What radio stations did you listen to growing up?

The IHeartRadio (features Clear Channel stations) and AOL Radio (CBS stations) are good, too. Not sure about Droid, but I have them on my iPod Touch, which means they're available on the iPhone.

 

Growing up in central New Jersey, there was a nice mix of New York and Philly stations to pick from. For talk radio, when I was really tuned in in the early 90s it was right about the time WIP and WFAN were first blowing up. Loved staying up into the wee hours and listening to Steve Somers on WFAN.

For music, it was mostly the Philly stations (was a little too far south for New York's FM stations) and WPST out of Trenton. WPST was top-40, for the most part, but they'd also mix in some cool alternative stuff or older 80s New Wave songs that you rarely heard.
They also took requests, which was fun. Since I always stayed up until dawn in the summer as a teenager, I'd often call at 2 or 3 in the morning and do one. One time the DJ asked what I was doing, I assume to make conversation. Then he says, jokingly, "I bet you're watching dirty movies on Cinemax, aren't you?"
The fact that I was didn't make it any less creepy.

 

Living in outstate Michigan, you could get CKLW when the wind was right.

Here are representative playlists for the era.

http://www.thebig8.net/surveys.html

About 1970 you had the rise of album rock. WRIF, WKNR, some of the other stations out of the Detroit area.

Even top-40 AM pop radio was fun until the middle-to-late 1970s.

Every station had its own slightly quirky personality centered around the listeners. When the PDs and jocks had good taste and a bit of wit, it could be awesome. Of course, when they didn't, it wasn't.


With corporate-programmed radio these days, I make a point not to listen. Pre-programmed bullshit some fucking focus group decided teenagers are supposed to like, filtered through the corporate profit factory and run across the desk of a fascist foreigner from Australia. Fuck it all to hell.

 

I'd forgotten about "Chickenman." That brings a smile to my face.

 

I lived east of Nashville and did the KDF thing too, but more often Y107 for top 40 and more importantly, Coyote McCloud and the Zoo Crew, which was officially banned by my parents. By current standards it was PG-13 at worst, but in those days it was raunchy enough that the local paper felt the need to call for a ban on the editorial page.

 

Must've sucked to have been stopped dead in your tracks like that.

 

On FM in the DC area: WPGC 95.5 and WHUR 96.3. Easily the best R&B/urban stations in the area, especially given that WHUR is Howard University's station.

Didn't get into WHFS 99.1 until I was in high school, and I didn't truly appreciate it until it was gone.

I'm an advocate for satellite radio but there are times I long for AM radio - loved driving around at night in high school, listening to WFAN out of New York, KDKA out of Pittsburgh or WIP out of Philadelphia. On a REALLY good night you could catch KMOX out of St. Louis.

 

