Pure heaven is probably the only way to describe this nearly one-hour long scoped composite featuring the talents of Bobby Rich (Bobby’s B-100), who here is in for Al Bandiero, Sue O’Neal, Bobby Messina and more! Courtesy of Big Apple Airchecks, this was donated to our site nearly 10 years ago and finally is finding its way to airchexx!
You will notice that this really just before the disco days as 99X is solidly Top 40, with Rock, Pop and a few Oldies well represented!
You will enjoy!
You get a good feel for the station back then and the high energy of Live radio with this aircheck.
There was a “fly by the seat of our pants” impromtu-ness, as opposed to an homogenized computer voice over.
Note the Top of the Hour ID almost buried and sounding more like “wx Hello, New York” rather than “WXLO, New York”.
A fun sounding Aircheck – one you could listen to over and over again.
Good job!
That’s me on the recorded ID open. I was trying to transition the station to more “99X” and less WXLO. And yes Jeff, that’s exactly what I was going for…
“(wx)HEL O New York!”
And thanks for this air check Steve West–I hadn’t heard it since it was coming out of my mouth live.
Yes. Yes it was. America’s Most Listened To FM Station. 1,792,600 12+ Arbitron Spring 1978. 99X/WXLO New York.
Also really fun to hear Sue O’Neil (a great jock-then and now), Bobby Messina (so high he never knew he was doing overnights), Jay Thomas (as wild off as on the air-and had a great engineer with huge collection of recorded SFX and drops), The Mike Love 99X custom version of “Almost Summer,” Charley Steiner doing news (went on to ESPN Sports-night and LA Dodgers baseball play-by-play), Dick Sloane (beautiful voice), Bumper “Glen B” Morgan (even funnier off the air, great guy), Al Bandiero (called himself the Italian Stallion, ugh. Once threatened to have me whacked) and finally at the end of this montage John Larabee (one of the funniest and funnest cats on the planet).
In between ESPN and Dodgers play-by-play, Charlie Steiner did radio play-by-play for the New York Yankees from 2002 to 2004. Steiner shared play-by-play duties with John Sterling, who continues as the Yankees’ radio play-by-play voice to this day.
Bobby, 99X was my radio station. I got to finally get there doing weekends on-air during college. But they had just transitioned away from 99X to “FM99″…I was crushed. No jingles. No talking up records. Everything I loved during your time there I wasn’t allowed to do. But something funny: When 99X started playing Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night” in 1975 they edited out the words “spread your wings and let me come inside”. That cart must have played hundreds of times in ’75. There I was in 1981 and the song comes up in the log. I looked at the cart and it looked well used. Sure enough, it was the SAME CART from 75 with the edit still in the rack in ’81. No one bothered to re-cart it after all the original use. A tiny piece of the old 99X was still there.
I still have most of the custom 99X version of Mike Love’s band Celebration “Almost Summer”. He did a version for 99X, K-EARTH101 and one for the Chicago station.
All the best to you.
LOVE that story Jim. It’s cool you got to be on the station, even if it was after the fun (love?) was gone.
Thank you. 🙂