Category: Radio

Categories
Animals Blogging Computers History Internet Life Music News People Radio Television

Saturday Night Retro

Exactly 17 years ago yesterday morning on the 21ST of May of 1993 in the heart of Melbourne Florida ‘Captain Airwaves’ was officially born. He was my original pseudonym in cyberspace. Of course back in 1993 nobody knew what the World Wide Web was all about. After all Al Gore had just invented it, and he hadn’t yet explained it. Back then the most popular form of modern communications between personal computers across the free nation was via the telephone dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). Mine debuted real early on that morning 17 years ago, and it was named after my lovable childhood cat (still alive at the time) – Fluffy. She was a Manx, and the name of my first creation in cyberspace – ‘MANx CAT BBS’. That first bulletin board system lasted a little over four years, and it eventually spawned a spinoff site on the emerging web at the time – ‘MANx On The Net’. That web site eventually morphed into the ‘MASSIVESMASH.COM‘ hit music web site that survived and thrived for the better part of a decade during the late-1990s into the new millenium. It faded several years ago, but it inspired this personal blog that continues today.

‘Captain Airwaves’ was actually the pseudonym of the late great John Carmody – the famed daily television columnist of “The Washington Post” newspaper from 1977 to 1998. During my high school years in the early-1980s he inspired me to get in to the entertainment business somehow someway. The bulletin board, the web site, and the blog was as close as I got to that dream. I adopted the ‘Captain Airwaves’ pseudonym for the BBS, and then after a couple of years my followers at the time (known affectionately as ‘MANxsters’) promoted me to ‘Major’, so I became ‘Major Airwaves’. When the web site hit it big I took on the ‘Major Hitwaves’ name and persona to more accurately reflect my role at the time as a deejay on the web. Nowadays I’m still ‘Major Hitwaves’, but I’m more commonly known as simply ‘The Major’.

17 years ago this past week I was unemployed, living off of my savings, and having way too good of a time with all of my friends and neighbours in the Melbourne area. The 1400 block of South Oak Street rocked back then, and ‘Captain Airwaves’ was crankin’ out the hits from his second floor studio efficiency – and all up and down the U.S. 1 and the A1A.

Here’s one of those hits of the time – an obscure track that was a local smash on the radio and in the nightclubs of Melbourne. It’s His Boy Elroy – and a track about them “Chains”. As are most of the songs that I feature here on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ it’s one of the greatest songs ever made according to me.

Categories
History Life Music Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

23 years ago this week on the 19TH of May of 1987 me and a friend traveled from our airbase near Fairford Gloucestershire England eastward to the bright lights and big city of London where we saw Duran Duran LIVE in concert at the Wembley Arena. Simon Le Bon, John Taylor, and Nick Rhodes brought their “Strange Behaviour” world tour there to accompany their hit album at the time “Notorious”. It was 1 of 19 LIVE concerts that I attended with friends during my two years of living in the United Kingdom.

I consider 1987 to be one of the greatest and most memorable years of my early life. It was all about the music back then – the music on the radio – the music at the concerts. It was the greatest year of music of my life at the time during a year in which I fondly look back at as being simply smashing and very British.

This was one of the most memorable (for me) and biggest commercial hits of the year in 1987 – a # 1 gold-certified HI-NRG dance smash from sisters Mel and Kim. It had the entire European continent dancing in unison – including a rather young not quite 20-year-old Chris M. Day. It’s “Respectable”, and it’s ‘Retro’:

Categories
Animals History Home Life Music People Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

This week on the ‘Retro’ I’m taking us back 38 years ago to 1972. Many of you reading this weren’t even alive back then, but I was an active 5-year-old kid roaming around my new Bowie Maryland house and yard off Peach Walker Drive. I can actually see our old family house and neighbourhood today on Google Street View. It looks like a 40-year-old neighbourhood. I could fly to Washington D.C., drive to my old ‘hood in Bowie, walk up to my old house, knock on my old front door, and introduce myself as the guy that lived in that house as a little boy 35 to 38 years ago – and it would be the eeriest thing that I’ve ever done. You always hear of older people doing that – returning back to a home that they grew up in some 40 or 50 or 60 years ago – but a 43-year-old ?  38 years ago seems like such an eternity for me. I can’t believe that I’m now two generations old. I don’t feel old, but numbers don’t lie.

All we’ve got is the uncertainties of the future and the memories of the past. No matter how far we’ve come. No matter how much time has passed. We should never forget where we came from. We should never forget what we once were.

In 1972 I liked to play with my German Shepherd ‘Brandy’ out in the backyard. He loved to run. I loved to chase him. I just wished that he would stop digging holes underneath the fence and escaping into the outside world around him !

On WWDC AM-1260 (before FM radio hit it big) Raspberries were near the top of the pop charts with back-to-back hits. You may not remember the name of the band, but how about its lead singer – the legendary Eric Carmen – who enjoyed a late-1980s comeback courtesy of the “Dirty Dancing Soundtrack”. Here he is leading his band back then with two rockin’ hits – “Go All The Way” and “I Wanna Be With You”. Let’s Rock the ‘Retro’ !

Categories
Career Driving History Home Life Music People Radio

Saturday Night Retro

Every 4 weeks here on the ‘Retro’ I flashback to the 1980s – the decade in which I went from 12-years-old to 22-years-old. It’s when I attended and graduated from high school. It’s when I learned how to drive. It’s when I left home to join the Air Force. It’s when I lived overseas in the U.K. for two years, and then returned back home stateside to move to Homestead Florida – my home of the past 22+ years.

1988 was my first full year here in Homestead. I had no car back then, but my buddies did – so any driving around the local area was courtesy of my good buddies at the time. Within the air base I rode around on my 10-speed bicycle. It was very cost efficient, but the rain and the wind could be quite troublesome at times. I put an end to that misery by purchasing my first new car in January of the following year (1989).

During much of 1988 HOT-105 was the radio station to listen to here in South Florida for mainstream TOP 40 music without deejays during the day. They played it all – pop, dance, freestyle – even power rock and heavy metal !

They even played this COLOSSAL hip hop smash from The Fat Boys. It’s a modern Summer of 1988 update of Chubby Checker‘s “The Twist” – with Chubby himself providing guest vocals on it. CHECK IT !