SO HERE IS THE BIG QUESTION: WHAT IS A RADIO SHOW? WHY COLLECT THEM? WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?
Well, those are good questions, especially if you have never known of them.
Radio Shows are syndicated productions by one of several large and small distributors who supply broadcast product to radio stations normally during weekends when the usual air personalities have a break.
Many air on Saturday or Sunday evenings or during overnight segments. They often feature some of the best known voices for their genre from across the country thus the Dick Clark's and Casey Kasem's and Rick Dees and Dick Bartley and so many others.
People collect them for various reasons.
Some just collect the series because they like it and want them all.
Some collect their favorite artists or genre of music. Rather than an album by the artist or a compilation bought at Wal Mart or downloaded through iTunes or wherever, they have a unique presentation of their favorite artist or music not available anywhere else and always with dj presentations which were very entertaining.
Some collect interviews with their favorite artists as most shows had interview segments.
Some collect commercials especially old car commercials but certainly not limited to only those.
AND, these shows are in limited quantity.
They were printed just for syndicated stations in the United States. Many have just a few still in circulation. Some of the more popular shows may have as many as a hundred of each week's show that survived but think about it. A hundred for some 200 million Americans and millions of overseas collectors who look for unique presentations of their favorite artists or form of music is about as rare as rare can be.
And, many if not most stations just threw them away after the show aired because the content was dated by the commercials and could not be aired again so they were in that sense worthless and not worth the storage.
So there are likely very very few of these great shows remaining.
This being the case, they are increasingly hard to find and more and more expensive all the time.
They were first distributed on reel to reel tape if the show goes back that far into the 60's, then later on lp, later on CD and even later (after 2000 for most shows) on CDR. Now they are not available at all to collectors since they are distributed by digital download much like you get your music from iTunes.
These shows become rarer and rarer every day because the people who buy them hold on to them and the people who sell them, like me, are running out of them. My best contact for radio shows is out so I am at the mercy of finding a good deal here and there but never from a regular source.
The shows that you get now and hold on to will never decrease in value and only increase. I have prided myself since the start to provide the best and fairest cost with a no holds barred guarantee that you will be happy or I refund your money.
I sell them for near what I bought them for. I give volume discounts and discount postage always. As the postal service increases their rates, my shipping rates over the years has decreased.
And, I have one of the biggest radio show libraries in the world consisting of over ten thousand shows, so many that I don't even know all that I have and am sometimes amazed when I go to look for one show and find another that I did not realize I had.
Finally, it is Americana at its best. Whether the show be from the 60's or 2000's, rock, countdown, oldies, country, classical, religious, jazz or big band, it is unique and home grown.
And you just can't find them anywhere. Even record stores that still exist will rarely have any. Radio shows are wonderful representations of the real golden age of radio at least music wise. And every one you buy is an original, not a copy, not a remake - all are limited editions in the hundreds at most and most much less. Once you get hooked, like me, it is a love affair for life! Welcome to the Club!
AND, IF YOU BUY FIVE ITEMS AT ONE TIME FROM MY STORE THE SIXTH OF EQUAL OR LESSER VALUE IS FREE. JUST EMAIL ME THROUGH THE EBAY SYSTEM WITH THE SHOW TITLE AND DATE AND I WILL INCLUDE IT IN YOUR PACKAGE.
SO, ON WITH THE SHOW!!!! Picture yourself back in the late 50's or 60's, even the 70's. You were glued to your transistor radio listening to the top 40 presented by your local radio station. You had that radio glued to your ear or connected with the little earphone jack that immediately broke.
Your local dj was great. He knew the music. He had the gift of talking which rarely occurs anymore. You loved the presentation of the music as much as the sounds. You liked the station jingles.
And on weekends when the local dj's had off, you listened to either taped shows they did during the week to be played on the weekend or a syndicated radio show featuring one of the greats. It was the golden age of country and rock. Music was king and the dj's were just as popular. You can relive those days whether you grew up then or just wish you had on only a handful of oldies shows. THIS IS ONE OF THEM.
OK guys and gals, in this outing, A RARE TREAT!!! This show, for all you vinyl lovers, and there are a bunch out there judging by the number of you that have responded to my rare and old vinyl radio show sales, is a rare vinyl that you will not find on eBay ever.
