The Thread Of Complete Randomness

  • Nothing wrong with white noise, I love it. One of my most missed cassettes was one consisting entirely of shortwave radio noise, oh man I loved that tape. I'd discovered that by carefully tuning the SW band on my dad's radio cassette player, I could pick up these weird and wonderful sounds and in particular one that was like a continuous sustained low guitar power chord blended with a very loud fuzztoned bass pedal, with slight undulations. It was gorgeous and I recorded this whole tape of it. It was great to listen to over earphones in the dark and perfect for lulling me to sleep. I still occasionally conjure it up in my mind.


    Incidentally, through this SW radio experimentation I realised what Gabriel meant by "When the night shows, the signals grow on radios". The sounds only happened in the evening, during the day there was virtually nothing.


    You'd also get those distorted morse code transmissions. Bob Mould used it brilliantly at the end of Tilted, on the Sugar album Beaster.

    I used to be a SW listener, I bet your dad's radio cassette was a Grundig? I have a bunch of radios still, including 3 Grundig Satellit 700's (see https://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/portable/sat700.html - Universal radio was a good place to hang out if you wanted to meet Joe Walsh, so I was told) a500, a 400, a 300, a 210 and a couple of Yacht Boy 500's.


    Gabriel's experience with radio is that of most people, who use LW & MW, but actually, what happens is lower frequencies, (below 10 kHz, so both those bands and the lower 3rd of SW) improve at night, and frequencies above 10kHz are better during the day, night and day of course referring to the area which you, and the transmitter, and most of the area between, is currently in. 20-odd years ago, Radio Australia was an easy noon catch on 11660 Hz, as was Radio Jordan on 11690, here in the UK. Deutche Welle is relatively local to us, so their main European transmitter on 6075 was easy all day. the Night effect is more pronounced the further the station was, as anyone who used to listen to Radio Luxembourg in summer well knows. 208 metres, 1512 kHz, is now Radio China's European service I think.


    The morse signals were distorted because you need a radio with single Side Band capability to receive them properly, same with voice radio hams. They use SSB because you only need 25% of the power to get the same coverage if you remove one of the sidebands, and the carrier wave, but your radio needs a beat frequency oscillator to re-insert the carrier wave to make it legible.


    SSB was also used for lots of other stuff, like Slow Scan TV, faxes, and even spy numbers stations, like Lincolnshire Poacher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…_Poacher_(numbers_station) & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station) ) which I've often heard. Boring, yet exciting because you knew you were listening in to something very clandestine.

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

  • I bet your dad's radio cassette was a Grundig?


    Lincolnshire Poacher

    Thanks for the info. No... thinking back to it I'm not getting 'Grundig'. I want to say Phillips but I'm not sure, though I'm fairly certain it wasn't Grundig.


    Yes I read about Poacher a while back, probably the last time I searched stuff relating to SW and it led me there - interesting, I like stuff like that.


    For anyone interested enough, from 3.30 on this video of Tilted the lead-out features what sounds like a TV evangelist about to deliver an emotive prayer but just as he takes a breath to do so, we get the stream of distorted Morse. I always loved the image of those signals streaming from his mouth. Brilliant song, I love it.

    Abandon all reason

  • OVER 150 ALBUMS?????


    Disgruntled fans at gigs - "Really disappointing they didn't do anything off the first 75 albums".

    :D:D:D


    I was looking at Wikipedia and it says they have had 160 releases, this includes studio albums as well as some live official releases and soundtracks. I think i have 158 of them. :huh::love:

    “Without music, life would be a mistake”

  • Music magazine Q publishes its final edition next week. They say the pandemic has finished them off.


    It was a regular read for me through the 90s but I lost interest in it in the early 2000s when it rather lost its way. But I still feel a pang of sadness at its demise.


    If I remember correctly, its first edition in 1986 had a cover feature on the IT tour.

    Abandon all reason

  • Music magazine Q publishes its final edition next week. They say the pandemic has finished them off.


    It was a regular read for me through the 90s but I lost interest in it in the early 2000s when it rather lost its way. But I still feel a pang of sadness at its demise.


    If I remember correctly, its first edition in 1986 had a cover feature on the IT tour.

    I had not heard that. That used to be a regular buy for me many years ago

    “Without music, life would be a mistake”

  • Music magazine Q publishes its final edition next week. They say the pandemic has finished them off.


    It was a regular read for me through the 90s but I lost interest in it in the early 2000s when it rather lost its way. But I still feel a pang of sadness at its demise.


    If I remember correctly, its first edition in 1986 had a cover feature on the IT tour.

    That's really sad . I must have first bought it in 87 for the cover feature " It was twenty years ago today " and all about Sgt Pepper. I still have the issue along with all the following editions from the next 16 years. Stopped buying though. Swapped for Classic Rock which is more me. I buy Mojo and Uncut occasionally but I'm afraid I have never seen a cover of Q when browsing that had made me want to buy it for many many years.