When I was a senior in high school (1981-82), I’d wake up every morning to “I’m Chris Edmonds and this is Morning Sickness!” Chris was a big reason why I loved “Stereo 101” so much. He was raunchy, disgusting, and distasteful. Everything that young males love to hear on the radio! In many ways, Chris Edmonds paved the way for the future success of Tom Barnard’s KQ Morning Show in the Twin Cities.
One of Chris’ recurring bits was where he’d talk into an “echo chamber.” Since this was several years before the advent of digital audio, he’d do it simply by routing his voice through a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Chris gives his secret away to us radio geeks when he says “try 15, go all the way up to the top one.” This of course refers to 15 inches per second, the maximum speed of most reel-to-reel decks. The average listener thought it was somewhat magical since they had no idea how he accomplished this. Radio is such a great theater of the mind. The clip begins with Chris taking a jab at Al Quie. For those who don’t know, Quie was Minnesota’s governor at the time.
This aircheck was originally recorded on 8-track tape. Yes, I had progressed from 8-tracks to cassettes by 1982. But since I was on my way to school at 6:45AM, I wasn’t able to flip the tape over to record on “Side B.” Auto reverse home cassette decks were still a few years away. Since Edmonds was my favorite local talent at the time, I wanted to record and save as much of him as I could. To do so, I pressed my reliable ‘ol Panasonic RS-808 8-track recording deck back into service. I’d set my alarm for about 5:57, turn on the system, and insert a 90-minute blank “Stereo 8” cartridge which would record until about 7:30. Pretty smart kid, huh? My Pioneer SX-3900 receiver and Winegard 10 element FM yagi antenna were also used for this project. The tapes were generic black cartridges with a small label that said “90” on the top. I got them on clearance for 50 cents in the Kmart automotive department. Amazingly enough, they held up for all these years and survived the transfer to digital without self-destructing!
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