Lost Audio
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As the grand finale to nearly four months of daily releases of lost content from my radio past, this one is especially grand. Recorded on Saturday, April 14, 1990, this video documents the last couple of hours of a ten day fundraiser (known as a Radiothon) held by WUSB, only the second time we had done such a thing. The money being raised was meant to be used to help move our antenna to a higher location so that our signal wouldn't be lost to a new NPR station on an adjacent frequency.

In addition to being the Radiothon coordinator, I was also the host of the last program before everything came to an end at midnight. That program was "Brain Damage" and the audio for this edition can be found at https://www.2600.com/braindamage/1990/0490.html.

You will see a lot of WUSB staffpeople in the studio and pledge room as we try to make our goal. There's even an appearance by my dog Walter! The festive atmosphere was contagious, both to the staff and the listeners. It was everything radio should be.

After it came to an end, there's even footage of a few of us trying to get to the WUSB offices down the hall in a building that was closed for spring break. This involved climbing under a gate, something we were all used to doing on a regular basis after normal building hours. Just one of a whole host of magical memories.

This is something from our archives that we only recently discovered - and what a treasure it is. From Friday, April 13, 1990, this is a video documentary of "The Voice of Long Island" reunion show that aired that afternoon as part of WUSB's second-ever fundraiser. (You can hear the full audio of that show in yesterday's audio release.) Of course, this will mean the most to those of us who recognize the many people affiliated with the station at that time who make an appearance in the video. But even for those who aren't familiar with them, the unique and quirky family that comprised WUSB at the time will soon feel like old friends. I'm just so thrilled that a video archive exists of this very magical period in our history. And I'm really happy that so many of these amazing people are still involved with WUSB in one way or another.

As the grand finale of all this lost audio being released for the past few months, here's the reunion show for "The Voice of Long Island," recorded on April 13, 1990. If you recall, during my midwest tour earlier that year, I invited my former cohost Mike Yuhas to come to the station to take part in the fundraiser. Well, that was what this special episode of the program was a part of, and it turned out to be historic in many ways.

In addition to re-airings of our "Tripod Family" serial and excerpts from past shows, we had various special guests passing through the studios. But a live "crisis" began to develop as a depressed watermelon threatened to jump out of our record library window if not enough pledges were received. It seemed like everyone in the station showed up for this, even a member of the campus police!

While this is in fact the grand finale of the lost audio releases, we're not quite done yet. Tune in tomorrow for a real surprise.

An interesting and educational interview with Sharon from the public affairs department of a government office in Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, recorded in April of 1987. We learn how being a white person who's a minority can be liberating and how the Inuit culture values consensus. We also hear how the Inuit were treated differently than native Indians in the rest of Canada. Sharon tells how dog races are different here than the ones in Alaska and we learn the meaning of the words Qallunaat and Qallunaaq. She discusses the reason names are being changed and just what those names mean. We learn some details about everyday life in the region, what Apex is, and the dangers of a whiteout.

If you ever wanted to see the difference between the type of radio I do and the commercial radio scene, look no further than this episode of "The Lazlow Show," recorded on December 11, 2005 over New York's WXRK (K-ROCK), shortly before one of their format changes. There's a lot here that probably wouldn't go over well today, but, again, that was typical of commercial radio. A lot of juvenile humor and stuff that could offend - that was what the people wanted. I didn't hear a lot of what went on before I came on the show while driving into the city in my Smart car with a shitty radio, but it wouldn't have dissuaded me from showing up. These were good guys who were a lot smarter than commercial radio made them sound; Lazlow alone had been invaluable in various hacker and radio causes. This was a challenge that involved being on completely alien turf and seeing a world I easily could have found myself a part of.

It would be a full 103 minutes before I showed up in the studio and once I did, we launched into various tales of hacking and battles with corporate America, along with explaining what 2600 meetings were all about and detailing my arrest during the Republican National Convention the previous year. All in all, it was great fun to see this other world of radio.

This is a brief but memorable interview with former Big Audio Dynamite member Don Letts on Lister Hewan-Lowe's "Saturday's a Party" reggae program on WUSB that I set up sometime in the spring of 1991. Don was about to release an album from his new group called Screaming Target. There's a little bit of chaos which Lister is somehow consistently able to make work. Don discusses why he had to leave B.A.D. and how the new band is working out so far and gets into a political philosophy back-and-forth with Lister, which is always entertaining. Don was most gracious as always, even when we played the wrong song. To this day, I still listen to that Screaming Target album.

One of the highest honors I can recall is having bits of 2600 read on "Over the Edge," the radio show that members of Negativland were involved in over at KPFA in Berkeley. This episode aired on June 28, 1990 and featured excerpts from the magazine that they called "2600 news," as well as excerpts from a tape some of us had made called "Eat Chicken and Die," portions of which have aired on WUSB and WBAI. This particular episode was entitled "Over the Phone" and it went well beyond our contributions. They had a ton of great sound and they also had this magical ability to connect with their audience, who never missed a beat when calling in to add their input. This is what radio should be all about.

