At only ONE talk break, here’s the shortest aircheck on our site.
A short bit of background on this, although I’m sure we’ll get more details from the subject himself, this is a recording of Jim Kaye’s “Gold Rush” show that ran on WAQY in the early years as, first, an AOR, then Classic Rock station. I believe, if memory serves, that it also ran in the final year that WAQY was CHR as “Wacky 102”.
That show lives on, on an internet station as of this writing. www.atomicradio.com. Search for the Big Tuna, the name that Kaye used at Wacky 102 and on the web.
This is a recording which I, your friendly webmaster, recorded on top of a hill, at a campground site in Colrain, Massachusetts, out in the northwest part of the state a few miles west of Greenfield on State Rt. 2. Wonderful place to make recordings due to the elevation, but a pretty scary place to be sitting around the campfire when a thunderstorm rolled through. It was my honeymoon – and I won’t go into details… since she’s long my ex. But the week was fun and filled with lots of recording, of which this is apparently the lone survivor. Hey, I never figured I’d be the curator of a radio museum!
The rest of the tape that this comes from is of John O’Brien (half of today’s very long-running “Bax & O’Brien” morning show, who was working that weekend, playing the “Memorial Day 500”. I intend to post that for THIS Memorial Day… so ‘stay tuned’!
Steve West
I went to college in Springfield from 1980 to 1984 and recall WAQY was calling itself “Wacky 102” back then. Usually that station or WAAF was blaring from a dorm room window. It often amazed me that WAAF reached that far from Worcester.
Yep, we were WACKY 102 until August 1981… Rick Kelly, Ken Gilbert, Glen FM Stevens and I all got to do one last show on the final day of TOP40/CHR before the station changed format to AOR after a Beatles A to Z special over the Weekend… I am STILL playing OLDIES (cd’s, records and some videos) on the GOLDRUSH WEBCAST SUNDAY NIGHTS at 8pm on the internet HERE: //atomicradi.us
2016 update… The GoldRush Lives on… Now we can be seen and heard on the internet, most Saturday nights at 10pm… //vaughnlive.tv/totally_70s AND, the Original GoldRush Sunday Night show at 8pm…. //vaughnlive.tv/retroradiooldies been doing the Sunday night internet version of the show since Summer 2008… Thanks from The Big Tuna, Jim Kaye (still having fun, but now, it is only a hobby… REAL RADIO would NEVER touch a show like the GoldRush!)