Weasel's Wild Weekend

Jonathan Gilbert joined WHFS 102.3 in the early 1970s. Beginning as an engineer, he quickly moved into full-time on-air work as Weasel. His distinctive voice and delivery and his legendary knowledge of -- and passion for -- all things musical made him one of the most recognizable and enduring members of the Einstein WHFS lineup.

Weasel stayed with WHFS through the Einstein Days, the Duchossis Days, and into the new Millennium. On January 1, 2000, as he signed off of his part in the Top 99.1 of 1999, he noted that he had now worked with WHFS in four decades: the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. By then the station was in decline, as its present owners tried to monetize it, gradually discarding the things that made WHFS the radio treasure it once had been. In 2003, feeling that the fun was gone, Weasel left WHFS for good. In 2005, 99.1 stopped being WHFS. After a few format changes, 99.1 has emerged as an all-news station, WNEW -- itself a recycling of another famous call sign that had once been synonymous with progressive music in New York City.

Since 2011, Weasel has made his radio home at WTMD 89.7 in Towson, MD. WTMD is the voice of Towson University and the most-listened-to NPR affiliate in Maryland. Branding themselves as "Radio for Music People," they are a strong advocate for and supporter of independent music in Baltimore, MD. A non-commercial station, they depend on listener support for a large part of their funding. This blogger proudly supports WTMD with his pledge dollars, and he urges you to do likewise.

For three hours every Friday night, Jonathan Gilbert hosts Weasel's Wild Weekend, a variety show with a weekly theme, everything from songs about smiles to commemorations of important days such as the Day the Music Died, when we lost Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper on February 3, 1959. And on the Friday before New Year's Day he does his Party Music program. As I listened to it, I realized that I had the answer to the question I posed on the Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium post: What would that program sound like fifteen years on? It would be none other than Weasel's Wildest Weekend of them All: the New Year's Eve Party Program!

Weasel's Wild Weekend Party Set 2014 -- 1.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Party Set 2014 -- 2.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Party Set 2014 -- 3.mp3

Update ... Well I'll be damned ... someone actually likes this Weasel's Wild Weekend thing. I got a request for the Baseball's Opening Day program from April 10, 2015, which I actually did manage to catch on my digital recorder. Here it is ... but you gotta promise ... if you download these recordings and enjoy our Weasel, Pledge WTMD. Become an encore club member. Radio stations don't last forever, and your pledge can help to keep Weasel on the air at WTMD ... not a promo roll ... just saying.

Weasel's Wild Weekend Baseball's Opening Day -- 1.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Baseball's Opening Day -- 2.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Baseball's Opening Day -- 3.mp3

Halloween Update: It seems that All Hallows Eve is one of Weasel's most auspicious days. To this day he devoted two whole episodes in 2014. The only other event that received such lavish treatment was Christmas. The Halloween program is divided into the Treats episode and the Tricks Episode. Each is presented in three segments of about an hour each. Here they are.

Weasel's Wild Weekend Halloween Treats 1.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Halloween Treats 2.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Halloween Treats 3.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Halloween Tricks 1.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Halloween Tricks 2.mp3
Weasel's Wild Weekend Halloween Tricks 3.mp3

Feast Your Ears ... --jkw

WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millenium

On December 31, 1999, the WHFS 99.1 team wrapped up the old year with a listener-vetted collection of songs known as the WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium. Well, sort of. As Rob Timm pointed out, there weren't any party songs written in the 13th, 14th, or 15th centuries, so it is really more like the Top 99 Party songs of the 20th Century. And after losing an argument with his "old man" at the dinner table, and feeling compelled to add a song that pre-dated WHFS by about half a century, Bob Waugh allowed that "some times you just have to add a few."
And what a broadcast it was. The program began at 2PM and lasted until after midnight. Bob Waugh presented the first five hours, and Rob Timm came on at 7PM -- the REAL Y2K moment, given that all that computer stuff runs on Greenwich Mean Time anyway. Between them, they played one song twice, several songs that had never before been heard on WHFS, and we learned a few things that evening. Rob Timm likes his Kiss loud, and Bob Waugh posed a verbal conundrum on the difference between the meanings of "Party Man"(a man belonging to a political party) and "Party Girl" (a physically attractive young woman hired to entertain male guests at parties).
And at ten o'clock, WHFS wrapped up the Millennium Party Song Collection and switched over to the MTV Millennium Mayhem Broadcast from Times Square, NY, what they called Y2K Ground Zero, for live music by Blink 182, No Doubt and others, and to HEAR THE BALL DROP at midnight. And with breathless amazement, the announcers on the scene observed "the lights are still on ..."
Not surprisingly, the list itself was rather loaded with songs of the last half of the '90s. After all this is the music we all had in our brains that year and that week. But it does make me wonder: how different would that list look today, fifteen years on, if a certain pair of millennium veteran DJs were to do it again this New Year's Eve?

