Somehow an old friend of mine had the foresight to tape himself on air when he had a summer job with WLNG, back when the Big Signal made use of even more of a reverbing echo chamber effect and even more of those time-warp jingles produced in a studio in Texas.
He played me a snippet, his voice coming through across the decades as a newsreader, as the Brits more accurately put it, the big story something about a plane crash up the Island. No stumbles, no hiccups, no ums, he was surprisingly good, his voice’s timbre deeper and more authoritative than his 20-ish years might attest.
I’d forgotten that newsy part of his radio work, choosing to focus instead on his spinning records as a D.J., like the time he introduced a particular Stevie Wonder tune with, “And now here’s ‘Jammin’ ’ — the long one.”
That would be the extended version.
He captured some of Paul Sidney’s work on that tape, too, if you remember Sag Harbor’s man behind the mic at all hours, year after year, one profit-making “remote” broadcast after another — slightly slurred, but never at a loss for words.
It was a cellphone photo my friend sent of a vintage cassette tape that brought me up short, however. I lost every one of mine, maybe half a dozen shoeboxes’ worth, in the Great Flood of Superstorm Sandy, when we lived near the bay in Flanders and our basement was hit with a foot and a half of water.
Of course, almost any music can be resurrected on YouTube these days, but, also of course, it’s not the same as pawing the plastic.
So, while my now-20-year-old son was denied that pleasure, it’s surprising the extent to which he’s discovered my old favorites on his own. First it was Electric Light Orchestra’s great “Out of the Blue” double album, the spaceship album, that is, the one that came with a paper foldout spacecraft. My old WLNG friend and I practically wore out that vinyl as kids. My son became such a fan we took in a flawless ELO show, the band’s long-awaited return in 2018, in fact, at Madison Square Garden.
And so on, until the other day, when I’m having a beer with my old friend and my son texts me out of the blue with Cocteau Twins recommendations. An early adopter of that dreamy Scottish band when I was cool and living in Boston in the late 1980s, my heart sang.
Now if he’d just tune his dial to 92.1 WLNG, the circle would be complete.