It is called NIGHTBIRD AND COMPANY WITH ALLISON STEELE AND WAS PRESENTED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMY RESERVE WEEKLY.
IT IS A LEGENDARY SHOW AS ALLISON STEELE HERSELF WAS LEGENDARY.
It was sent to stations as a weekly half hour show, each show featuring a specific artist or group. There were two half hour shows on each lp.
Each show contained multiple interviews and music.
The life of Alison Steele can be seen below. She was truly an iconic figure in the development of FM radio rock and was known all over the country for her talent.
Alison Steele (born Ceil Loman on January 26, 1937; died September 27, 1995) was a pioneering American disc jockey in Manhattan at what would become the archetypal progressive rock radio station in the United States, WNEW-FM 102.7. She was commonly known as "The Nightbird". She also became a writer, television producer, correspondent and an entrepreneur
Born Ceil Loman in Brooklyn, New York, Alison Steele began her career in media at the age of 14, running errands for a local television station. At 19, she met and married orchestra leader Ted Steele, who was 20 years her senior. They eventually went their separate ways, and thereafter Alison raised their daughter, Heather, as a single parent.
Steele achieved her greatest following as a disc jockey on WNEW-FM 102.7, where she hosted the night shift in a new format when contemporary rock music began to be featured on FM radio. FM stations broadcast in high fidelity and, typically, had featured classical or instrumental music in the New York market. This all changed in the 1960s when this station led the switch to FM stations for the musical preferences of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. After a major change in station programming from a briefly instituted all-female middle of the road (MOR) music format to what was becoming known as progressive rock radio occurred at WNEW-FM 102.7, she took the new late-night position.
Steele acknowledged that she did not know much about progressive rock when she started the program, and apparently, neither did the management of the station, but the new programming was being extended to the growing market. Steele was given complete freedom to plan and present her program. In the process, she developed her persona as "The Nightbird", and acquired a massive, loyal audience. Her audience was estimated in 1971 at approximately 78,000 nightly, with the majority of listeners being men between the ages of 18 and 34.
Steele began her show by reciting poetry over Andean flute music, before introducing her show in her well-known sultry, smoky voice with,
- “The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.”
She then made a transition to recordings of some of the more exceptional and experimental music being recorded at the time, as well as featuring the best of the familiar favorites of her audience.
Some of the groups Steele featured were progressive rock and space rock outfits such as the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Jefferson Airplane, Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, the Chambers Brothers, Hot Tuna, Yes, Genesis, Hawkwind, Kiss, Lothar and the Hand People, Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese, The Stooges, Ramases, Renaissance, Curved Air, Bloodrock, Tomita and many other groups from a variety of genres. Frequently the recordings of these groups were long and extended, sometimes without any singles on the album. Her programming often included seamless transitions to the next music featured, with minimal identifications at the end of a related session that could last most of an hour. The required station identification at half-past-the-hour provided the opportunity for credits.
If it was raining on a Monday night, she always would play The Doors classic, "Riders on the Storm" as her first song, setting the mood for that night's show. She always ended her shows with The Beatles instrumental song, "Flying", over which she would say her goodbye message.
According to Jimi Hendrix's manager, Michael Jeffery, the song "Night Bird Flying", recorded by him and released posthumously on the album, The Cry Of Love, was inspired by Alison's late-night Manhattan radio program. and a poem in his handwriting reads: Hello night bird. How was your day? Did you visit the gods in the valleys far away? What did you bring me, in your visit from the sea? The song originally was intended to be the flip-side of a planned single.
Her show became an instant hit and did much to push WNEW-FM 102.7 into the forefront of progressive rock radio. At one point, she also served as the music director of the station. Steele became the first woman named as Billboard Magazine FM Personality of the Year.
Steele left WNEW-FM 102.7 in 1979 and worked as a television producer, writer, and correspondent for Limelight on CNN.[She served as the announcer for the daytime soap opera, Search for Tomorrow, from 1981 to 1984, and then returned to New York radio as a host on WNEW–AM from 1984 to 1986.For a number of years, Steele was also the disc jockey for the pop/rock in-flight audio entertainment channel on board Trans World Airlines.
