History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
This is most likely not Ellen, the DJ you hear on the aircheck below (I picked the photo because the studio equipment was period-correct for live operated FM radio stations of 1968...And she looked cool.)
There's a certain indescribable beauty to an unscoped radio aircheck.
Hold up, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself; What's an unscoped radio aircheck?
An unscoped radio aircheck is a complete, unedited recording of an over the air radio or TV broadcast. For example, have you ever popped a blank cassette in your tape deck, hit record and just let the tape roll until it ends, capturing DJ talk, commercials, music, jingles, everything? Congratulations! You just made an unscoped aircheck! Without even knowing what you were doing was even professionally called!
They're like aural snapshots back in time. To a time and/or place we may or may not remember. For however long the tape lasts, you get to virtually relive that time again. But in a non-intrusive way, where you can go about doing other things while enjoying the soundtrack.
KMSC 102.1 was a "popular, semi-classical, and semi-jazz music and news" (i.e. Easy Listening) radio station in the Houston area. With studios in the pre-fab city of Clear Lake City, TX (which was annexed into Houston proper in the '70s) It's still home to the Manned Spacecraft Center (which was renamed into the Johnson Space Center in 1973.)
Recorded at around 4:18am on Saturday morning, August 17, 1968. On this tape, you'll hear Ellen play space-age jazz, the kind of stuff you'd probably expect in a master-planned bedroom community full of astronauts and engineers. The DJ, Ellen, is young, groovy, her Texas accent pure and uncompromised. The music is directly from vinyl, as evidenced by the surface noise and occasional skip or stuck groove.
KMSC continued until 1975. 102.1 FM in Houston has been the legendary KMJQ "Majic 102" since 1977.
Apparently, there was supposed to be a meteor or an asteroid crashing into planet Earth. And God and his angels would blow their trumpets and we'll all be treated to the end of all humanity in a horrific catastrophe with a nice jazzy soundtrack. Or something to that effect.
The internet is filled with crazy videos and websites from wacky conspiracy theorists claiming that "The End Times" are coming.
You'll have to pardon me if I'm not much fun here. I've seen and heard it all. You can only see and hear so much of this nonsense before you just get bored of it (and before anyone starts firing off any comments about repentance and it's-for-real and you-just-wait, save your breath. Or keystrokes.)
You can't set an exact date on such a thing either.
But fear in America isn't just an emotion. It's a big industry. Politicians use fear to get votes. Radio and TV personalities use fear to get ratings and sales. And people on the internet like spreading fear for fun. Which translates into dollars for enterprising scam artists that feed off the money of the fearful, who are often the same people who tout the virtues of "freedom and liberty" (or the far-right version of it.) Which is odd because you can't have either if you're always scared.
Nibiru is an alleged planet that every year since 2003 was supposed to crash into Earth or tilt its rotational axis, causing the usual global catastrophe.
Much of this is spread further by radio hosts such as Art Bell, George Noory and
Alex Jones, who host syndicated radio talk programs to audiences who
are looking for something to justify their own delusions about "The Great Unknown" or "What The Government Won't Tell You". Who then make
outlandish videos for YouTube and websites supporting the theories these hosts entertain or these individuals add their own twist to them.
Religious people especially like to get people worked up over doom and gloom. And for the same reason; It makes money. Hundreds of books have been written on "The End Times", some of them New York Times bestsellers.
In 2011, evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping made an infamous prediction over his Family Radio network of stations predicting the return of Jesus Christ on May 21, 2011. This prompted many employees and listeners of Family Radio to sell or donate their worldly possessions in anticipation of "The End".
When this did not materialize, Camping pushed back the date by five months to October 21,2011. When nothing happened on this date, Camping quickly disappeared from the airwaves, replaced by reruns of his own program. Camping died on December 15, 2013. He is survived by the world. The failure of his predictions as well as falling listener donations have led to the sale of many of his radio stations.
But as any of you who have had to deal with friends or relatives who were panicky about the whole "Y2K" debacle, you begin to seriously wonder if there needs to be a law requiring a disclaimer to all these programs and websites to at least protect the mentally unstable (which will surely cause stock in tinfoil to collapse.)
Then when nothing happens, they scramble for some explanation to save their asses. Which makes them and those that believed in them the first time around look even more foolish.
Personally, the only thing that can really destroy the Earth is the greed of the human race itself. Not some bipolar "god". Or things from outer space. But as long as there are fragile minded, easily terrified people, there will be always be someone trying to exploit that fear.
And as I speak, there's someone out there making up another end of the world story. And this time, it's for real. It's the big one. You better get ready this time.
This is the end product of crass over commercialization of a fantastically successful movie franchise (and crass over commercialization is something new Star Wars franchise owner Disney has made a fucking SCIENCE of.) A totally useless and crummy knockoff of itself.
This was among the last releases from the dying RSO Records label. RSO was still smarting from the massive failure of their first and only entry in the movie business, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Which costed the company millions to produce and millions more to promote and barely drew flies, let alone an audience at the time of it's release.
Like another upstart '70s record label and their biggest rival, Casablanca Records, RSO was a wildly successful record label gone horribly wrong. They both made a serious error on betting far too much on disco and when disco died, they were both left with massive image problems and a massive portion of their rosters of once platinum artists who suddenly couldn't sell cardboard.
On top of that, the Bee Gees had filed a $200 million lawsuit against RSO and were forced to settle out of court and the band stayed with the label until it dissolved
In fact, the only album RSO released that sold anything decently in 1980 was the Irene Cara-heavy soundtrack to the movie Fame. But RSO was still drowning in red ink.
In 1981, RSO finally yelled uncle and sold out to it's distributor, Polydor Records, who promptly dissolved the label and save the always lucrative Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees (who both had the advantage of the upper hand over their former label, which Polydor inherited, But they were also still platinum sellers outside the US), sent everyone else packing.
This record was part of a deal to distribute soundtrack albums for the Star Wars franchise. Christmas In The Stars actually sold fairly well and a second printing was planned, But RSO was so deep in debt, they couldn't even raise the capital for that.
But the REAL kicker on this album is the last track on Side 1, "R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas", sung by a young lad named John Bongiovi (You may know him better as Jon Bon Jovi.) In his first professional recording.......