When I was growing up, I listened to two stations early -- WJR, which was what my parents listened to and CKLW, which is what I listened to. J.P. McCarthy was THE man in Detroit, talk, music and news. If there was a school closing (which was when I listened -- at breakfast) it was to J.P.
CKLW was music. It was THE station in the eastern Midwest with its 50,000 watts and D.J.'s like Super Max Kinkel, Brother Bill Gabel and I think Dick Purtan worked there in my formative years. Ask anyone who listened what 20/20 news was and they'll still tell you Jo-Jo Shutty and Byron McGregor.
But it was the start of my formative geek years
I'd take the radio from the kitchen -- the 4 D-Cell/AC monster -- and at night, I'd listen to baseball. Yea, I could listen to WJR, but I'd listen to the Phillies on KYW, Cards on KMOX, Reds on WLW, Bucs on KDKA... strangely, the Chicago stations didn't come in well. Later, I'd pick up the Jays on CHYR from Leamington or CHUM from Toronto (I think...). It was the era, when you could walk down the street on a summer night and not miss a pitch from the radios in the living room or on the porch.
When I started driving, it was an extension... my parents 1975 Plymouth Fury --the Brown Bomb -- only had AM radio. So I listened to Joe Charboneau's rookie year and was a believer with Indian Fever on 3WE with Nev Chandler and Herb Score.
An aside, because of listening to 3WE, I also followed the Indians. One summer home from college, my buddy and I were trying to figure out what to do one night. We had Tigers tickets, but it looked like rain.
"Let's go to Cleveland," I said. He said no. So I asked a couple other friends for suggestions, they both said go to Cleveland -- like 2 1/2 hours away.
We went to the Tigers game and it started late because of the rain. About the fourth inning the PA announcer proclaimed that "Len Barker just threw a perfect game..." the rest was drowned out in my yelling at him "YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!"
I have Sirius/XM now and it's not the same. I don't get the thrill from Dan Dickerson and Jim Price clear as a bell, that I did from driving to a hilltop in suburban Minneapolis in October of 1984, having moved from Detroit three months earlier and knowing that I had to listen to Ernie.. and that opening day Tuna Fish, Swiss, Lettuce on White, potato chips, pickles and Lemonade doesn't taste the same now than it did when it was watching George Kell and Larry Osterman.
Living here in the armpit of the SEC, I rarely get a broadcasting thrill.
A couple of years ago, I was on the way back from a basketball tournament an hour away. I switch to AM for some reason and tried WJR for giggles. I heard Frank Beckman and Jim Brandstatter calling the Alamo Bowl on WJR. Clear as a bell, but fading out on occasion. I was 19 again, listening to the 1980 Indians; I was 22, listening to Ernie Harwell on Townline Road, with a cop pulling behind me asking what I was doing; I was back in the Brown Bomb, with the 360 V8 and the balky carburetor.
I can still see the radio on the refrigerator, I can still see the kitchen, I can still feel the bench seat with the brown fabric and the five-button radio.
I miss radio.

 

Bubbler and I shared a bedroom in the early to mid eighties, so I obviously listened to a lot of WKTI around that time period as well. Some others...

Q95, Indianapolis: I thought Bob and Tom were funny when I was ten, there was probably some Bubbler influence there as well.

WENZ, Cleveland: (a.k.a. The End): Alternative rock station, a staple of my high school days. They switched to a rap format a couple years after I left for college.

WMMS, Cleveland: When I was in high school this was also an alternative station, but they seemed to play crap like Bush and Candlebox a lot more often than The End so I didn't really listen to it as much. They switched back to classic rock about a month after I left for college.

Rock 107, Canton: Alternative/hard rock station. It was basically like WMMS except instead of Bush and Candlebox they played Metalica and Korn.

WAPS, Akron: This was the Akron Schools station. It was kind of hit and miss like all public radio stations, but they had a really awesome punk show on Sunday nights that I never missed.

 

Q95 seemed original and funny when I was in high school. They were sort of still developing their schtick at that stage (late 80s) that they've since run into the ground for at least two decades, now in national syndication.

I almost exclusively listen to XM these days, but I flipped Q95 on when I was in Indy recently. I don't think the song list has changed since 1989. How the hell many times do brain-dead classic rock fans need to hear Boston before they've had enough?

What was the station in Cleveland that employed Humble Pie's Jerry Shirley? Was it WMMS? Which station played Funkadelic's Maggot Brain on Friday nights and Sunday mornings? They actually went beyond the usual classic rock bullshit.

Cleveland radio in the early 90s meant Michael Stanley. He (and his music) were bullet-in-the-brain bad.

That's not the only thing we shared. Wait ... what?

 

I'm just old enough to have listened to 99X back when it was Power 99, before it went alternative.

Spent about 99 percent of the '90s (and early 2000s) listening to that station, sometimes flipping to Z93 during the commercials. Went to a whole bunch of the great festivals they put on, such as Big Day Out. And the 99x stage at Music Midtown was absolutely dynamite for about 7-8 years in a row. Great stuff.

 

Try the BBC. Seriously.