From 1989 to 1995, she was on WXRK. She also did some work for VH1, as well as running the cat boutique Just Cats with her sister, Joyce Loman, on East 60th Street in Manhattan. Steele did much voice-over work for radio and television commercials, and she provided the narration for one of Howard Stern's most famous bits, "Larry Fine at Woodstock", where the former member of the Three Stooges was voiced by Billy West.
Steele died of stomach cancer on September 27, 1995, aged 58.
HERE IS HER OBITUARY AS PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
Alison Steele, Disk Jockey, Dies; The Pioneer 'Nightbird' Was 58
By DAVID STOUT
Published: September 28, 1995
Alison Steele, whose sultry voice and iron will helped her become one of the first women in the country to be hired as a disk jockey, died yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 58.
Ms. Steele, who lived in Manhattan, died of cancer, her family said.
She was widely known to late-night radio listeners as "the Nightbird." Her most recent perch was WXRK, a classic rock-and-roll station at 92.3 FM. She was on Monday through Friday from 2 to 6 A.M.
Ms. Steele loved to work hours that most other people find good for sleeping. "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 usually received 25 to 30 telephone calls a night; in her early years, she also had her champagne-colored French poodle, Genya, to keep her company, chewing on a bone in the studio as Ms. Steele talked to listeners.
Ms. Steele also worked for WPIX radio and often did voice-overs for radio and television commercials, according to her sister, Joyce Loman. Her syrupy voice was not affected by a flirtation with miniature cigars that she indulged in her early days on radio but gave up years ago, her sister said.
Ms. Steele and her sister operated Just Cats, a feline boutique on East 60th Street in Manhattan, but Ms. Steele was fond of dogs as well.
She is a member of the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and in 1976 became the first woman to receive Billboard Magazine's "FM Personality of the Year" award.
Ms. Steele was born in Brooklyn. At 14, she was an errand girl for a New York television station. Later she became a production assistant and associate producer at a New York radio station.
Her big break came in 1966, when she was one of four chosen from about 800 to be part of a disk jockey lineup made up solely of women on WNEW-FM. The station abandoned that idea 18 months later but asked one woman, Ms. Steele, to stay on.
"I've never called in sick; I've worked hard and built my own following," she once said, to explain her popularity.
A marriage to the bandleader Ted Steele ended in divorce.
In addition to her sister Joyce, of Manhattan, she is survived by a daughter, Heather Steele, of South Dakota; another sister, Emalie Daniel, of Houston, and a granddaughter.
THE SHOW COMES ON ONE LP, IN BEAUTIFUL VIRGIN VINYL, PLAYED ONLY ONCE ON THE DAY OF BROADCAST AND THEN CAREFULLY STORED SINCE. THERE ARE NO CUE SHEETS IN THIS SERIES - THE FEATURED ARTIST OR GROUP IS PRINTED ON THE LABEL AS SEEN IN THE LISTING PICTURE.
ALSO IN THE LISTING PICTURE IS PICTURED THE ALBUM IN WHICH THE SHIPMENT OF FOUR WEEKS OF SHOWS WAS MADE. EACH LP CONTAINS TWO FULL HALF HOUR SHOWS.
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ARTISTS WERE ERIC BURDON AIRING ON MARCH 23, 1975 AND PETER ALLEN AIRING ON MARCH 30, 1975
You will love this UNIQUE ONE OF A KIND show and it belongs in your collection. It is a great variety of music along with intimate interviews and facts about each featured artist. You will enjoy great music and the best part is that you can hear them again and again, over and over, whenever you want.
Remember, when you buy this show, not only will you own the tune but also interspersed between songs is fascinating commentary on the artists and songs.
Also, keep in mind that this and all shows are not just about the music - the music can be found anywhere. It is the mixture of great music and great announcing that makes it so entertaining.
As well, it is a piece of radio history. IT IS AMERICANA!
MOST PEOPLE DON'T EVEN KNOW THESE SHOWS EXIST AND SO DON'T KNOW WHAT TREASURES THEY ARE. THE INTERVIEWS ARE PRICELESS. THEY ARE A PART OF HISTORY You just aren't going to find these shows anymore. Think of what they will be worth in a few years! (IF you wanted to sell.) I am selling to share with other music lovers what I was able to get at a reasonable price
Good Luck and God Bless You.