OUR STORY SO FAR: This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl debuted on December 27, 1998, broadcasting on WXXE-FM. The signal from rural Fenner, NY was initially strong enough to reach Syracuse, but that changed quickly as a competing signal soon shut us out. We needed to figure out a way to continue being heard...somehow.
There was talk of a webcast almost immediately. I made a reference to it in the email accompanying the playlist for our third show (our oldest surviving bit of playlist hype), so the idea had at least come up in conversation. As with most things involving Syracuse Community Radio, a webcast was a lot easier said than done. But it was a necessary part of any notion of us trying to go forward. Aside from the contented cows grazing in Fenner, no one was going to hear much out of WXXE-FM.
Money was an immediate issue. SCR was cash-strapped from the get-go, so each playlist I emailed out to eager rockin' pop fans included a plea for tax-deductible donations. Since these emails were being sent to folks well outside the Syracuse radio market, it made sense to pitch support for a webcast as a way to someday actually hear this magic three hours of radio Dana and I were doing Sunday nights. That was the hook: with a webcast, you'd be able to tune into TIRnRR from anywhere in the country, or in another country entirely. We used the playlists to network, to build a fan base, to create...well, if not quite a mythology, at least a mystique around this goofy show we started to bill as "The Best Three Hours Of Radio On The Whole Friggin' Planet."
This effort succeeded, at least on its own DIY terms. I used whatever little notoriety I'd earned from writing for Goldmine and participating in the power pop internet community to beat the drum on behalf of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. People responded positively. We got some donations. We got some fans, even though they were vicarious fans who could only read our playlists and pretend they could actually hear them. We did the best a little mutant radio show could do.
But a webcast was not immediately forthcoming. In addition to our shoestring budget, there were technical considerations, and there were bureaucratic channels to navigate. We kept playing our records, begging for spare change, and trying to live up to a legend we'd crafted in our own minds. The Best Three Hours Of Radio On The Whole Friggin' Planet. Well...why not?
We settled on a boilerplate description of the show: "This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio is a rockin' pop/punk/soul/bubblegum Shangri-La, where Toots & the Maytals play poker with The Ramones, Liz Phair arm-wrestles with Little Richard, Big Star is a household name, and some act you've never even heard of before can change your life, or at least send you on an interstate dancing spree." Dana's involvement in the Syracuse music scene made him much better known locally than I was, whereas I had a tiny bit of name-recognition outside Central New York. In promoting the show far and wide, I leaned on my Goldmine pedigree and added a number of spurious credits for Dana:
The Bobby Sherman of the new millennium.
Costumed scourge of the underworld.
Heir apparent to the vast Spaghetti-O's fortune.
The New Kid On The Block that time forgot.
The man who would be Kinks.
The only man ever to leave The Partridge Family...and live to tell the tale.
The man who sold the world--dealer inquiries welcomed!
The 17th Beatle.
The undisputed Rock 'Em-Sock 'Em Robots champion of the free world.
First in war, first in peace, and first in the line at the Dunkin Donuts.
Who hunts the world's most dangerous game: dust bunnies!
The 1999 poster boy for good posture.
Who is hooked on phonics, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and--might as well face it!--he's addicted to love.
Yeah, Dana's credits were significantly snazzier than mine.
Hype was really all we had going for us in the early days. It kept the name alive while we kept on doing our shows, praying that someday somebody would be able to hear us. We still had a signal, weak as it was, so occasionally someone would manage to tune in. We added a weekly Wednesday playback of Sunday night's show. My friend Fritz Van Leaven kept track of what we played, providing stats we could use for a year-end countdown. We did our first anniversary show on December 26th, 1999, crowning The Stallions' punky cover of The Dirty Wurds' obscure '60s nugget "Why" as our most-played track during our first year on the air. It would take that title in our second year as well, and it would remain our all-time most-played track for a long time thereafter. It was eventually dethroned by Big Star's "September Gurls." We oughtta dig up "Why" for a few fresh spins. Hell, I think we'll play it this Sunday night. You should, like, join us or something.
The hype accompanying each week's playlist always hawked the idea of a webcast to commence...eventually. Throughout 2000, the people who actually did the work at Syracuse Community Radio (as opposed to those of us--me!-- who just talked about it) moved forward with the slow process of getting DSL installed, negotiating agreements with servers and the Westcott Community Center, and trying to figure out how to pay for all of this. The TIRnRR tin cup was thrust forward each week, sometimes in self-deprecating fashion:
3/12/00: "THE WEBCAST IS COMING! So, of course, is Armageddon, and we're covering all bets as to which one arrives first."
3/26/00: "We're pretty sure we'll have the webcast up 'n' running a little before, say, Brian Wilson completes SMiLE."
7/9/00: "The webcast continues to lurch its way slowly toward Bethlehem. Sorry for the continued delay; our original plan--to just get a cardboard box, dub it a Magic Transmission Machine, staple it to the payphone downstairs and start wishing really, really hard--has fallen by the wayside because of some stupid 'technical reasons.'"
8/6/00: "We also dedicated '(You've Got Me) Dangling On A String' by The Chairmen Of The Board to our ever-elusive, ever-forthcoming webcast."
Yeah, this took forever. When we did our 8/13/00 show, we still didn't know when the razzafrazzin' webcast would be a real thing. By the time I got that week's playlist out, the webcast was finally beaming our virtual signal from sea to shining sea. The Wednesday playback was the first edition of TIRnRR to be heard on the world wide web.
Hallelujah.
Our 8/20/00 show was the first live TIRnRR on the web. We played Kyle Vincent's "She's Top 40" just before our show started at 9 pm Eastern, 8 pm Central, etc. For the show itself, there was always only one track we knew we had to play as the kickoff to our first official webcast.
Screen Test was a great Syracuse pop combo in the early '80s, formed by three members of my favorite power group The Flashcubes. 'Cubes/Screen Test bassist Gary Frenay wrote a song he used to introduce in live sets as about "how great radio used to be, back when radio played The Kinks." "Sound Of The Radio." It absolutely had to be the first track on our first webcast.
When I was a boy
I used to try to run away
You can't go far
So you escape in other ways
Hiding in my room
I'd hold the radio to my ear
No one could tell me what to do
My world became the songs I'd hear
Just can't get away from the sound of the radio
Just can't get away from the sound of the radio
Radio
The sound of the radio. That was us. That's what we wanted to be. And now, for the first time, people would be able to hear us, wherever they were. Just can't get away from the sound of the radio.
Now. What else could This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio do to make an impact?
WHEN BOPPIN' THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' PLANET RETURNS: Crafting Mix Tapes For The Digital Age (or: Dana & Carl Make A CD)
"Sound Of The Radio" written by Gary Frenay, Cubic Music BMI
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Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here. A digital download version (minus The Smithereens' track) is also available from Futureman Records.
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