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Do-it-yourself station revels in obscure oldies
BY JIM PHILLIPS
Athens NEWS Senior Writer
Imagine a radio station that plays vintage rock, pop and country music around the clock, seven days a week, with no commercials.
A station that hearkens back to the days when disc jockeys picked songs they liked, not just the ones on some narrow 20-tune playlist. A station that serves up such an overwhelming variety of artists and styles that you could listen for a month and never hear the same song twice. And for good measure, it even has cute jingles and a funny radio soap opera.
You may think such a fantasy unlikely in this era of Clear Channel, satellite feeds, and sound-alike music formats disgorged by giant record companies. But hallelujah, thanks to two local men and the Federal Communications Commission, it is now a reality in Athens County.
WEAK-LP FM recently went on the air at 106.7 on the FM dial. It's a low-power, non-commercial station that holds a special brand of FCC license. It operates on 100 watts, where the typical FM station would have 1,000 or more.
According to founders Richard Whitmore and Jim Williams, WEAK should be picked up on a car radio anywhere in about a 10- to 15-mile radius from the transmitter, on Ohio Rt. 56 in Union, a few miles to the west of Athens. It's a smaller radius for home receivers, and listeners who want to hear the station may need to get an external antenna. (On the near east side of Athens, where this reporter lives, the station comes in pretty well on the home stereo, thought with a little crackle.)
Whitmore said he's found a car will pick up the station's signal as far northwest as Nelsonville, where it gets crowded by another low-power station at the same frequency in Logan.
The notion of low-power stations, the men say, was fought by the National Association of Broadcasters, who feared interference with their markets. The FCC has begun issuing low-power licenses, however, with the condition that the stations must be non-commercial.
The station is incorporated as Hobby Radio, Inc., and the men say they want it to serve as a community outlet for people to discuss their hobbies, and for local bands to get their music played.
Whitmore and Williams themselves share a hobby, the collection of "oldies" music dating mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. Genuine thrift-store junkies, they have compiled a gargantuan collection of such tunes, which over the last seven years or so they've been recording onto computer hard drives. When they finally got their station on the air, they had a huge vault of tunes ready to go.
"We've bought and borrowed CDs and 45s and LPs and tapes," Williams said. "We've got thousands of hours of songs."
And what songs. Both men are omnivorous gourmands of virtually every popular style of the early rock 'n' roll era, and firm believers that in addition to Elvis, the Beatles and Motown, they should offer the tunes of the hundreds of other artists who were not so big or well known.
"We're trying to introduce that sound we grew up with in the '50s and '60s," Williams explained. (Both men are in their late 50s.) Even commercial "oldies" formats, he said, tend to slight more obscure artists for the big names.
"Clear Channel (a comglomerate that owns hundreds of radio stations across the country) has gobbled up everything, and there's no diversity," Williams said. "You can hear Elvis and the Beatles, but you never hear Connie Francis, Fats Domino, Bobby Rydell, or Brenda Lee."
(To be scrupulously fair, Robin Barnes on WATH has a nice oldies show where she'll slip in some far-out numbers, and "Radio Free Athens" on WOUB AM Saturdays digs into some dusty archives as well, though it plays newer music.)
Based on a few days of listening to WEAK, however, even Bobby Rydell seems a household name compared to some of the artists that get their records spun on the station.
The diversity of the music is mind-boggling, pulling in doo-wop, soul, garage rock, surf guitar instrumentals, girl groups, novelty tunes, countrified pop numbers, and the Lord knows what all. These guys put the ram in the rama lama ding dong, and they're not afraid to play B-sides. Real obscure B-sides. How many times in the last 50 years would you figure Patti Page's rendition of "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" has been heard over the airwaves?
If you know anything about vintage American pop music, you'll find listening a delight and a challenge, as you hear songs you probably haven't heard in years, and many you've probably never heard.
In an effort to recreate the classic sound of '50s and '60s radio, the two men have commissioned a company to create them some vintage crooned jingles, like the WEAK "singing clock" that tells the time. They've also gotten a man from Michigan to provide a number of episodes of "Floating Flash Frisbone, Radio Ace," which tells the ongoing and amusing saga of a deejay who can't hold a job.
"Back in the '60s and '70s era, there were a lot of radio serials done," Whitmore said. "I thought that I would get tired of listening to these, but every time I listen to them I hear something new."
The station is urging people to call in at 592-1067 with requests or community announcements. They can leave the message on the phone machine, and it will go on the air, or they can indicate that they don't want their voice on the radio, and Whitmore or Williams will read it. Callers also can record intros to songs of their choice. "You can be the deejay!" Whitmore said. Announcements also can be mailed to Hobby Radio, Inc., 6747 Ohio Rt. 56, Athens.
The aim of the station, Whitmore said, is to get the community involved in a fun radio project. They hope to get hobbyists of all kinds on the air talking about their pastimes, and also urge local musical performers to send in recordings for airplay. (Appropriately, top local Elvis impersonator Dwight Icenhower is already getting his records played there.)
WEAK was one of four parties in the area who applied for low-power licenses. Hope Radio, Inc., a church organization, got 104.5 FM here and in Marietta, while Hocking College got 97.5. Athens' cable access channel withdrew its application.
As a non-commercial station, WEAK can't take paid ads that name a price or a product, but they're hoping to eventually attract sponsors who will help them recoup the money they've put into the operation.
Both say they want the station to just make people feel good, as putting it together has already been a joy and a challenge for them.
"It's a stress reliever," Williams said.
