Damn, what a joy to have good College FM stations.


Just was inspired by my local college station playing great Jazz off an album...  When living in the Madison, Wi, Iowa City, Ia area and a few others...Chicago, Milwaukee, L.A. etc. college FM stations have been a joy. 

Not my music that I own or would, but my local station just played a great song by the Mills Bros...  Ed Sullivan gave them new life in the 50s.  If you have a local college FM station that plays good music, support their fund drive and let your friends know that there are still reasons to own a great tuner.   For what it's worth (no not the Buffalo Springfield song) the "wood look" Sony table radios. like the ICF-9550W  are worth your time. ...can be had on ebay for near nothing and if nothing else, some music for the garage while you are changing the oil on the Ferrari California Spyder 250GT SWB......or the minivan. 








whatjd

@whatjd, we must be about the same age ;-) . Though the pre-British Invasion Pop music was dismissed as disposable fluff by the mid-late-60’s counterculture and critics---who insisted on bands being primarily Blues-based---they were mistaken. Your two examples are proof: Gene Pitney was an incredible singer and songwriter, and Del Shannon’s 1982 comeback album was produced by Tom Petty, who was a big Shannon fan.

Early 60’s Pop music was written by some of the best songwriters of all time: Carole King & Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weil & Barry Mann, Ellie Greenwich & Jeff Barry, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Otis Blackwell, Bert Berns, Bobby Darin, Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, and Phil Spector. The first UK Beatles album was simply covers of early-60’s Pop hits, fer cryin’ out loud!

There was also Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison (now THERE’S a singer!), Surf music, and what Rock ’n’ Roll historians call Garage Rock: Paul Revere & The Raiders ("Just Like Me" ROCKS!), The Sonics ("The Witch" sounds like The Ramones, but much more primitive and brutal), The Wailers (the classic "Louie Louie", which every band in America played), lots more. A great time in Pop music, imo far better than most from the 80’s, for example. The "New Romantics", anyone? ;-)

Oops. While The Wailers WERE an early-60’s Garage band (the U.S. Wailers, not the Reggae band of course), it was The Kingsmen (both The Wailers and The Kingsmen were from the Northwest) who had the hit with "Louie Louie", written and recorded in 1955 by Richard Berry (no relation to Chuck ;-). Richard's version was banned by the "decency squads" in the U.S.A., who found it to be too sexually suggestive. Can’t have our white kids corrupted by that nasty "Race" music (it was actually called that at the time). I heard the song first on the debut Paul Revere & The Raiders album, and later by The Kinks. I must have played that song live hundreds of times.
david_ten - Internet tuners can sound quite fine, depending in part on kbps - but not as good as a strong analog FM signal played on a good FM tuner.  The best quality FM sound I've experienced was on KPFT in the late 90's/early 2000's - -like the full, rich warm sound heard of the *Milestones* jazz program every Saturday evening from 6 to 9 pm.  I'm glad I recorded many of those programs to cassette - still have, and play, them from time to time.
@rshak   Thanks. Your findings are what I would expect. My point was that I had not conducted a head to head comparison (myself) and I would like to, once I get a vintage tuner in.