The Program, as it aired in December 31, 1999

WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 1.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 2.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 3.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 4.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 5.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 6.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 7.mp3
WHFS Top 99 Party Songs of the Millennium 8.mp3

If you enjoyed this program, please post a comment and let me know ... think of it as signing a guest book. Thanks and, as they used to say on Einstein's HFS, Feast Your Ears.

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999

1999 saw the release of what would become the last of the Just Passin' Thru CDs, as another fine program was left behind in the last century. The station was now firmly within the CBS portfolio. Its music continued to shift to a harder, more youthful, more Generation-X direction, as its historical audience, this blogger included, turned elsewhere for our music.

This "Generation-X" directional shift reflected the larger embrace of decadence within the United States at a variety of levels. Culture wars were afoot everywhere you turned, from Congress to talk radio, from the PTA to the Supreme Count, where 5-4 decisions had become the norm. This phenomenon, which generational theorists call the Unraveling, was a time of weak institutions and high individualism. The previous unraveling in U.S. History was the Roaring Twenties, ending with the Crash of 1929. It is interesting to note that the recent unraveling also ended as a broad financial crisis -- the Crash of 2008 and the Great Recession -- roiled the world. But that is another story. 


The 99.1th song is a rather naughty little thing called "No Class of 99" by Spaz Luhrman, a knock-off parody of a successful Baz Luhrman song released in 1998. This song had itself made Number 26 in the countdown. It was based on a potential commencement address written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune in 1997. While tape degradation makes it difficult to hear at some points, enough remains intact to leave no doubt as to the author's message.

The song fits right in with the demotivational messages of the day what were daily joke fodder for young adults in their 20s and 30s.  The lyrics include the advice to "smoke cigarettes to mask puke breath." It recommending a variety of other maladaptive behaviors, such as judging others solely on physical appearance, standing idly by and criticizing, and leaving the places you live before you are involved in a drug deal gone bad. It encourages giving "the finger," noting that it is not passe' and it still hurts people's feelings. 

Moving on from the 99.1th song, the program continued with Weasel announcing the songs down to Number 74. As he closed out, he commented that he had now, as of today, played new rock on HFS during four decades -- the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Rob Timm took over and carried the countdown all the way to Number 5. Along the way he introduced us to his favorite new game of the year: "It's the first time this millennium I have done X." Paula Sangeleer came in and finished the countdown.

Another interesting observation: the stereophonic image of WHFS was broadcasting that day was significantly narrowed as compared to that observable on most compact disc recordings of the day. I'm not sure if this was by accident or an effort to make the station sound better on "boom boxes" and other such portable sound reproduction devices that were prevalent by the late 1990s, but whether intentional or otherwise it certainly degraded their original High Fidelity Stereo concept.

As always, we let the music and the presentation speak for itself. Give it a listen and post your thoughts. 

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -1- Top 99.1 to 83.mp3 
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -2- Top 82 to 67.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -3- Top 66 to 50.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -4- Top 49 to 33.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -5- Top 32 to 18.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -6- Top 17 to 4.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1999 -7- Top 3 to Number One, Paula Sangeleer.mp3

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998

THe Top 99.1 of 1998 aired on New Year's Day 1999. Gina Crash -- a rather over-partied version of her usual energetic self -- started things off and carried us through song number 54, complaining at times about the horns being a bit loud. Paula Sangeleer took over then and finished out the program.

