We did not have a family radio in my home when I was a child: neither of my parents cared about music and were content for news from the local newspaper, The Hudson Register-Star. My parents, particularly my father, did not believe in anything that gave one pleasure, especially if it cost money and didn't make money, though he did buy a TV so my mother could watch soap operas. Radio drama was coming to an end in the 50's but I still wanted to listen to it --especially the remaining Westerns -- and my brother and I were both baseball fans and wanted to listen to the games on the radio. So we both were able to use birthday money from grandparents to buy inexpensive crystal radio sets (the power comes from the radio waves themselves), put them together (one can still do this) and start listening to the radio, each in the privacy of our own room; we particularly liked the AM baseball broadcasts at night, as the signals bounced to us often from far away and which we listened to with cheap earphones under the covers. Red Barber and Mel Allen were the announcers for the Yankees and Vin Scully, who started in 1950 and is still going strong, was the announcer for the Dodgers.
When I was twelve I had a paper route and was able to use some of the money to buy a portable radio that could also be plugged in and that's when I started to listen to popular music, especially New York station WABC, which had quite a strong signal. I was fairly indiscriminate in my taste but was particularly fond of The Beach Boys. In 1962 I went away to school in New Hampshire and listened mostly to Boston Top 40 stations, savoring the British bands of that period; I was especially fond of The Rolling Stones because adults seemed to dislike them almost as much as they disliked Elvis Presley when I was younger.
When I came to New York to attend college in 1965 I still listened mostly to pop music, until I took Music Humanities, a required course at Columbia. That opened my eyes and ears to classical music and opera, of which there was a great deal in N.Y. While growing up in Hudson, N.Y. I never heard of classical music and never had attended a concert. I started going to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center fairly regularly, as well as the lower-priced and exciting NYC Opera. I also started going to ballet and dance performances, which also helped me appreciate a wider range of music: seeing the wonderfully musical ballets of Balanchine helped me to appreciate the intricacies of composers as different as Tchaikovsky and Bach. And I also started listening frequently to classical radio stations WQXR and WNCN (especially the late night show of Bill Watson, who would play Mozart's Requiem twice in a row).
I bought a lot of records and listened to a lot of radio in the 60's and during that period many things happened --the good, the bad, and the ugly -- but among the best were discovering WBAI and discovering country music. In 1966 I first heard of Bob Fass when he did a "fly-in", something of a "be-in" except that it took place at Kennedy airport. The press mentioned his show, Radio Unnameable, on WBAI at midnight, Monday to Friday, and I started to listen to its marvelous combination of free-form music and comedy, a very individual style that also influenced WBAI personalities Steve Post (Saturday and Sunday) and Larry Josephson (weekday mornings). Unexpected and interesting things were always happening on Radio Unnameable; for instance, it was where Arlo Guthrie performed "Alice's Restaurant" for the first time. And it was around this time that The Byrds, a favorite rock group of mine, did their album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" and got me interested for the first time in country music. As popular music had become solipsistic and formulaic I started to discover the populist authenticity of country music. ...to be continued
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