La Emisora de la Revolucion

Ondas del Mar (1380 kHz), in Puerto Cabello, Carabobo, Venezuela, quickly became our default beach radio station during our trip to Bonaire. Its format consists of mostly Cuban music, with enough Venezuelan vallenatos to keep things interesting and to satisfy the government’s local content requirements. Here’s a song (4194524 bytes, 4:22) that was especially good, recorded around 9:30 a.m. on September 27, 2005.

Q: (redneck accent) So, what’s with the name, anyway, you leftist liberal long haired Clinton-loving Communist sixties throwback, you?

A: It’s the slogan used by Radio Rebelde, one of the national radio networks in Cuba. Here’s a sample (491664 bytes, 0:28) of its top of the hour ID, from its stereo feed on Hispasat 1C, 11.885 GHz, Vertical polarization, SR 27500.

Q: What the heck would you ever want to listen to that for?

A: In fact, here’s another sample (787934 bytes, 0:36) from Radio Rebelde. In this one, the announcer says the programming is about to split, with the AM service carrying sports and FM continuing with normal programming. It’s followed by the ID for Rebelde FM.

Stanley Beckford is a Jamaican reggae and mento singer whose voice is always a pleasure to hear. Instead of burdening you with further opinions on the subject, here’s a discography and a 1981 single of his, St. Thomas Chicken  (6041049 bytes, 3:24) b/w Dub Pt. 2 (6040496 bytes, 3:24).

[19:15:10] * nc-jay scores another 10 points with his September 2005 model NASWA muggenswatter
[19:16:07] <MarkV-NL> Blog it!
[19:16:08] <MarkV-NL> :-)
[19:16:39] <nc-jay> heh, I don't think that quite rates a blog entry, but...hmmmm...

Back in the days before Reagan-era deregulation turned the US medium wave dial into a cesspool of partisan poison and “religious” charlatanism, entertaining and engaging local talk show hosts could be found. Here is an example captured at random on July 20, 1981, shortly after midnight, on WGR-AM (550 kHz) in Buffalo, New York. Listen to the (unidentified) host walk the line between graciousness and sarcasm, as he discusses contemporary music with his earnest but boneheaded teenaged caller. Topics covered include Rastafarianism, the local concert scene, early 80’s pop-metal bands, and the relative popularity of Van Halen and the Box Tops. Funny and pathetic at the same time. (4051872 bytes, 8:48)

Test posting with an enclosure (155040 bytes, 0:19). It’s the top of the hour ID from Radio Grito de Baire, Contramaestre, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1420 kHz.

We went to the island of Bonaire in September. Here are pointers to a collection of radio-related pictures from the trip, and a bandscan of radio stations audible on the island.

The picture on the right is a view of the Radio Nederland Wereldomroep relay station on the western side of the island, looking north up the shoreline and parallel coastal road. More RNW station pictures at the link above.

I’ve resisted the urge to jump on the blogging bandwagon until now, but the release of the  Flock Developer Preview made me curious about its WordPress integration. So here we are.

This might be another one of the zillions of blogs out there that are active for a month, then never updated again.  On the other hand, maybe I’ll use it as an excuse to do some occasional creative writing, or to post pointers to interesting music, photos or net resources.  I suspect topics will include:

• ’70’s reggae, especially Lee “Scratch” Perry-related
• French, Spanish and Brazilian pop music
• Radio, especially medium wave and shortwave
• DVB/MPEG TV
• Caribbean travel
• Food and beer
• Unix-like operating systems, especially OS X and Linux
• Digital photography

So, off we go.  Let’s see how this all develops.