1998 was a challenging year for the Top 99.1. The atmosphere was atrocious, with a major thermal inversion that challenged WHFS's usually clear signal in Columbia, MD. I had recently moved and did not yet have the outdoor antenna installed yet. These two factors contributed to a lower quality recording than the earlier ones -- fortunately these effects cleared up later in the day when the best songs were being aired. The program was further challenged by some noticeable tape degradation. Some of it cleaned up with selective restarts and tape alignment shifts. To recover the Top 99.1th song I actually spliced bits of the song from three source recordings to render a reasonably clean version of the song. Other parts were just beyond salvage though. Fifteen years too late, I have learned that TDK made a better tape from an archival perspective, than SONY did. Viewed as blemishes in a piece of fine leather -- as the Woodstock liner notes once described such things -- they're not too bad, all things considered.

And it is an important historical document, as the times, they were a-changin'. The Top 99.1 of 1998 sounded more different from the one before of any issue in the set. The Top 99.1th song, that had featured creative acts from within the station itself during the 1992-94 period when Duchossis Communications owned WHFS, was now a political work: a spoof of the Marcy Playground Sex and Candy song, that rode a big wave of musical parodies of President Clinton and his various and sundry scandalous affairs. The song was titled Sex is Dandy. It featured a Bill Clinton sound-alike who poked mischievous fun at Clinton for his Monica Lewinsky affair and also on Ken Starr, whose four years of investigating turned up only this sexual liaison -- that had been front page news for months by the time Starr started investigating it.

The station's style had evolved to a more glitzy set of jingles and a "louder" sound. Three years in the CBS fold were beginning to show their effect.  The production included something new that year: an electronic voice announcing the number of each song. I personally didn't care for it, and it was not repeated the following year. There was also, to my knowledge, no other retrospective programming of the kind seen in the Duchossis years.

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -1- Top 99.1 to 89.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -2- Top 88 to 74.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -3- Top 73 to 55.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -4- Top 54 to 41.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -5- Top 40 to 28.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -6- Top 27 to 14.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1998 -7- Top 13 to Number One.mp3

If you enjoy these recordings. please take a moment to leave a comment. Think of it as signing a guest book

Thanks and happy listening,

--jkw

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997

1997 saw the continued transformation of WHFS in a more Generation-X direction. Its staff was primarily of Generation X -- born between 1961 and 1982 -- with one notable exception: Weasel. And by 1997 the 17 age cohorts that comprise WHFS's 18 to 34 age demographic were completely of the Generation X birth years.

The year saw the second of the Just Passin' Thru CDs, arguably the best of the lot and certainly this blogger's favorite.

The alternative music itself had changed as well. It was less guitar-based and more electronic, sometimes more pop-ish, and sometimes with a harder edge. It was also a big year for swing, led by groups such as the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, who broke big that year.

Some have criticized HFS for "going pop" in those days. While the complaints have some merit, the effect seems to have been at least as much generational in nature as business decision (which itself was made by increasingly Generation-X station management). And WHFS 99.1 did maintain its creative edge that other alternative stations of the day lacked, through its highly stable program staff, several of whom had been with the station while the Einstein brothers still worked there.

The Top 99.1 begins with Bob Waugh opining that 1997 was "not a great year for music, but it was a pretty good year." He carried the program through the first 20 songs. Weasel came in around number 80, in an uncharacteristically quiet hand-off, and he carried the show until number 40, at which point Jonny Riggs (sans Auggh!) took over and finished off the countdown. Then Tom came in and produced a couple hours of radio, featuring a few decidedly decadent stories (e.g. How to be Suave). Just before the tape's end, Tom handed things over the Mark the Alien. His last words: "here, take this pack of matches, and follow my instructions."

Yet it is still HFS and the Top 99.1, and in retrospective I find myself wishing I had loaded a third tape ...

