Archive rooms are usually dusty places - but I've found a place on the net that smells like that cute girl back in school, that you secretly fancied - you even sat next to her in science...
You'll see the link on the right - it's The Radio Vault, a project by Duane Rafferty. He collects radio station memorabilia (stickers, logos, cards, press clippings etc), and has undergone a painstaking exercise of digitising these for us all to see, and reflect upon.
Looking at some of these radio station stickers, takes me back to my childhood and the music I used to hear on these various stations. I even took notice of promotional trailers at the time, and remember some of the corporate voices - how they used to say their catchphrases.. "nobody plays more music than 91FM" etc... reminds me of the imagery, stories, station promotions and the countless hours of recording songs off the radio onto Maxell cassettes :)It also takes me back - seeing logos of radio stations I used to work for at various stages (even others that don't exist now), and how long ago it was. Very apparent.
The Radio Vault is growing too. If you have anything in your collection (I have a briefcase with lots of radio stickers on it), old promo t-shirts, jerseys etc - take a photo and email him. He would be very grateful :)
One other thing I found interesting, is that it clearly illustrates how - as the bigger networks acquired the smaller stations, the less LOCAL they appear to become!! Sometimes I wonder about the day Doug Gold put pen to paper about the More FM idea, and how he might be feeling now.
Even thinking back - about the govt regulations changes, with the 1989 FM frequencies release, I wonder if radio would be able to survive today if Govt, say, kept it regulated, but continued to release frequencies. How much more diverse and fiercly local would our airwaves be today?Would we need National Radio, for example?