Not only was this one of the best interviews I've ever been a part of, but it was also a super positive and uplifting experience. It was September 5, 1989 and I had just traveled overseas for the very first time in my life, spending six weeks going to England, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, and even East Germany. On the last leg, where I had returned to England as the last stop before flying home, I thought I'd check in on Big Audio Dynamite and see what the band had been up to since the world hadn't heard much from them recently. As it turned out, they had just released a brand new record and I was lucky enough to be able to get an interview with them at their studio.

I've done lots of interviews, but talking to these guys was always just like having a really good conversation - particularly with Don Letts, who I know wanted to talk primarily about the music but somehow I kept steering the conversation back to world affairs or injustice or something else that he had a lot to say about. They were all highly intelligent and engaged in relevant things, which somehow made the music so much more interesting. And yet they also carried this endearing innocence in their observations and creative expression. They couldn't have been nicer or more accommodating which, combined with the release of what I still think was their best album ("Megatop Phoenix"), really helped make this a magical moment.

I apologize for the poor sound quality in some parts - fortunately not the majority. Some of this interview was used in a WBAI special program, aired on September 28, 1989 and available in our archives.

Here's an episode of a show called "Whad-Ya-Know" from February 10, 1990 that I appeared on along with my former "Voice of Long Island" cohost Mike Yuhas. This all took place during my midwest tour that brought me to Wisconsin. I don't know how Mike arranged it, but he was called upon to read disclaimers 33 minutes into the show and I was chosen at the 114 minute mark to throw a dart at a map that wound up selecting Lebanon, Oregon as the town of the week for the next episode of the program. What's also funny about this is that the station I recorded this off of (WHAD in Milwaukee) has the same first four letters as the name of the show. Synchronicity.

My midwest tour came to an end with this segment. After airing some Canadian border radio announcements, I visited my former "Voice of Long Island" cohost Mike Yuhas in Wisconsin to record a promo officially inviting him to participate in the upcoming Radiothon fundraiser for WUSB. You can hear all of the takes it took for us to get that right. (I didn't realize at the time that Mike was lowering his voice an octave for each attempt!) After that, you can hear me starting my drive back to Long Island from Chicago, possibly on no sleep at all the night before. You'll hear my condition deteriorating gradually as I travel from state to state, always stopping to pick up an out-of-town edition of TV Guide whenever possible.

You may have heard several allusions to disturbing events in St. Louis that eventually led to my canceling that part of the trip. This was a reference to the hacker raids that were currently taking place in that area and in other parts of the country where there were serious violations of rights, leading to lawsuits and the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Much of this is covered in my various WBAI shows of 1990, available in our archives.)

One other item of note concerning this trip: despite my being completely worn out after driving all the way back from Chicago, I tuned into WUSB as I got closer to home and heard that there was nobody in the studio to do a show. So I actually stopped in at the station for a couple of hours to do a fill-in! If a recording of that existed, it would no doubt be a classic.

This is unedited footage from the anti-Shoreham nuclear power plant demonstration that took place on Sunday, June 5, 1983. I did a short interview with Long Island Lighting Company spokesperson Jan Hickman. The turnout was less than expected but that didn't dampen the spirit of the protesters. They were quite open with what they were planning and what motivated them. I had a great interview with Kevin Duggan of the Critical Marks affinity group and got some comments from people in the Narcoleptic affinity group. There was singing, discussion amongst the demonstrators, and an announcement from LILCO. After a final warning from the cops, the arrests began. I was particularly struck by the level of courteousness between the protesters and the police. And, of course, in the end the protesters won. Shoreham never came online.

The "unprecedented access" to the Shoreham nuclear plant we alluded to didn't stop at a mere press conference. We managed to get a tour of the whole plant! I had actually gotten arrested in 1979 (four years ago to the day!) at a previous demonstration against this very plant and now here I was, on June 3, 1983, inside it being shown around with a bunch of other reporters. Isn't life strange?

There's so much to digest here and probably a whole lot of sound that others will understand far better than me. I learned that floors in the plant were measured in elevation levels rather than floor numbers and that the construction workers at the plant really liked to write graffiti on the walls. At one point, you'll hear me trying to social engineer the guide into explaining exactly how the emergency evacuation sirens were activated. You'll also hear the guide's theory on cigarettes and why fish like nuclear plants.