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -1- Bob Waugh, Top 99.1 to 84.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -2- Top 83 to 71.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -3- Weasel, Top 70 to 59.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -4- Top 58 to 46.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -5- Top 45 to 30.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -6- Top 29 to 18.mp3 
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -7- Top 17 to Number One.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -8- Johnny Riggs.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -9- Tom.mp3 
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1997 -A- Top 9 at 9.mp3

If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

Missing: The WHFS Top 99.1 of 1996

The WHFS Top 99.1 of 1996 went off as planned, but there is unfortunately no known recording of the event. I missed it due to an unexpected trip out of town due to an untimely death in the family. I left a long tape set to run, but a power failure while we were out of town put the Kibosh on that plan.

Better Luck Next Year ...

--jkw

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995

1995 was a transitional year for WHFS.  and the New Year's Day retrospective reflected that. During 1994, Jake Einstein had taken over WRNR and pulled together some HFS talent to re-create the "old HFS." The Einstein brothers left to join their father/s new station, but Weasel stayed at 99.1. The station's ownership also changed twice in 1995. When Jake Einstein sold WHFS in the late 1980s, Duchossois Communications took ownership and would hold the station until 1993, when it sold WHFS to Liberty Broadcasting. Liberty Broadcasting then sold the station to SFX Entertainment who quickly flipped it to CBS/Infinity in 1996.

The Top 99.1 of 1995 featured Pat Ferrise and Rob Timm, each of whom called about half of the songs. The 99.1th song featured Matthew Sweet doing the Scooby-Doo theme song -- a cute and clever song but no "Bitch Boy" (see the Top 99.1 of 1994). And neither "Just Passin' Thru" nor "Best of Dave's Garage" appeared in the retrospective lineup. Instead, there was a concert, Dave Matthews Band, broadcast live from Hampton Roads Coliseum in Newport News, VA, beginning at about 10PM on New Year's Eve. The concert had significant production and delivery problems: periods of dead air during which WHFS filled in with other music. This made for a choppy presentation that required some editing -- fading abrupt sound breaks and splicing out dead space and weird electrical noises -- to make it presentable.

The following morning featured an "Acoustic Feast," two hours of unplugged music, some of which had been previously recorded in the Modern Rock Morning Show sessions over the past few years. While a nice block of music, it lacked the professional charm of the Just Passin' Thru series.

Just Passin' Thru would make a return in 1996, when the first of what would eventually become 3 CDs was released. The quality was noticeably better than some of the earlier programs had been -- there is an upside as well as a downside to a more corporate environment. Yet among HFS afficionados, including myself, the home-grown studio version was missed.

If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

The Links:

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -1- Prelude Pat Ferrise, Top 99.1 to 88.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -2- Top 87 to 70.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -3- Top 69 to 51.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -4- Top 50 to 36.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -5- Top 35 to 18.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -6- Top 17 to 2.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -7- Number One, Dave Matthews Band, First Set.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -8- Dave Matthews Band, Second Set.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -9- Acoustic Feast.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -A- Acoustic Feast.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1995 -B- Acoustic Feast.mp3

The Dead are dead, Long Live the Dead

On this First Day of Spring, I figured we could digress a bit from the Top 99.1 to pay tribute to one of the great bands of my young adulthood. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and a small host of other musicians created the Grateful Dead in 1965 and sustained it for the next thirty years. They made original music and covered the works of others from Buddy Holly to The Beach Boys to the Rolling Stones. They inspired a culture like no other band in their time, one that persists even to this day.

 



The group had relatively few Top-40 hits and was famous for its concert performances in several ways. According to the Guiness Book of World Records, they did the most concert performances of any band before or since. They permitted free taping of their shows, so long as no profits were made from the sale and distribution of the tapes. Legendary for their alcohol and drug use, their concert quality was variable, often depending on their "pharmacology," sometimes being fixed -- or broken -- during halftime, resulting in concerts that had one good set and one bad set.

But the 1987 New Year's show at Oakland Coliseum Arena was something special among their 2,500-odd concert performances. For that fall the band had one of its rare Top-40 hits: "Touch of Grey" from their "In the Dark" CD, and their record label put a little something extra behind the show. The technical quality was about the best in the business. Their pharmacology was "managed," resulting in two stellar sets. They played a 25-minute encore that was in some ways more a third set than an encore.

