You'll love this, then: Because I leave the house so early for work, I couldn't be at home at 7:30 to tape the announcement. So I used my stereo VCR and an FM radio, started a videotape at SP speed at 6:45, and got two hours of audio.
Not such a crazy concept. Hifi VHS was the poor-man's DAT. I used to throw tapes in the VCR and record six-hour segments of 99x to take back with me to college. Even on SLP, they sound like live radio.
I still have all of those tapes. Probably something between 100 and 150 hours of 99x circa 1993-1997.
Fun moments within:
1) The first Live X with 10,000 Maniacs. Broadcast live. Delayed for at least an hour while an intern drove around trying to track down an acoustic guitar (with a variety of play-by-play therein). Guitar finally arrived, band started playing, Natalie Merchant stops them after a couple of songs and decides she's not "feeling it". World Party comes in and salvages the afternoon.
2) Ace of Bass. Yes, there was a time that 99x had Ace of Bass in regular rotation (before anybody knew who they were). (To me, it demonstrated the stations early willingness to play music that sounded "right", regardless of who made it.)
3) Pendarvis doing a five-minute slideshow (with appropriate slide projector effects) on an imaginary animal (the silver-bellied something-or-other, I'll have to track down the tape). He claims he lives in the back-end of the animal.
4) Sean's first stint at mornings. It worked in the beginning, but by early 1994, you could tell that his night owl tendencies were getting the best of him. I've got at least one tape of him where he sounds like he's (barely) functioning on an hour of sleep.
5) Tech/Emory/GSU students (never established which) hijacking the signal that the station used while at Coca-Cola Olympic City during the Olympics. They played Soundgarden's "Never Named". Barnes became humorless (shocking), insisting that they identify themselves; Baron cursed on air at least once, not realizing that the second relay signal was still getting through. (They were using two - one for music and one for voice.)
I think my favorite tapes are from 1993. One from May, in particular, starts with the end of a Barnes shift and rolls through Pendarvis (On the Edge). The last time I listened to it (several years ago), I took note of how many songs were repeated. Over the course of six hours, only three songs were played twice. (My favorite tape of all is probably the October one with Pendarvis' slideshow.)
