WVVV Rock105_1992_#1

[ALL AUDIO FROM MY 30-YR OLD CASSETTE TAPES.]
It was a small commercial FM station, one of the first granted its FCC license in 1964 in the New River Valley in southwest Virginia. It was either dormant or simulcasted its more established sister station, WJJJ, which played "beautiful music" for years until new life was breathed into it in the late 1970's. At that time, the only rocker in Montgomery county was AM flamethrower WQBX, where area engineer JJ worked, as well as the legendary Animal, doing afternoon drives there in the 70's.

The first real programming on FM 104.9, WVVV (it went by "V105" from circa '79-83) in Christiansburg, Va, was provided by infamous radio consultants Bill Drake and Lester Chenault, Drake-Chenault Enterprises (who later became the equally infamous Jones Radio Networks). They provided individual stations lots of huge reels of quality tape filled with pre-recorded favorites of the day, all sanitized, tested, and played in the biggest markets across the USA, so of course who wouldn't like that?

If interested, you can read up on the history of Drake-Chenault here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake-C...

By 1986, Rock 105 had emerged, playing some choice mostly-unheard picks, sandwiched in with many chart favorites. The blend was modest, since "alternative" rock wasn't a genre yet. There were synth-rock groups, Euro-style sub genres of reggae, punk, metal, and similar budding pools of rock forming in those early days, and we played them.

These videos contain audio from my time there. I worked on the air at Rock 105 from Sept 1991 - July 1992, and I still cherish my memories there. All audio here was culled from my morning drive shifts. The sound was coming from a cheap boombox the station used as a "skimmer", to tape us jocks when we opened up the mic at the control board. So, usually, us old DJ's have tons of old airchecks, and for the most part they're filled only with our breaks from that particular shift.
I got into radio because of the love of music. And presenting great music. Which, of course, includes the segues. They last only a few seconds, aren't the "main" part of listening to music...but they mean so much. A bad segue can just jolt a listener out of their bliss-filled trance, and I totally respected that fact, and concentrated on all of my music sweeps with segues in mind. It meant pre-staging the possible segue in audition, listening close as you practice the two songs blending, what drum beats happen when, etc, from each song, then setting them up for play in the current sweep you're in. All on the fly, while music plays, and you try to be in the moment, planning the next song according to the mood that's currently playing from any song.

So I ended up opening my mic at the board, keeping it potted down of course, when segues were happening that I thought would sound good. I wanted to study them later for evaluation.

Otherwise, these segues are like Zen sand sculptures: beautiful, but transitory. Forgotten for the ages after someone rakes over the sand drawing that took days to construct. Except for some of these tapes that are a record of what WVVV Rock 105 used to sound like in the early 1990's. Thanks for listening.