THE B-52s

Thursday, 17 December 1987

WLIR-FM Studios
1103 Stewart Avenue
Garden City, New York 11530
USA


FLAC master, 11 September 2018, by elegymart:
Analog radio broadcast (stereo) {recorded by Stonecutter}: WLIR 92.7 FM (Garden City, NY) > Maxell XLII 90 analog audio cassette master {from the Stonecutter Archives} > Tascam 202MKV > Edirol R09 (16/44) {transferred by Smores} > Cool Edit Pro 2.0 (audio cleanup) > SHNtool (fixed SBE) > TLH (WAV > FLAC8).
Created this text file.


Total running time [4:32]
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01 Fred and Kate phoner


Band line-up:
Fred Schneider
Kate Pierson


Notes:

From the Stonecutter Archives comes this radio call-in from Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson of the B-52's to WLIR DJ's Larry "the Duck" Dunn and Donna Donna.

Of interest here is when Kate announces they've just recorded a new song for an upcoming album. At this point, the band had not seen a lot of activity, and the song mentioned, "Love Shack" would end up one of the big hit singles during their comeback period.

The other historical significance here is that this was in the final hour of WLIR's history on the 92.7 FM frequency. Elton Spitzer, the president and general manager of WLIR, had been operating the station for years off a temporary permission that was repeatedly extended by the FCC, but with the success of the station and the increased value of the station, the time had now come and Jarad Broadcasting, won the battle over the 92.7 frequency.

Spitzer held on to the call letters and the "Dare to Be Different" slogan, and as you can hear on Larry the Duck say here, they planned to move up the dial in the new year. After switching out of its progressive format in 1982, WLIR program director Dennis McNamara spearheaded its change to the new music format, focusing more on bands like U2, The Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order, the Clash, the Replacements, R.E.M., Talking Heads, Blondie, and of course, the Ramones and the B-52's.

After 6pm this day, WLIR was no longer (until 1996 when it no longer mattered), and the frequency was taken over by WDRE, with its slogan "New Music First." Ultimately very little changed from WLIR, since Denis McNamara stayed on with WDRE as its program director and Jarad Broadcasting continued to give him free rein with the programming which he continued in the same vein as its WLIR heyday until 1991, when grunge was trending.

From Smores:
This show is from the Stonecutter Archives who was kind enough to share some of his tapes for this forum. If you have masters that you would like to share PLEASE contact me or anyone that is willing to work on them to get them out to the collecting community. Thanks.

Enjoy,
elegymart