Top 40 Radio Archive

[FreeThinker]

Dude mentioned Awesome Dude Radio on another thread and it reminded me of something I think a number of members may be interested in. There is a web site that had archived hundreds of hours of recordings of actual radio broadcasts from the Golden Age of Top 40 radio in the fifties, sixties, and seventies from such giants as Boss Radio 93-KHJ, 77-WABC, WMCA, WLS, etc. You can hear the music, the deejays patter, the commercials, even an occasional newscast. It's amazing and it's just like being a kid again and listening to the way radio used to be. You can hear some of the great deejays of all time like The Real Don Steele, Dan Ingraham, Robert W. Morgan, Bob Crain before was Colonel Hogan, etc... It can be found at http://www.reelradio.com/ It is a subscription service and you pay $20 a year, but it is WELL worth it if you miss radio from the 60's and 70's.

There is also the oldest aircheck, of Bing Crosby on KHJ in 1932, plus several recordings of Dallas radio stations on the day of President Kennedy's assassination. This is an invaluable collection. Check it out.

[dude]

Sounds good! er... do the archives include Lucky Pierre at WLCY Tampa/St. Pete?

[FreeThinker]

Roy Nilson and Dick Wilson WLCY Tampa-St. Petersburg 1966

Mark Edwards WLCY Tampe-St. Petersburg 1968

With your background in broadcasting, Dude, this would be the perfect site for you to check out! You can visit without actually subscribing if you want to see what they have, it just costs to listen.

[dude]

Heh heh, Roy Nilson was my boss at WLCY! Don't know that I'd pay to hear him again... LOL It does sound like fun, tho.

Thanks for the heads up....

Mike (Lucky Pierre) WLCY 1963-64

[FreeThinker]

Mike, Do you have any airchecks from that time? If so, you can upload them to the site! And you will be immortal!

[The Pecman]

BTW, Mike knows that I grew up with WLCY, and listened to that station throughout my childhood and teen years, growing up in Tampa. They were a huge station during that time, sometimes getting as much as 40% of the audience. Pretty much every great song of the 1960s -- all the Beatles hits, the Beach Boys, the Stones, everything -- I heard first on WLCY. It's part of my DNA.

[FreeThinker]

Pecman- isn't WLCY the station you reference in A Groovy Kind of Love?

[The Pecman]

Correct, I mentioned WLCY and some of the late-1960s DJs in the story. (Not The Dude, who had already departed by 1968-1969, but a few others.)

I'm a huge pop culture fanatic, so I generally sneak in music to my stories every so often, at least when it's appropriate (or I can get away with it).

[Cole Parker]

Does anyone else have a problem with stories that include song lyrics?

If you do include them, how many are too many?

C

[Gee Whillickers]

I've been working on a story for several weeks now that has necessitated some research into Cole's question. I asked Pecman and another fellow I've known for years their opinions, and have done some reading. Since pop songs are short, apparently even fairly limited use can get you in legal hot water if you don't have explicit permission, though that's very rare for stories like those posted here where no money is charged for reading. If it was a story that appeared in a future version of Midnight Dude there might be issues.

One way around this is the use of parody (or tribute) stipulations in the law, where an author can use considerably more of the original work. Of course, this necessitates the story falling into that category.

[FreeThinker]

I would think that quoting a verse from a song, as long as you aren't reprinting the entire song, merely quoting it, would not be any different than citing research in a paper. You can quote as long as you properly cite the source. When I quote lyrics, I always cite the composers and the current holder of the copyright. I might be wrong, but I can't see that it would be significantly different than citations in a research paper. Then again, I haven't written a research paper since 1981!

[The Pecman]

I think the legalities are pretty loose with something done online, especially amateur fiction given away for free, and if you're only quoting a verse or two. If you used the entire lyrics, then I think the lawyers could make an argument that it was no longer a Fair Use, but the question is if they're really going to come after you for an online erotic story... which I think is doubtful.

If you were going to sell it commercially as an eBook or published novel, then absolutely, 100%, you gotta get the publishing rights cleared. As I told Gee in email, I seem to recall a Stephen King novel where he bitched in the afterword that he had planned to use a stanza from a Beach Boys hit for a chapter, but the music publisher wanted something like $100,000 or something for the rights, which King understandably balked at. (I think they had dollar signs in their eyes.) He used another song that cost him a fraction of that amount.

Ethically and morally, I use the standard permission quote, giving the name of the publisher and the names of the people who wrote the words and lyrics, plus give them the copyright notice, but I don't say "used with permission" since I've never bothered to get written permission for anything like this. I've also quoted a line or two from lyrics in published magazine articles, but those have different rules than a published novel (for various legal reasons). Famously, I know of a case where noted rock critic Dave Marsh wrote an entire book on the song "Louie, Louie" (titled Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World's Most Famous Rock 'n Roll Song), and the music publisher balked at giving him permission to print the entire lyrics! And this is a book about the controversies regarding the lyrics of this song! Insane, I know, but it just shows, music publishers can be crazy (and greedy).