up late, mesmerized by the high-tech (for the time) computer graphics. One night in 1981, I was at my friend's house across the street and we turned on Nite-Owl after Saturday Night Live and fell asleep to the blue glow and soft music emanating from the tv.
I distinctly remember hearing that Little River Band song and thought it would make a good theme to the program.
Nite-Owl premiered in September of 1981 and was attracting some 75,000 viewers a night within a year. The company then expanded and started charging a fee, but it soon died out by 1984.
Here's a promo for the premiere of Nite-Owl from 1981:
And here's a 60 minute segment from August 25, 1982, featuring "Love is in the Air" by John Paul Young, "Who Am I?" by Petula Clark and "Biggest Part of Me" by Ambrosia.
The service was provided via teletex, which was hooked up into the computers at the Chicago Sun-Times. The editorial office for Keyfax was located in Elk Grove Village where editors typed up the copy and sent it back to WFLD in Chicago over a telephone line. The service was paid for through advertising placed between the 100 or so pages that scrolled throughout the night.
Nite-Owl, although archaic by today's standards, was really ahead of its time. It foreshadowed 24 hour news channels and internet RSS feeds. It looked much like the on-line bulletin boards and dial-up services of the early and mid-1990s. Remember Prodigy and Compuserve? Nite-Owl looked just like those 1990 internet gateways.
But with soft-rock soundtrack.