Forget the CDs and the music on computer. A station in Philadelphia has spent the day cueing up records with DJs playing nothing but vinyl on the air, some from their own personal collections.
WXPN is a public radio station run by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and everything from 6 AM Thursday to midnight is being spun off a 45 or 33 RPM record - complete with cracks, pops and whatever other noise comes off the old discs. If you missed it on Thursday, there will be a brief extension from 10AM-2PM on Saturday.
It's to celebrate Record Store Day on April 12th. I have to say some of the stuff they've played has been pretty good, especially if you're an oldies fan. One of the jocks I heard when I was listening commented he'd forgotten how much work it was running a show off of discs only, with removing the record from the sleeve, putting it on the turntable, ensuring the pot is down, and cueing it up to get it ready for broadcast, then starting the turntable and hoping for no "wow's".
"All I normally have to do is press a button!" he notes. And he says it's hard to know when the record is ending because there's no countdown or timer.
Even the IDs get into the spirit of the thing, with a female voice saying, "We're talking slower than normal so the disc jockey can cue up the next record."
But my favourite part of this is the Vinyl Cam, in which a static camera is focused solely on the two turntables in the studio and you can watch the jock cueing up the next song. You can see it - and hear it - here.
Now this is what they meant by throwback radio!
Evuguy wrote: