Lots of Beautiful Music, Alcoholism Stories, An Odd Rehearsal Tape, Orchids on the Radio and Testing, Testing

Today's lead feature is something of a sort that multiple readers have asked me to please share whenever I come across it. And that is: Beautiful Music Programming. I admit to being wholly and deeply mystified by this, but I'm certainly not trying to be here solely to share what I like, and, if anything, the requests for this sort of programming have been the second or third most common thing I've been asked for more of!

So when I recently found two entire tape sides full of this stuff - nearly 130 minutes of programming from a Los Angeles station some time in the early 1970's - I  knew how I was going to lead off my next post. And that's what I'm doing! 

Download: KEZM, Los Angeles, Beautiful Music Programming, Early 1970's, Side One

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Download: KEZM, Los Angeles, Beautiful Music Programming, Early 1970's, Side Two

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Taking a hard turn into something completely different, here's another tape I unearthed in the last month which contains an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting from November of 1957. This meeting featured the testimony of two recovering alcoholics, both of whom present their histories. Near the end of the tape, the meeting ends and the recorder was turned off. At that point, we hear a short segment of a previous meeting, which was being erased by the November meeting. 

Download: An Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting, 11-23-57

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Okay, speaking of things which mystify me.... Here's a tape I obtained decades ago. I'm going to try not to overexplain this, but what I will say is that it contains singing by a few women - sometimes singing solo, often in duos and at times in trios. This appears to be a rehearsal tape, and several of the songs are from a musical production called "Israel Oh Israel". A professional presentation of that show can be found for sale here. But not all of the songs here are from this store. 

I actually sold this tape some time ago, but saved the MP3 to share here, eventually. Personally, I find the singing here, when the singers go into their upper ranges, to be aggressively hideous - shrill and ugly in tone - and moderately hideous the rest of the time (my mother would likely have begged me to turn it off) - but I do think it is... interesting, interested enough to share. So here it is. 

Download: A Female Trio Rehearses

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Here's an undated piece of AM radio talk which I find sort of befuddling, and humorous in that capacity. It just seems to me that doing a radio segment on flowers - a category of objects (in this case, Orchids) which would seem to only be able to be enjoyed by the senses of smell, sight and touch - is unintentionally ridiculous. 

This comes from radio station WDLC, AM 1490, which was (and is) in Port Jervis, New York. The show is "The Pike County Hour". Port Jervis is not actually in Pike County (which is in Pennsylvania), but it borders that county. 

Download: Pike County Hour, WDLC, 1490 - Show About Orchids

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And now, our "Very Short Reel" for this post. I've named this "Testing the Microphone" and I suspect that's self-explanatory. 

Download: Testing the Microphone

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