The BBC has posted a four part audio series about the history of electronic music titled, “The Great Bleep Forward”. Thank goodness main stream Europe “gets” synth and computer music.

“The story of modern music is one of subversion and experimentation, of heroes and villains. But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if the real subversives didn’t wear leather and denim but smart suits and white lab coats? What if the true experimentation wasn’t with LSD but with DX7′s and S900s? What if the real heroes of music aren’t John, and Paul, Mick and Keith, but Ralf, Florian, Robert and Wendy!

The Great Bleep Forward is a series four programmes, presented by Andrew Collins exploring the history of electronic music. Hear the first baby’s cry of the moog synthesiser, embrace the difficult childhood of prog rock, grapple with the ‘experimental’ teenage years of the New Romantics and discover the middle aged maturity and nostalgia of the present day. You’ll also get a sense of the sound of the future.” – www.bbc.co.uk

Don’t forget to also catch the superb BBC Documentary Synth Britannia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNiGnTSrL5o

It drives me crazy to listen and watch these type of things because they were so integral in my own life. I love this stuff. What about you?

For more info: www.bbc.co.uk

Good old AM/FM. The last time I listened to regular radio outside of my car was in the 80s. I used to listen to stations for hours just to catch and record a song I liked onto cassette. Lucky for me that habit created a giant box of tapes recorded from the airwaves which I will make digital someday. These days most radio is harsh, loud, repetitive and loaded with more than 60% commercials. Since I moved back to New York from Berlin I bought a car and so I’ve been listening and seeking through stations.

The craziest thing happened. I find myself stopping on 106.7 Lite.fm more than any other music station. Lite.fm is one of those you know adult contemporary stations playing elevator, oldies and love songs (Joe Cocker). You still can hear a lot of Korg M1 sounds on this station! I got to thinking what’s keeping me at this part of the dial. I think it’s the fact that these songs are full of melodies and clear vocals/lyrics I can understand. If I don’t know a song I like to follow along and hear the message. I’ve noticed a lot of songs I once thought were really horrible cheese are actually pretty good. I’m not leading this blog post to some profound point I just wanted to share. I know your going to say I’m getting old. That maybe but I still love me some kill evil music. They never really played any of that dark stuff on the radio anyway. Sometimes I check out 89.1 WFDU (Fairleigh Dickinson University) radio but it’s hit or miss depending on the DJ. When it comes to AM NPR is where it’s at.

My radio listening days are almost over as I finally ordered a new radio with an iPhone hook up. Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker, Simplify Media, podcasts, audiobooks here I come!

Do you still tune in?

photo credit: dsearls

Inside Digital Media is a series of interviews by Phil Leigh. I like his content because it’s a view of net media with a heavy business swing. This week he interviews Tim Westergren the founder of Pandora and Chris Wallace of The Super Group.

Sales of recorded music in the United States are nowabout 30% lower than when Shawn Fanning introduced Napster in 1999. Sales in the physical form (e.g. CDs) are down by nearly half. There is little doubt that the Internet has been a “game changer” for the record label business.

In this audio program we explore a couple of ways that the Internet can add revenues. One is already generating more money for the industry and promoting new artists. The second appears to be an idea whose time has come. – insidedigitalmedia.com

To listen to the interviews: click here

photo credit: eszter

Living in New York in the 80′s I spent a good amount of time recording the local radio onto cassette tapes. Classic rap shows like DJ Red Alert’s Rap Attack on Kiss FM and DJ Marley Marl on 103.5 WBLS. I also grabbed freestyle hits like When I Hear Music by Debbie Deb and Silent Morning by Noel. As my music taste broadened I discovered I could pick up a faint signal from a alternative Long Island Radio Station WLIR and recorded Depeche Mode, New Order and other new wave masterpieces.

I had a giant Conion boombox I bought at the Spring Valley flea market. It was the size of a car door! It had a double cassette deck, turntable inputs, an alarm and the above said FM tuner. If you want to see how big these boomboxes really were check out this YouTube video.

One of my favorite pastimes was making mix tapes for my friends and the car. Heading over to Tower or Sam Goody to pick up a 10 pack of blank Maxxell XLS-II 90s was a weekly journey. I miss opening the plastic wrapping and cracking open a clean new cassette. Each mix needed a unique name. It took special handwriting skill to write the track list super small and neatly on the paper inlay. Next one would apply two rectangle stickers with the name of the mix onto the cassette itself (one on each side). Finally I would snap out two little plastic squares on top of the cassette. This was a record protect system. In an emergency you could tape back over the hole where you snapped out the plastic and record onto the tape again.

I have a few thousand of these cassettes in storage. Before they deteriorate I plan on taking photos of each one and making them all digital. I’m going to leave the tape hiss. It’s going to be a kick hearing 80s radio commericals like “Crazy Eddie! His prices are insane!” Those of you who live in the New York area will know what I mean. If you have cassettes but no machine to play them in not to worry because Tascam still makes new ones.

There were over a hundred cassette manufacturers. Two great websites have galleries of blank cassettes. Warning: this is extremely nostalgic. Tapedeck.org is slick and has been featured in many hip lifestyle magazines. 365.com has large user generated archive of blank cassettes.

But cassettes were useless without boomboxes and the Sony Walkman. The great website pocketcalculatorshow.com has a fantasic journey into the boombox era and a great homage to the Sony Walkman.

What if you made a mix today? Add a customized cassette album cover to the mp3! Head over to says-it.com/cassette, pick a cassette style, input the name of your mix and it gives you an image free to use as you like.

Lastly before you head back into the future Wikipedia’s entry on the cassette is worth a look. Did you know cassette is the French word meaning “little box”?

photo credit: Dead Air, Joseph Robertson, and chaos.nt