And the concert was carried live on WWDC (DC-101) out of Washington, DC. To record the show, I used my late grandfather's (then still quite new) reversible reel-to-reel tape deck and a pair of brand new top-quality tapes. I set up a rooftop antenna for the occasion. I didn't drink at all through the midnight hour -- the show started at 1 AM on the east coast. I saved my champagne et al until the "third set" had begun, around 4:40 AM local time. The atmosphere was cold and beautiful that night, the lights stayed on, and I went to bed with a big smile, knowing I had just caught the Dead Show of a lifetime.

I also recorded the program on an audio cassette, although that recording was used up in my car radios and is no longer extant. In 1989 I converted the reel-to-reel recording to VHS Hi-Fi, making two copies for safekeeping. In 2013 I digitized it along with the HFS Top 99.1 collection.

So what has this got to do with Einstein's Legacy? The Grateful Dead was not love-at-first-sight for me, raised as I was on the British Invasion and Acid Rock that followed the all-too-short musical life of Buddy Holly. It took me a while to wrap my head around The Dead and their syncopations and improvisations. And that's where WHFS came in. WHFS introduced me to many of these songs. Weasel, David, Damian, Cerphe, Bob Here, and Hall each had their own piece to contribute to my musical appreciation of the Grateful Dead. They explained the group and the music to me so that by 1985 I was deadhead enough to take a day of vacation from work and go party with the band and its faithful at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD. To this day that concert is among my favorite memories of young adulthood, together with this recording and the near-all-nighter I pulled to make it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the years. If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

19880101 1-First Set.mp3
19880101 2-Second Set.mp3
19880101 3-Encore.mp3

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994

The 1994 edition of WHFS Top 99.1 was the third in a series of top-notch retrospectives that included not just the Top 99.1 but also the two home-grown music retrospectives: Just Passin' Thru and The Best of Dave's Garage, at two hours each. 

The retrospective begins with a montage of sounds of news stories from 1994, presented by Rob Timm.

The Top 99.1 of 1994 follows next. Gina Crash -- an alumnus of West Virginia University and WWVU-92 FM with arguably the coolest radio name in the business -- began the show with a locally produced 99.1th song. This song, "in its own category ... because it's special ..." was performed by Johnny Riggs (auggh!).  It was entitled "Bitch Boy" and describes an encounter between Johnny and Henry in Henry's dressing room at the HFStival that "ruined his HFStival experience." In the song, Johnny admits he was being a jerk at the time, but he figured Rollins, a public figure, would be used to it ... evidently not so much, according to the song.

Crash carries the program all the way to Number 35 and then turns things over to Alan Scott, who will carry the Top 99.1 program to completion. As Crash and Scott discuss the upcoming Pearl Jam Voters for Choice concert program -- a fine old-school promotion in which listeners enter a drawing by mailing a phone number where they will be on a certain night so that drawing winners may be called and contacted -- a new word appears that will change so much so soon so fast ... Internet.

About an hour and a half after the Number One Song, Just Passin' Thru '94 begins. Bob Waugh and Pat Ferrise bring us two hours of the best recordings made at WHFS studios by musicians visiting the Baltimore/Washington area and playing live on the air on the Modern Rock Morning Show.
The final retrospective is the Best of Dave's Garage, another two-hour retrospective based on the Now Hear This program hosted by Dave Marsh.

The entire program ran some fourteen hours. What a day it was. If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -0- 1994 Retrospective with Rob Timm.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -1- Top 99.1 to 83.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -2- Top 82 to 67.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -3- Top 66 to 49.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -4- Top 48 to 35.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -5- Top 34 to 17.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -6- Top 16 to Number One.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -7- Alan Scott Radio.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -8- Alan Scott Radio, Just Passin' Thru.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -9- Just Passin' Thru, Best of Dave's Garage.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -A- Best of Dave's Garage.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1994 -B- Best of Dave's Garage - Finis.mp3

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993

The Top 99.1 of 1992 was very well received by WHFS listening audience, so the 1993 program was little changed from the prior year's editions. This year the Just Passin' Thru series ran first, starting at 10AM, followed by the Top 99.1 at Noon. Johnny Riggs (arggh!) kicked it off, followed by Zoltar, the Brother From Another Planet, and then by Will Robinson ("Danger Will Robinson"), sporting his new tattoo and "piercing in the unholiest of places," none of which he remembered getting at all, much to the amusement of Brother Zoltar.