As part of WUSB's continuing coverage of the Shoreham nuclear power plant's troubled history and the efforts of the community to keep it from opening, we were able to get unprecedented access. On the eve of yet another anti-Shoreham demonstration on June 3, 1983, we invited ourselves as members of the media to attend a press conference inside the plant itself! We heard from Long Island Lighting Company spokesperson Jan Hickman, as well as chief operating officer Jack Notaro, associate director of information Darrell Lankford, and members of the Suffolk County Police Department. We also learned of a union protest that was taking place, just to make the events of the next couple of days a bit more entertaining. This is a great look at the other side of these actions and how people in authority plan for them.

Here's a fun assignment I went on for "The Voice of Long Island" with friend of WUSB David Ruderman on January 7, 1982. There was a bit of a scandal in the Town of Islip in a community called West Sayville where a resident was having her garbage rejected for not following the rules. So we drove down there to see the garbage for ourselves - and we were able to make some corrections to the story that had run in Newsday. No Pulitzer, but it was still worth it. (An edited version of this piece appeared on the January 9, 1982 edition of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.

In the third part of my February 1990 midwest tour, we hear some interesting Canadian radio, including a time check and an update on the language controversy in Sault Ste. Marie, a place I was heading to after a stop in Sudbury. Then from a hotel room, I made an infamous telephone call to Radio Tirana in Albania. The reason this was such a big deal was because at the time it was completely impossible to make such a call in the United States, even with operator assistance. All of Albania was on some kind of a blacklist. However, it was possible in Canada and so I jumped at the opportunity. You'll hear the most patient operator in the world, as she stops at nothing to get me connected, first to the right country and then to the right party. In the end, I actually made contact with someone at Radio Tirana who managed to send me something in the mail just over a month later. (Much of that call can be heard on the February 24, 1990 edition of "Brain Damage," available in our archives.)

The final episode of "Transmitter Test," the Tuesday evening show that aired from 6 to 7pm and never quite found its niche. The actual reason it was canceled was due to the fact that my other radio show ("Off The Hook") over on WBAI had been rescheduled for Tuesday nights, making it impossible to continue doing this one. (Ironically, this very slot would be inherited by "Off The Wall" in 2003.) This episode aired on September 26, 1995 and included former program director Christina, who had also been in attendance for the last episode of "Brain Damage" that aired earlier in the year. Everyone was fixated on the O.J. Simpson trial which was reaching its end. We talked about an upcoming WUSB garage sale, radioactive dishes, and what exactly a bulk eraser was. We got a call from WUSB's Scott Warmuth, who was at a commercial radio station and we questioned Michael (the current program director) on when certain shows were on. I rewound an entire edition of "Pacifica News" on the air and wondered if that might have been the only time such a thing had ever been done. We discussed some of the new shows on television and I put forth the argument that "Babylon 5" was the best program out there. We held out for one last call (and got one from WUSB's Steve Kreitzer) and said our final goodbyes.

On April 30, 1986 at 8:30pm, we aired a special on the crisis at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This was one of those moments when WUSB was at its finest, presenting late breaking news with our own unique perspective. We used a variety of news sources, including shortwave, to try and get the truth out. I did live interviews with Stony Brook professor Les Paldy and Nora Bredes of the Shoreham Opponents Coalition, who theorized as to what this sort of accident could mean for the world. We played some Radio Moscow material and noted how they didn't even mention the accident for the first 24 hours after it happened. We took listener phone calls, including one from Stony Brook professor Ted Goldfarb, and discussed what such an accident on Long Island might be like.

In the second and last part of WUSB's visit to the mysterious Fisher's Island on April 9, 1983, the four of us (myself, WUSB chief engineer Frank Burgert, and friends of WUSB David Ruderman and Alan Belitsky) explored the streets and described the scene around us. We found several girls who were inside some kind of a store with no customers and talked with them for a while (apologies for the truly awful audio quality here). We learned what it was like to grow up in a remote place like this and discovered that Robert Redford had a house on the island. We walked along a rocky beach for a while and discovered what appeared to be an old munitions bunker. We all got really excited thinking we might have seen an eagle (although it's more likely to have been an osprey). After reading some interesting graffiti, we were able to get a ride back to the ferry, where we had time to play with a Fisher's Island payphone before boarding. On the ferry back to Orient Point from New London, Connecticut, I reminisced about the first time I had ever heard of Fisher's Island and also expressed some curiosity about some other islands we discovered that existed off the coast of Fisher's Island: the Dumpling Islands. Maybe next time. (Much of this material aired on the last recorded regular episode of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.)

