Did You record songs off the radio?

[Dawn]

Here's a great older thread I thought would be cool to resurrect.

I haven't taped at all off the radio since 2006. A lot of that is due to my seldom listening to cassettes anymore, although I still have many of the cassettes I taped off the radio years ago. Is it ever strange to hear commercials and station IDs for businesses and radio stations that are long gone!

A lot of my old ones date from 1980-1984. But, what's interesting is how many older songs are on those cassettes as well. The playlist of the station I listened to most often was about 80-85% top 40, but they would play the occasional recurrent song from the '70s, and I have a lot of those on those tapes - songs like Steve Miller's Swingtown, Steely Dan's Do It Again, and Paul McCartney's Listen to What the Man Said to name a few.

I still have that "Best of 1981" tape I mentioned in the original post. Hard to believe it will be 28 years ago this December that it aired! Makes me feel old!

Although I don't use tapes anymore, I will still occasionally record a song off of an internet radio stream. It's a lot of trouble to capture and edit them down, plus the sound quality sometimes is not great, so I usually do that only with songs that aren't available any other way.

[gremashlo]

I distinctly remember taping several Casey Kasem countdowns--one that comes to mind featured Billy Joel's "It's STill Rock and Roll" as having dropped a few spots, and their featured oldie was "Tears of a Clown"...odd what one remembers...

I especially remember trying to adjust the dial so the "stereo" readings would stay on! Geez, I feel old. Where's my JC Penney Coronado hi-fi?

[Dawn]

Jul 17, 2009 15:24:29 GMT -5 gremashlo said:

I distinctly remember taping several Casey Kasem countdowns--one that comes to mind featured Billy Joel's "It's STill Rock and Roll" as having dropped a few spots, and their featured oldie was "Tears of a Clown"...odd what one remembers...

I especially remember trying to adjust the dial so the "stereo" readings would stay on! Geez, I feel old. Where's my JC Penney Coronado hi-fi?

I might have that countdown! Sirius/XM airs AT 40s from the '70s and '80s on the weekends, and I've been recording them onto DVR and then onto DVDs. That reference to Tears of a Clown sounds familiar - will have to go through the '80 ones I have and see if it's among them.

[Ken]

I sure did!

I started in December of 1980, taping a John Lennon tribute from one of my local top 40 AM stations. I still have it and listen to it every so often. It's not bad quality at all considering the way I recorded it, sitting my portable cassette player in front of my brother's portable AM / FM radio lol! oh those were the days.One commercial I remember is an ad for a Stevie Wonder concert - it's neat to hear and because the station was promoting the show, it was played quite a few times throughout the special.


The rest of my radio cassettes date from 1982 - 1985. The quality of these is great, because by then I had my trusty AIWA ghetto blaster, it was a great machine and sounded fantastic. Like you Dawn, the stations I was recording from were all top 40 FM stations but they would also mix in songs from the 50's, 60's and 70's.


One tape I have, that I love is a " top 500 songs of all time" countdown from labor day weekend 1984, I didn't get much sleep that weekend - lol. The local FM station I recorded it from, I believe still does it to this day. Songs on the cassette include the Theme from Flashdance, American Pie, Born To Be Wild, Itchycoo Park, Jessie's Girl, One of These Nights and The Twist.


The last thing I recorded off the radio to cassette was a George Harrison tribute in late Nov /early Dec 2001.

I haven't used cassettes since then. Now, I record the occasional song or interview from an internet radio stream using Wavepad sound editor, then bun it to CD - R. I've actually found the quality to be quite good and have been very happy with the results.

[H2IZCOOL]

I probably haven't taped off the radio in 35 years or so. I still have some of the old reel to reel tapes I recorded back then, but I haven't listened to them in years. I don't know if my old Grundig still works.

[dave910]

From the 80's until the early 90's, I would tape my favorite songs off the radio, mostly top 40 stations. I would record just the songs, I cut out most of the DJ chatter and the commercials as well. But looking back, I wish I had just recorded 45 min of a shift with commercials and the DJ intros as well. I have many of these tapes still in my closet, but as I stated they are just a collection of songs. What I used to do was be my own DJ so I could get the full intro to speak over myself. I do have my old air checks from when I worked at an AM station as well as many from my college days.

As a side note, a friend of mine gave me a CD-R of an air check from WPLJ 95.5 which was NYC's big album rock station. The quality is not too bad considering the air date was June 2, 1977. This has commercials, DJ Tony Pigg introducing the songs and great playlist. I may write a future post on this at a later date.

[Sith Penguin]

sure did. i remember my brother used to do it in the early 90's, and we'd sit there listening and waiting for a good song to come on to record. when i got my own radio/tape player a few years later, i started making my own mix tapes. i did it pretty much up until 2 or 3 years ago when the player finally bit the dust. i still have the most recent tape somewhere.