Some things that were different: The commercial-free day was not repeated, and there were no inside-produced parody songs. Full disclosure: I snipped a few commercials from the top 18 songs to make them fit within a 200-MB file, in such a way as not to alter the basic feel of the program.  Another small difference: "A look back from the station that's always looking forward" changed to "A look back from the station that's always looking ahead." This was a small change that made a big difference for the better, in this blogger's opinion. This phrase stuck around for several years before giving way to "The Rock of the New Millennium" a few years from now.

Will Robinson carried on the WHFS programming after the countdown ended, of which we captured about two hours before the tape expired.  If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -1- Just Passin' Thru Part 1.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -2- Just Passin' Thru Part 2.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -3- Top 99.1 to 83.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -4- Top 82 to 67.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -5- Top 66 to 51.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -6- Top 50 to 39.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -7- Top 38 to 19.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -8- Top 18 to Number One.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -9- Will Robinson on WHFS.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1993 -A- Will Robinson on WHFS.mp3

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992

The WHFS Top 99.1 usually aired on either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. The New Year's Eve editions had a sense of anticipation about them, rather how it feels to have left work with a party to attend later that evening. The New Year's Day editions were a rather different affair. Sleep-deprived and partially hung-over, the announcers could get a bit punchy. Each had a charm and an energy all its own.

The 1992 edition was presented on New Year's Day. In many ways the 1992 edition is my personal favorite. It found the station evolving the craft of the Top 99.1. It is also the only year in the set that ran completely commercial-free. The 99.1th song (a.k.a. the special one in a class by itself, was a locally produced number, featuring Wild Wes Johnson of the Modern Rock Morning Show, in a parody of both Star Trek Two: the Wrath of Khan and the MC 900 foot Jesus song from the year before. It's not every day you get a musical work that parodies two completely different things. This one does, and he does it well.

The program begins with Gina Crash handing the program over to Johnny Riggs at 10AM. He complains about how early it is and then concedes that it isn't any earlier than when he normally comes in. I'm not sure about this, but I think he may have been up a bit later than usual last night. Johnny carries on into the low 40s, where he is relieved by Zoltar, the Brother from another Planet. Johnny is tired, and Zoltar is clearly enjoying the moment. Zoltar then finishes out the Top 99 and plays the Just passin' thru sequence.

Based on the 1991 experience, I figured there was a chance it could fit onto a single 8-hour videocassette. But I had my bets hedged with a clean new second tape sitting at the ready, just in case. As luck would have it, the Just Passin' Thru ran about ten minutes over the end of the first tape.
At this point the commercial-free nature of the program became a challenge. Not having a commercial break to provide me a gap, I was forced to switch out the tape during a talking break.

Having done so, I was then treated to an additional six hours of excellent WHFS programming. Zoltar carried the hour after the Just Passin' Thru series ended. Then followed Kathryn Lauren's Request-o-Rama and the Spastic Plastic that she co-produced with Aq (a.k.a. Aquaman).
The Spastic Plastic episode features the three parodies of the MC 900 Foot Jesus song, "The City Sleeps," a song that finished in the high 40s in the 1991 program. These are: MC 900 Foot Doughboy, who sets a story of a doughnut maker opening early to make the confections the public craves; MC 900 Foot Goatboy, who actually does a parody of the "Sweater Song;" and last but not least follows MC 900 Foot Shatner with "You Klingon Bastard, You Killed My Son!" This is the very same song that was number 99.1 in the countdown.

Aq repeats the last 11 songs of the Top 99.1 during his Top 11 at 11, the regular production in which the 11 most requested songs of the day were typically played. Along the way he actually plays the Number Two song by mistake, so that song appears three times within the 14 hours of this year's program.