On July 5, 1990, I was extraordinarily fortunate to not only see Negativland at The Knitting Factory in New York City, but to interview a number of their members after the show. It was more of an ongoing conversation than an interview, with Mark Hosler dancing around the room with various noisemakers. You simply could not get more Negativland than this. We talked about all kinds of things from why there's no "e" in Negativland" to the fake press release the band issued and how their record company handled that. We discussed the various talents and quirks of members of the band (how Don collects audio and Weatherman never tours) and shared stories about radio, which it turned out we all had a great passion for. In fact, members of Negativland had been involved for years with a show called "Over the Edge" on KPFA in Berkeley, California. I filled them in on some of what the hacker world was up to and we theorized about where "Twin Peaks" was after its first season. We literally talked until the venue threw us all out. One of the best interviews I've been a part of and some of the most interesting people I'd ever met.

This is a highly entertaining showdown that took place on a Bridgeport, Connecticut radio station. While doing an early episode of "Brain Damage" on WUSB, one of our listeners decided to start a fight between myself and another talk show host on a commercial station. I don't know how it all got started, but I do remember being challenged to insult the city of Bridgeport, something I was more than happy to do. The next thing I knew, I was facing off against WICC-AM talk show host Dave Feda trying to make things as bad as I possibly could. This was all broadcast on his show on September 21, 1988 and talked about on both stations for some time afterwards. He had a great sense of humor, not to mention a ton of loyal listeners who immediately hated my guts. This was probably the only time I'd ever done something like this, but it was great fun, and I learned that I had a real knack for turning audiences against me in short order.

On Saturday, April 9, 1983, I took a unique trip to a place called Fisher's Island. I was accompanied by WUSB chief engineer Frank Burgert along with friends of WUSB David Ruderman and Alan Belitsky. Fisher's Island is a very strange part of Long Island in that you can only get there by going to Connecticut first. While it was in Long Island's 516 area code, it had a Connecticut zip code and was actually much closer to that state. I had discovered it by accident once while exploring phone exchanges and finding one that sounded really far away even though it was in the same area code. We documented the entire trip, starting with our missing the Orient Point ferry that would have gotten us to the Fisher's Island ferry in time. Overcoming such hurdles made the trip more interesting. We eventually made it and began exploring this tiny, isolated island. We had seen newspaper articles about a new bowling alley that had just opened up, so that was our first destination upon arrival. We were fascinated by the fact that someone on the island was named William Faulkner and wondered if he could be the person right in front of us at the bowling alley. We later found out that it indeed was. (Much of this material aired on the last recorded regular episode of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.)

When I decided to visit Baffin Island in April of 1987, Frank Pearce was the guy who helped me arrange the whole thing. He was the general manager of the Baffin Island Tourist Association and was also a big part of the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce. In this interview, he discusses why tourism is important to the area and gives a good explanation on how the 13 communities throughout the massive region are set up. It was really interesting to learn that the people in Yellowknife (the capital of the Northwest Territories) were considered "southerners" and basically out of touch with how things worked in the far north. We discussed the controversial seal hunt that was making headlines everywhere - and how people from outside this part of the world might not be getting the full story. Frank went out of his way to connect me with interesting people in Frobisher Bay (now called Iqaluit) and allowed me to see it for the unique place it was.

This is a news item that aired on Long Island's WGSM-AM on June 10, 1987 concerning a controversy I was involved in with New York Telephone. We at 2600 had started a campaign to abolish the touch-tone fee since it was basically a fee for nothing. (The tone was generated by the customer; all the phone company had to do was not ignore it. Instead they were charging a fee to accept it.) This feature was part of the Bruce Herbert afternoon show. The piece on the 2600 campaign airs at around 24 minutes in. (WUSB alumnus Doug Bell appears in an unrelated story at around 21 minutes in.)

A portion of the final episode of "Planet Three," the program I had been doing for several months in the Friday night/Saturday morning midnight to 3 am slot. This aired on January 31, 1981 and the theme of the evening, which should be painfully obvious to pick up, is "goodbye." You'll hear a computerized voice repeating that throughout, along with all sorts of musical farewells. (That computerized voice came from a mysterious 800 number I had discovered, which simply answered "Hello, enter user number" and would say "goodbye" when you couldn't enter a valid one. It was highly unusual for the time and none of us were ever able to figure out what it was.) There were also a number of allusions to John Lennon, who had been killed the previous month, a particularly traumatizing occurrence for anyone involved in music at the time.

Considering not a single word was ever spoken throughout the history of this program, the whole thing must have seemed really strange to the casual listener. The show ended with an apropos excerpt from "The Wizard of Oz" and our usual spacey outro. And for the first time, the words "Planet Three" were played in a non-backwards form and an underwriting announcement that really made no sense was also shared. The announcement said that "Planet Three" was made possible through "an arrangement with Kilkenny Design Workshops, Butler House and Castle Yard." Kilkenny Design Workshops was an Irish research and development center that was found at random in a phone book, with Butler House and Castle Yard being two nearby locations. It was designed to confuse the hell out of anyone who actually looked into it.

The following week this timeslot would be taken over by the show that eventually would be named "The Voice of Long Island," all episodes of which are available in our archives.

