I have to give credit to The Oldies Board (a place you should consider joining if you love 60s music) for directing me towards a site called WIWSradio.com. It's a re-creation of a station that used to broadcast to Beckley, West Virginia on AM 1070, before it switched to FM many years ago. 

Yes, it plays your typical oldies music as well as a large share of obscure tunes, but that's not what makes it so different from other similar offerings on the worldwide web. This version plays ancient jingles, deliberately scratchy records and even purposely has static in its feed in order to authentically relive the way most of us heard AM radio in the 60s. 

So while it's streaming, the quality isn't 100% hi fidelity and that's totally by design. 

According to its website, the goal is to "relive hearing some of the best music ever made in a way that listeners first experienced it...with wide-open playlists spanning many styles of music with the bonus addition of vintage jingles and commercials."

Some of those old spots include things you'd never hear today, including cigarette commercials (I just heard that infamous "To a smoker, it's a Kent" singalong jingle that was banished decades ago) and there are others that may not be so politically correct today, although there's a warning on the site about that. It even has vintage news on its occasional newscasts.

Not entirely sure if it's geoblocked or not - it didn't work on one of my browsers, but did on Firefox, so if at first you don't succeed, try again. 

It's not for everyone, but for those who struggled to hear distant stations back in the day, it just might bring back the feel for an era that's a real blast from your past. 

WIWS Radio

Live feed