WTIT: The Blog

Today we will share with you the story of the very first recording that we did on WTIT Tape Radio. When I was about 10, I knew I’d be a radio DJ. With some kids it might be baseball, which I loved, but I was only an average player. Others want to be doctors or astronauts. I just wanted to listen to rock music and introduce the songs. Comedy, I was drawn to as well. In the sixties, DJs were huge. We’d listen for the hits, but we’d be grabbed by the personalities. Being from Hartford, that meant listening to WDRC, “The Big D”. (Check out Ed Brouder’s infamous WDRC OBG site. You’ll see from a fan’s prospective how radio was back then.) By the time I was 14, I had saved enough up to buy a reel-to-reel mono tape deck. I started “playing” radio at once. I became “Bud Weiser” because most DJs had names like “Sandy Beach” in those days. Any friend I had, had to tape with me. We called it WWWW, “Because We Can’t Think of a Second Letter”. We listened back, and taped over the preceding shows.

Tape 10 was just one of 16 tapes that I had. They were numbered because I did save a lot of stuff & used a basic numeral system. Bouncing Billy was with me on the 5th of May in the spring of 1967. We didn’t use call letters, called it “The Tape Ten Show, the Big TT”. We did one comedy bit, “News, Sports & Weather”. I saved this tape. Billy was the only guy I knew who got it. He was funny and enthusiastic. It would not be until the next tape, Tape 15, that we came up with “WTIT, the Big T”. Neither Billy nor I remember who came up with the letters. I just thought we’d use them for that one tape, and come up with new ones on the next tape. Obviously, it did not work out that way. Heck, we didn’t have the tape numbers go in order until Tape 17. On our second tape,Tape 15, Galloping Gary debuted. Just as Billy was a natural, so was Gary. He has one of the greatest voices I have ever heard. He never did voice-overs or anything related, because unlike me, by the time he got to college, he had a lot of other interests. After I graduated from Emerson College, I was a DJ for many years. I spent about 20 years in radio and/or DJ’ing in one way or another. As far as tape numbers go, we are current in the upper 500’s. On the WTIT.net site there is a complete list for those of you who have NOTHING better to do.

The funniest line (about the whole WTIT Tape Radio thing) I ever heard was from Sam Buca, who contributed to WTIT in the early 90’s. While the music was played, Johnnie Walker and I explain the history and point of what we were doing. This is what we did for every new DJ. We would also play them old comedy bits, usually “On Air” so we often heard the new guy’s take, right on the tape. Sam was amazed. He said to me, “You guys started this in high school?” I said yea, sophomore year. Sam mused that over, then stated, “God, this is so important. My friends and I just pissed away our free time in High School”. I said (after laughing a lot), I’m not sure any of us thought it was important. It was just what we did. And still do. I don’t know, I know it is fun (and hopefully “funny”), but is it important? That is for someone other than I to decide. But, I guessing it probably wasn’t. Perhaps it is like the blog. We all think what we write is so important. But in reality, if I never posted another word perhaps you would notice. But then you’d move on. “Wasn’t there a guy named after a beer who had a stupid blog once?” someone might comment, “It couldn’t have been that good, since it’s gone.”