On April 26, 1984, The Clash came to Stony Brook (in their second incarnation) and, while we couldn't get an interview, a bunch of us at WUSB got them to record an ID for us. This is only a couple of minutes long, but it captures the thrill involved when people from a college radio station interact with superstars for a brief moment. It's pretty funny how Paul Simonon just couldn't get "Stony Brook" right and Joe Strummer had serious doubts that we were "the most dangerous station in the nation." They were both super nice to us and wound up putting on a great show.

This one is a bit weird. On the morning of April 28, 1987, I was in my hotel room in Frobisher Bay (now called Iqaluit) on Baffin Island when the phone rang. It was my Tuesday morning radio show back home on WUSB. Since I couldn't be there that week, guest host Chris Crowley called me and I did my best to describe where I had been for the past week. Thing is, this is not the recording as it went out over the air since that was never recorded. This was the recording I made on my end, so you only hear my responses to the questions being asked over the phone. And even that is incomplete because my tape recorder started malfunctioning a few minutes after I began. Definitely not the best radio moment, but a memory nonetheless.

One of my favorite series was the mysterious "Planet Three," a three-hour concoction of audio clips, music, and overall weirdness. I had inherited the Friday night/Saturday morning midnight to 3 am slot in the autumn of 1980 after another show that had occupied that slot ended. (It was called "The Better Than Dead Air Show" which was a fun program I was involved in with a couple of other people at WUSB. No recordings are known to exist.) Sadly, there are only two surviving excerpts from "Planet Three" and this is the first, broadcast on January 24, 1981, one week before the series finale. The trademark of this show was that I never spoke a word except for an ID that aired at the end and occasionally some backwards speech that revealed the name of the program.

This episode featured the sounds of Republicans as they were starting to take over the country, along with some memories from the 1960s. (One of the musical bits played here would eventually become the theme to another series called "Chatterbox," available in our archives.)

(There's even a bit where some prank calls (possibly live) were broadcast. Technically, they weren't calls since our local crossbar switch had a bug in it that occasionally allowed people to get connected together just by picking up the phone at the same time. You can hear the confusion as something like that was transpiring along with feedback that we were somehow causing.)

Every so often, something momentous would happen in New York City and I'd feel compelled to take the train into town with a tape recorder to cover it. On December 7, 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev made an historic trip to the city as part of a visit to the United Nations. I spent much of that afternoon trying to track him and his wife Raisa down in various parts of town, including outside the Soviet Mission. What was amazing here - and at so many other events - was how none of the other reporters on the scene really knew just what was going on. It was a fun experience overall, some of which aired on the December 10, 1988 edition of "Brain Damage" (available in our archives).

It's the final known edition of "News of the World," this one airing over WBAI on May 18, 1989 at 1 pm, a full two years after its WUSB incarnation. I was now using Emmanuel Goldstein as my radio name and this would only be my third show on that station, following the "Off The Hook" pilot in 1988 and another edition of "News of the World" on March 13, 1989 (both of which are available in our archives).

This version of the program had a revised intro and an expanded length. As with the first episode on WBAI, this edition was done live. Unlike that broadcast, this one aired in the afternoon. An explanation of what the program was all about, along with a warning about possible controversial content and an explanation of shortwave are all included here. In this edition, we hear from Radio Austria, a a feature that was sent to us on tape from a South African program called "Mirror on Africa," United Arab Emirates Radio, and the BBC World Service.

This was tied into a WBAI fundraiser and we offered copies of the shortwave listening guide "Passport to World Band Radio" as premiums. It got an enthusiastic response.

Now here's an incredible piece of history, most of which has never been aired. On May 1st, 1987, I was lucky enough to be able to see Big Audio Dynamite at Irving Plaza in New York City. It was the day after I returned from my trip to Baffin Island so the contrast couldn't have been more dramatic. I was able to get backstage and have a brief interview with Don Letts and Dan Donovan from the band before the show. I don't know what it was, but we just clicked and were able to have some really good conversations about music, the world, life, etc. Don was particularly interested in my hacker connection and I got a great thrill seeing Mick Jones looking over a copy of 2600. I would realize over the years and during other times we hung out that these guys were so much more than a band; they were truly interesting people who had a fascinating world view and were a joy to talk to.

I was there with someone else from WUSB (whose name I completely forget and I feel awful about that) and we were able to secure legal IDs, not only from members of B.A.D., but also from Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys who happened to be backstage as well. But the way he talked to my colleague was awful and disgusting, which made that probably one of the worst IDs ever recorded by anyone. So, in a very brief period of time, we went from intelligence to idiocy. And that was the music scene.

