Firesign Theater

[Gregg Lengling]

Do you remember? Sunday night broadcasts of Firesign Theater on WZMF???  Guess what I found in my archives?  I've got hours and hours of Firesign that I recorded on Sunday nights off of WZMF (even got a clip of Bob Reitman do the station id).  I'm in the process of digitizing it all for CD writing (don't trust the reel to reel tapes to last forever, so years ago I transfered to cassette) and now I'm doing the next step.  

If there is interest I might be willing to share some of these invaluable recordings with my friends here.  Tom I'm sure you'll really really really be interested.


Just an old hippie now with short hair and drug-free!

[dj1111]

It was my absolute favorite station back in the day.  What years were they broadcasting anyway?  I know I was just a teenager at the time.  I don't think I realized most people listening were probably high.  It didn't matter to me, I hated top 40 music.

Turn on the stereo, plug in the headphones and get lost for hours at a time with music you couldn't hear anywhere else on the dial.  

Then Sheboygan got it's own FM station at a frequency a few decimals off from ZMF and would block it completely.  And Sheboygan's station was top 40.  Puke :mad:    I would wait at night when the local yokels would go off the air so WZMF could make it through again.  Were they at 97.7?  That sticks in my mind.


Great memories.  :p

[Gregg Lengling]

There were on 98.3 FM and later were sold and became WFMR.  Later WFMR did a swap for a different channel but that's another story.
The recordings I have if I remember correctly were from 1971.

[Tom Snyder]

When I was in High School (Menomonee Falls East, Class of '72) a friend and I used to go hang out at 'ZMF after midnight on Saturday nights. Michael St. James was the overnight DJ, and we'd eat pizza and once I even had a chance to do Farm Report at 4 am (an event that got Michael busted by the PD)... but that's really what gave me the bug to be in radio that didn't go away till I got my first DJ job in 1982.

That friend and I used to drive around listening to Firesign Theater tapes, and had them all memorized. That was back in the day when our goal was to cut the soles off our shoes, sit in a tree and learn to play flute!  

I actually knew Reitman from WTOS... another great story.

But WZMF was real radio...

[waterhead]

I don't remember The Firesign Theater on zmf, but I'm a few years younger than you guys.
I used to listen to, and record, The National Lampoon Radio Hour, on a cassette tape. I took them to school (Bay View class of '75) and listened to them again while in the darkroom during my cinegraphics class. The door was locked, for film developing, so the teacher couldn't "catch" me.

I have 3 of the recordings left, but only one is of listenable quality.

I also saved a ZMF bumper sticker, here's a scan:

[bubbaridesfast]

I also grew up in the Falls off Town Hall Rd. I have almost the last 24 hours of WZMF's broadcast before they went off the air in 1979 that my brother recorded on his, at that time ,state of the art Nakimichi cassette deck.
We have now burned it all on cd's. My favorite Firesign stuff was the Nick Danger bits. I used to have them on vinyl but back when I lived on 35th & Vliet around 1982 they were stolen when my flat was broken into.
BTW, is there any good software (preferably free) for editing the files we burned on cd? A friend burned them before I had a cd burner and each tape is a single track. I would like to put in breaks for songs and dj chatter.