The tape ends around midnight, toward the end of a song. As it fades to silence, I find myself once again wishing I had loaded a third tape before bed.

If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -1- 99.1 to 82.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -2- 81 to 63.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -3- 62 to 44.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -4- 43 to 27.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -5- 26 to 8.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -6- 7 to 1, Just Passin' Thru '92 First Hour.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -7- Just Passin' Thru '92 Second Hour, Zoltar.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -8- Kathryn Lauren's Request-O-Rama with MC 900 Foot Trifecta.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -9- Kathryn Lauren's Request-O-Rama.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -A- Kathryn and Aquaman Request-O-Rama.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1992 -B- Aquaman Top Eleven at Eleven.mp3

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991

This version WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 aired on January 11, 1992. The first airing, which happened on New Year's Day, drew a strong response with many requests for a repeat performance, which aired beginning at 9:00 AM.

Three announcers teamed up to present the program. Liz kicked it off and presented the first hour or so, counting down into the low 80s. Scott Cool (the guy with the phony made-up radio name) carried it on, down to number 19, and then handed things over to Dave Marsh, who finished out the countdown and carried the program through the 7:00 Hour, at which point the tape ends, just as Neci has announced the Reggae Splashdown. It's too bad I didn't load a third tape that day .... 

If you enjoy this program, please post a comment with your nickname ... think if it as signing a guest book. Thanks!

--jkw

WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -1- 99.1 to 80.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -2- 79 to 61.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -3- 60 to 43.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -4- 42 to 26.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -5- 25 to 8.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -6- 7 to 1, Dave Marsh follows.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -7- Dave Marsh.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -8- New Music Express.mp3
WHFS Top 99.1 of 1991 -9- Now Hear This.mp3

The WHFS Top 99.1 of the 1990s

In the late 1980s, a significant change in recording technology became available: VHS Hi-Fi. Previously if we wanted to record radio programs, an audio cassette would give you about 90 minutes, or reel-to-reel could go about two hours -- with a side change. VHS Hi-Fi could run a whopping 6, 8, or 10 hours, completely uninterrupted.

Compared to other technologies, its quality was amazing as well. The audio was actually encoded into the video signal, so it delivered "CD-Quality" performance that did not degrade as record time was increased. In short, it became possible to record long-running radio programs so that the recording was indistinguishable from the original broadcast.

Beginning in 1991, I used this technology to record the WHFS Top 99.1, an annual retrospective program that ran on New Year's Eve or sometimes on New Year's Day. The program ran somewhat over 7 hours, so I would use either an 8-hour tape or two six-hour tapes to capture the whole program. In some years I would pick up a few hours of additional programming behind the Top 99.1, as I never stopped a tape, preferring to let it fill up and then break its "Record Tab," making it read-only forever.

I kept this up through 1999 (i.e. January 1, 2000). By then, my interest in WHFS was fading as the station evolved away from the "Einstein" model, having been sold and sold again over the previous decade. Being in those years the father of a young family, my time was very limited, so the tapes sat in a box, never forgotten, always kept safe and appropriately cool and dry.

Photo Credit Gina Crash

Since then digital recording has come of age, and the VHS medium has faded in importance -- and availability of tapes and players. Concerned that the tapes could become unplayable, I purchased a used Marantz PMD-670 digital recorder on eBay and set about digitizing these old tapes, listening to some of them for the very first time as I did so. Day after day I would do a tape or two. By the time I was done, I had one hundred and five hours -- more than four days -- of WHFS 99.1 programming from the 1990s.

Then I had to process them into a form that can be posted. Having digitized them to WAV files,  figured this would be unwieldy, given the 200KB per file size limitation at ZippyShare.  So I posted them at 320KBs MP3, which allows about 85 minutes in a 200KB file. Actual file sizes vary, as I have attempted to break the recording at points that made sense from a content perspective, so that each tape can stand alone and also be merged with its brothers to re-create the original recording in its full length, up to 14 hours in some years.

Each year has been posted on its own page. Of these, the 1992 retrospective with its full Request-o-Rama with Kathryn Lauren and Aq is my runaway favorite. Check them out and let me know which year(s) you like the best.