This is a very short piece but a significant one. I was still a senior in high school and (as I often did) I was exploring the FM radio dial when I found a brand new station at 90.1FM. This was what was being broadcast on that day in early June 1977, a few weeks before WUSB in Stony Brook signed on as an FM station for the first time officially. Little did I know the life altering effect that place would have on me when I started attending college there several months later. (The voice on this broadcast is that of WUSB's Frank Burgert who, as of this writing, is still the station's chief engineer.)

This is an interview I did with a teacher at the elementary school in Iqaluit (still referred to as Frobisher Bay at the time) on Baffin Island in the Northwest Territories (now part of Nunavut). We talk about how computers are important in such a remote place. Like we heard in the church service segment, kids were encouraged to be themselves, so there was a lot of background noise, but everyone was involved in a project and enthused by it. You can heat the interactions between the teacher and individual students. It was amazing to see how they were quickly mastering the technology. This was recorded in April 1987.

I'm so happy to have found this because people never believe you when you say you once interviewed The Ramones. This was recorded on February 14, 1981 with myself and WUSB's Bill Senikowich. Johnny and Joey were fun to talk to, not at all stressed about the concert they were about to perform at Stony Brook. They told us what it was like to work with Phil Spector, when recording for the new album would begin, how there's a different mentality in England, and the overall slowness of progress. They even recorded some IDs for us. And, of course, when we walked them over to the gym to set up, we were completely mobbed by fans. (It was never easy to hide if you were with Joey Ramone.)

Here is a small piece of a real bit of history. In 1984, I discovered that 209 people were running for president. I thought it would be fun to invite them all to the same place, that place being the Stony Brook campus where WUSB would broadcast whatever transpired. And so, on October 6, 1984, the Alternative Presidential Convention took place in the Stony Brook Union auditorium with more than two dozen candidates in attendance. We broadcast the whole thing for hours on that Saturday and held seminars with some of the candidates afterwards. The whole thing got a ton of media coverage from all around the world and what was particularly noteworthy was how civil everyone was, despite the huge differences between the platforms represented.

We managed to salvage excerpts totaling nearly 90 minutes from this event, which was moderated by Dave Goodman of WUSB. The candidates presented here include: William Allen Katz from San Antonio representing the Pan American Party; James Yager calling in from prison in Alabama; Bob Lamb from Carbon, Texas; former Hungarian diplomat Stephen Koczak; Grady O'Cummings from Brooklyn; Peter Swider from Michigan; Bobby Shofner from Las Vegas; Cyril E. Sagan of Pennsylvania; and Joseph W. Kelly from Texas.

It's another Friday afternoon show featuring the people of Stoneyhaven, this one from November 1, 1985. In this edition, the parallels between Halloween and Election Day were explored, focusing on the trick or treating escapades of one kid along with a particularly ugly election campaign season in the fictitious community. (The latter was probably inspired by that year's Suffolk County Legislator race between Steve Englebright and Helen Lefkowitz.)

One of my housemates bursts in later in the show and I make an attempt to find the phone number of the Coca Cola company in Madrid, causing a bit of confusion. The show had been preempted two weeks earlier, due to the airing of "Shadow Over Long Island" (available in our archives) and there was no news from Stoneyhaven the previous week due to my being in a strictly music mood.

On July 19, 1985, I appeared on the WEEI Evening Review with Rod Fritz to participate in a feature on hackers. WEEI was at 590AM in Boston. This broadcast took place right after the seizure of our computer bulletin board in New Jersey that summer and this show gave me the opportunity to try and get the word out about that. It didn't do much good, as on this very program an opinion piece by John Rodman repeated the very myths I was trying to dispel, namely that our BBS was somehow moving satellites in the sky. Also appearing on the show were computer security expert Jay BloomBecker and Dave Hackel from Arthur Andersen.

This interview with Stony Brook professor Ernest Dube, recorded in 1987, was an incredible experience. He was in the midst of a huge controversy as his tenure had been denied due to his criticism of Zionism in his Africana Studies classes. Rarely have I spoken to someone more knowledgeable and open about the topics they were involved in. I felt very small in his presence, but he was nothing but welcoming and gracious in his home in Manhattan. This guy was way ahead of his time and he had a lot of support from the student body, not that it did him much good in the end. We hear a lot of complaints about people getting "canceled" in university settings these days, but it's been going on for a long time for those who speak out against oppression or the status quo. He didn't deserve to have been treated the way he was.

I'm not certain if this was ever used for an article or a radio feature, but it's certainly worth hearing.

Here are some more excerpts from WUSB's first call-in show, "The Saturday Night Circus," alternately hosted by Ed Goldberg and Paul Harris.

The first excerpt, dated January 14, 1978, features my friend Al calling in to Paul Harris using a weird accent and reviewing various people who died in 1977 (both Al and Paul say "1978" instead of "1977" several times).

