There’s a reason we don’t do much with country station airchecks – compared with top 40 they are kinda boring, but they are similar in format to AC stations so sometimes its worth it.
Here’s a recording I made while still living in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. There were, at the time of this recording, three country stations one could pick up in that market. The first, WCMS AM/FM was the heritage country station, having been in the format for over 50 years. Then, there was a fairly new station called Kix 106 (105.9 WSKX) from Suffolk VA, and this one. I liked Keys Country both because it was a BIG signal on 94.1, and I liked the music variety better. I was JUST getting into Country music and discovering all the great music, as Country was moving from the “Urban Cowboy” era to what I’d call the modern Country era. Amazingly, as you listen to this, realize that Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn and so many of the staple artists of today’s Country format were just four years away, and listen to how much different the music sounds here than on an aircheck from 1992.
WKEZ lasted into the 90s, then flipped through a number of format changes. 94.1 FM in Yorktown VA is now an ESPN Radio affiliate with the call letters WVSP.
Where is the WSKX KX 106 aircheck that was on here? I would love to hear what that station sounded like once again.
actually garth brooks came out 2 years later but brooks and dunn did come out 4 years later man country music was great in 1987 and country would see the best period of music and artists in the next decade before going pop and it would never be the same but for about a decade country music was incredible 🙂
actually this is march 1988 i can tell by the songs