Thanks and Feast Your Ears,
J Kilowatt

A Celebration of the Existence, Memory, and Enduring Influence of Jake Einstein's WHFS 102.3

First post on my First Blog -- and I've got major Blank Screen Syndrome. The interest that brings me here is radio. From my youngest days I enjoyed listening to it. I liked it much better than TV. The screen images are very confining to the imagination. Yet even as radio frees my eyes to look elsewhere, its words and music paint images in the theatre of my mind, much more vivid than any TV screen could render. 

As a freshman at the College of William & Mary, I became involved in its radio station, WCWM, in the fall of 1974. When I arrived, its 77-watt monophonic signal covered the campus and some of the surrounding city of Williamsburg. Three years later it was a 1.6KW stereo beacon of progressive free-form music, reaching into western Newport News. The station, and the experience of building and running it, launched several of my cohort into careers in Tidewater, Virginia broadcasting.

And it profoundly affected my life in ways that, forty years later, I am still just now coming to understand. I signed up my first week on campus. I went through training and earned a "prime time" rating in one semester (many took two or more). I spent two summers in Williamsburg, working for minimum wage in lousy summer jobs and committing many hours of my personal time to the station and its construction efforts. The first summer we built out the studios with new or refurbished equipment to ready it for stereophonic operation. That fall and winter we collaborated to put a construction permit application before the FCC to increase our on-air power. When the permit was issued in the spring, we celebrated and made our plans to carry out the construction that summer.

Along the way I had come to "own" the midnight to 3AM time spot on Friday Nights. There is no better time than that to be on the air in a college town. And the unique energy of a radio station -- unlike that of any other workplace -- crept into my being and is still with me to this day. As we finished out the transmitter and antenna installation, we began taking full advantage of the FCC's test period. From midnight to 6AM a station either licensed or under construction permit can go on the air at full power for equipment testing. The other engineer and I would take turns, together with two other volunteers, to run the station every night, putting things through their paces and. as it turned out, building our audience in the community. Our license came through just in time for us to be fully operational before school started in the fall of 1976. And when the fall Arbitron ratings survey results were published, we did well enough to make other area stations take notice. Two local "Album-Oriented Rock" (AOR) stations, WNOR FM99 and WMYK 93.7 (K-94) edged noticeably in a more progressive direction. They also hired several of our best as they graduated that spring.

And the inspirational force behind the creative energy was WHFS 102.3 FM. Many of us, myself included, would come "home" on breaks and listen to 'HFS -- and then return to practice the craft we heard there on WCWM's air. My life felt complete in a way it has yet to feel again since those days. And, as it turned out, those days were way too short. For my heavy involvement with the station and its engineering development had both sapped my academic performance and also exposed the mismatch between myself and a liberal arts education.  So I left and took my First-Class (General) Radiotelephone license out into the world of small-town radio.

That was a far cry from the college radio experience. It took me about two years to figure out that small-market radio was a dead end. So I moved to Northern Virginia, one of the best places in the world for a young adult to start a career. I looked for work in a number of professions, capitalizing on my engineering talent and problem-seeking mentality. One of the want ads I responded to was with WHFS 102.3. I actually interviewed with Jake Einstein himself. His first question to me: "As an engineer would you say you are more of a text-booker or a shirt-sleever. I answered to being mainly a shirt-sleever, preferring short sleeves that don't need to be rolled up. He liked that answer and offered me the job on the spot. He took me around and introduced me to, among other people, Weasel.

The problem was that it was only part-time, and I needed something full-time, so I passed on it and went into Information Technology instead. I returned to school, earned a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, and developed an expertise in Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence system design and construction.

But I also became disconnected from radio. Information Technology is good work, and it pays the bills. But even at its best it has nowhere near the vibrant energy of a radio station. To this day I miss that energy. I sometimes wonder how things could have gone if I had taken that job at WHFS and settled in Bethesda rather than Northern Virginia. Two paths diverged in a wood, and I did not take the road less traveled, and I wonder what a difference it would have made if I had taken if instead.

--jkw