The second excerpt, dated January 28, 1978, was a real milestone for me, as I joined the cast of the show (at least Ed Goldberg's version) and became the official newscaster, using the name Eric G. Corley. Ed gave me the opportunity to critique my own first newscast and chief engineer Frank Burgert puts in an appearance.

In the third excerpt, dated July 1, 1978, some sort of change had been implemented by Paul Harris that resulted in my not doing newscasts during the show anymore, a fact I mentioned during a call-in segment to Ed Goldberg where I didn't seem to know how to get off the phone. There was also a rumor that the show might be canceled soon (which the date of the next excerpt indicates didn't happen).

The final excerpt aired sometime in December of 1978 with Paul Harris calling in to Ed Goldberg from the WUSB holiday party where "Blind Lemon Jefferson" and the entire staff sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

So after that disastrous newscast at the end of 1977, I decided to actually come back. I could only get better, after all. (I also modified my name from E.G. Corley to Eric G. Corley.) All three of these newscasts came on the heels of massive snowstorms. (You'll also hear a few seconds of another undated newscast at the very beginning.) But it was the second broadcast that was particularly momentous due to late breaking news of a fire in the Union building where the radio station was housed. We put together a live update and taped an interview with a student government staffperson, while exposing the fact that there weren't any fire extinguishers in the building other than in the radio station. And then we went on to focus on power failures on Long Island caused by the storm, interviewing Long Island Lighting Company spokesperson Jan Hickman, just like a professional radio station would! That newscast was a pivotal moment for me because it was the complete opposite of the previous year's disaster and it proved that in radio you could always have another chance.

Other newscasters featured here are Howard Altman and Frank Burgert.

In order, the newscasts presented here are:

January 18, 1978 (early evening)

January 20, 1978 (special report)

February 8, 1978 (early evening)

"News of the World" was a series I put together as a celebration of shortwave radio and the many different voices that could be heard over that medium. This was the pilot episode, aired on Tuesday, July 22, 1986, and it features broadcasts from Kol Israel, Radio Prague (including the interval signal and famed broadcaster Hana), Radio Moscow (including the interval signal), and the Voice of Free China in Taiwan. (While this episode aired on WUSB, there were others that aired on WBAI. One of them is already in our "Off The Hook" archives for March 13, 1989, which was my second program on that station.)

The second "Day of Outrage" took place on January 21, 1988 in Brooklyn. It was basically a crowd of protesters marching through the streets trying to disrupt subway service and making their presence known. Fighting back against racist attacks and closing crackhouses were a couple of the main reasons for the protest. My narration of the march's progress gives you a sense of the day. You might notice my voice getting somewhat sped up towards the end as my battery ran low (causing the recording speed to slow down and sound faster when played back at a normal speed). And while I'm in a bodega buying new batteries, you can hear a TV set playing back a live report from the very same demonstration! You can't get more New York than that. (Excerpts of this recording were aired on the January 30, 1988 edition of "Brain Damage," available in our archives.)

We're back in the soon-to-be-renamed Frobisher Bay in what was then the Northwest Territories. When I visited that remarkable place, I was determined to capture as much as possible. So I recorded their local radio station (CFFB), part of the CBC Eastern Arctic service. What I stumbled upon late in the afternoon of April 24, 1987 is a perfect example of the value of local radio as a host named Curt Petrovich encouraged listeners to call in and do raven calls live on the air. The response was incredible as people - not only in this small city but in tiny communities all over northern Canada - seemed eager to show off their wildlife imitation skills. I only wish I had been able to record more of it. Also included are news and sports updates, as well as a local blizzard warning.

It's another Friday afternoon show, this one from October 4, 1985, two weeks after the last one. (Hurricane Gloria had hit the previous Friday, making a show on that date impossible.) Both the actual show for the Long Island area and this week's Stoneyhaven story are focused on the aftermath of the historic hurricane.

(An interesting sidenote: the radio drama "Shadow Over Long Island" (available in our archives) had originally been scheduled for a repeat airing on this date after debuting the previous Sunday on both WUSB and WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Since airing a mock radio drama about a local nuclear meltdown immediately after a hurricane had hit the area seemed a tad irresponsible, we delayed everything by two weeks, which opened up this timeslot.)

OK, prepare for some fun. These are my actual first times on the air as a staffperson, using the absurdly pretentious name of E.G. Corley. These newscasts all aired in December of 1977. They're either evening (5:42pm) or late night (11pm) casts. The evening ones tended to be taken more seriously. Late at night there was less supervision. On the 12/9 broadcast, you could tell I was trying not to laugh. The 12/15 news report gives the wrong date at the beginning, which was super confusing for us trying to get it right in the present. But the biggest catastrophe came on the last newscast of the year, when a story about the late Guy Lombardo proved to be too much. After that disaster, it didn't seem like there was much of a future in radio for me.

