Get out your platform shoes and your Roberta Flack records. Despite popular demand, WRCT-FM (88.3) will once again return to the golden age of glorious AM monophonic sound this Dec. 31 and flashback the final day of 1972.
Yep. It’s that time again.
In a much-tolerated New Year’s radio tradition dating back a decade, WRCT’s resident oldies guru, Jay Thurber, will again roll back the clock 40 years. This year’s broadcast will air from 12 to 3 p.m. and will also be available online at www.wrct.org.
On Dec. 31, WRCT’s time-traveling Plymouth Valiant Scamp will rev up its slant-six flux capacitor to 88.3 MPH and head for Carnegie
Mellon’s old student union, Skibo Hall, in the era when the station was still at 900 kHz AM.
Kindly Uncle Jay, who hosts an oldies program on WRCT on Saturday afternoons (www.jaythurbershow.com), will count down the top songs of 1972, interspersed with news reports, commercials and other announcements from the era when the Pirates, not the Steelers, were the “champions” of the Steel City.
The “number one song of 1972” will be unveiled at 3 p.m.
Past broadcasts aired from 9 p.m. to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Thurber claims this year’s earlier broadcast is designed to make it
easier for people to listen — though station sources claim he moved the show to an earlier time slot because his increasing decrepitude is making it harder for him to stay up past 9:30.
Hey, Reader! Welcome to the first installment of Second Sense, my new A/V blog. Here we’ll take the time to appreciate the amazing thing that happens when sound and sight enter the ring together.
Let’s start with Yoshi Sodekoa, a Japanese artist working out of New York has been making visual art for quite some time. Maybe you heard of him over the summer — he designed the vignettes for Yeasayer’s “Fragrant World” scavenger hunt. The videos (featuring a song off of the album) were hidden all over the internet, and clues were given so fans could find them. Pretty neat stuff.
“Henrietta” by Yeasayer
But Sodekoa has been making these glitchy, psychedelic vids for a while, and for a whole bunch of musicians. My favorite is a multi-chromatic visual attack made for the song “Youth in Trouble” by The Presets. I know you want to watch it.
“Youth in Trouble” by The Presets
Glitchy, colorful, wonderful. Featuring pixelated unicorns and tweaked video footage of riots. What’s not to like?
Sodekoa has more of his A/V work on his Vimeo and his website. It’s definitely worth checking out.
The McKeesport-based Orchestra of the Alleghenies returns to the airwaves at 12 noon this Monday, Dec. 24, with a program of holiday music featuring Joe Negri.
The concert includes traditional carols as well as selections from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “The Polar Express,” plus the jazz stylings of Negri, an internationally known guitarist warmly remembered by generations of children and parents from his appearances on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
For the fourth consecutive year, Pittsburgh’s WRCT-FM (88.3) and McKeesport-based Tube City Community Media Inc. will present the annual Christmas concert by the orchestra (formerly known as the McKeesport Symphony Pops).
The broadcast over 88.3 FM also will be heard online at www.wrct.org.
It was taped Sunday, Dec. 16, at McKeesport Area High School by Tube City Community Media Inc., with the cooperation of the McKeesport Symphony Society and the American Federation of Musicians 60-471. Tube City Community Media Inc. is a non-profit organization that owns and operates the www.tubecityonline.com website, and for the past four years has also broadcast McKeesport’s International Village folk music festival.
The McKeesport Symphony Society, founded in 1959, oversees the Orchestra of the Alleghenies, a regional symphony comprised of professional, paid musicians from across the Pittsburgh area. Bruce Lauffer is in his 10th season as the conductor and music director. For more information, visit www.mckeesportsymphony.org.