Other newscasters featured here are Howard Altman, Keith Namm, and Bob Benuhan.

In order, the newscasts presented here are:

December 2, 1977 (late night)

December 9, 1977 (late night)

December 14, 1977 (evening)

December 15, 1977 (evening)

December 16, 1977 (late night)

December 23, 1977 (late night)

December 28, 1977 (evening)

December 30, 1977 (late night)

This is an unedited report from November 5, 1985 on Election Day, as County Legislator Steve Englebright is reelected. Multiple takes as we tally the early returns in the race pitting Englebright against challenger Helen Lefkowitz, a race particularly marked by mudslinging. In an interview with Englebright, he gives his thoughts on the campaign, compares this night to the election returns of two years ago, and tells us what to look forward to in the next two years. He discusses the fight to keep the Shoreham nuclear plant from opening and the continuing challenge to protect the pine barrens and drinking water. We hear about what has been accomplished since 1983 and learn what the Ratepayers Against LILCO line is and what it stands for. This segment ends with a victory speech by Englebright.

Oh yes, the Friday afternoon shows. I thought these had all been destroyed. This was the period in 1985 where I was into telling stories on the air about a fictitious town in the area and its assorted citizens. Nobody else was doing anything like that, right?

Stoneyhaven came about through the old Tripod Family serial that aired on the Voice of Long Island back in the 1980s. I expanded that world a bit and came up with a new story each week. On this first edition, aired on September 20, 1985, the subject matter included the start of school and the local newspaper. A good bit of the rest of the show is also included here.

The first of a bunch of features from Baffin Island, a place I decided to go in April of 1987 when I became curious about what happened if you just kept driving north. It turns out you'd never get to Baffin Island since it was so far north you could only get there by plane. What I found was an incredible community in a place called Frobisher Bay (in the process of being renamed to Iqaluit to reflect its Inuit culture). I arrived just in time for an annual festival called Toonik Tyme, a brief recording of which is contained here.

On Monday, June 27, 1977, WUSB officially went on the air at 90.1FM. (The station had existed as a carrier current outlet at 820AM for a number of years prior.) This is the first half hour of that momentous broadcast day. Station Manager Norm Prusslin introduces the station. Also appearing are Dr. John S. Toll, president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook; Ishai Bloch, president of the Student Polity Association at Stony Brook; and Richard Koch, program manager of WUSB. Controversies come up almost immediately, as well as a preview of what to look forward to. After some closing words from Norm, the official sign-on takes place, followed by a WUSB news promo and the "WUSB 5:42 News" with Paul Harris, Frank Burgert, and Dave Fink. Some of the news stories of the day include a vote to strike against the Long Island Railroad Saturday, protests against Caroline Kennedy getting a job at the New York Daily News, the fight for decriminalization of marijuana, and the future of "Star Wars" on television. An anti nuclear power Friends of the Earth PSA was also part of this broadcast, along with a sports report, a Chuck Mangione legal ID, and the beginning of the "WUSB Concert Series."

In March of 1984, I was involved in the first year of 2600. I was also in the thick of a major hacking case involving a company called GTE Telenet. The FBI had raided WUSB and my friend's house because those were the two locations that I was connecting from (I had yet to have my own computer). After months of limbo, I was getting impatient and wanted the case to move forward. So after determining that half a year after the raids (October 1983), there had been no effort to improve security (the default password remained "A"), a friend and I visited Robert Krulwich over at National Public Radio to share the story with him. These "Morning Edition" pieces were the result. And shortly after they aired, I got the indictment I was pushing for.

While the practice newscast we posted two days ago was my first attempt to be a radio staffperson, it wasn't the first time I tried to be on the air. That distinction belongs to a beloved call-in show that aired in the early days of WUSB called "The Saturday Night Circus." It was alternately hosted by Ed Goldberg and Paul Harris. My friends and I would spend the night trying to get on the air and do something memorable or funny.

In the first excerpt (an Ed Goldberg episode dated October 15, 1977), my friend Al is doing a pretty good job talking about the recently argued Bakke case on affirmative action (the topic of the night), but, as was often the case, the call had ulterior motives and soon took a turn. Following that was my first-ever attempt, where I called myself "Star God" (seriously, WHAT was I thinking), went nowhere, but my second call was actually on topic. However, I was in the same house as my friend Al who had other plans and a phone extension. There are a bunch more calls included here.

The second excerpt is a Paul Harris episode dated October 22, 1977. His shows had a very different flavor and he tolerated less nonsense, as I was about to prove. My friend Al had an amazing conversation about Lenin, Stalin, Marx, and the Bolsheviks as parallels to The Beatles while I made a ridiculous argument about how driving faster was a great way to save gas (based on an actual argument a kid in one of my classes had made). I didn't make it very far.