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Spotlight: Jim and Relic Radio

5 Dec

December 5, 2011

One thing that I hope comes through to anyone who spends time on this website is the fact that I have varied interests. While I admit that I have not blogged much about science, I am following the new Mars mission on twitter and if you search the index, you can find my lament that Pluto was downgraded from planet to dwarf planet. However, I do hope that readers have picked up on the fact that I am a fan of Old Time Radio.

In general, and very loosely, Old Time Radio can be defined as radio broadcasts of scripted programming, like TV today, between the decades of the 1920’s and the 1950’s, though the final broadcasts of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense, ending at 7:00 pm Eastern Time on September 30, 1962, are often cited as the end of the Golden Age of Radio.

No week of spotlights would be complete without a site I have talked about before, Relic Radio. For quite awhile Relic Radio was my internet home. Relic Radio presents an amazing variety of OTR for- brace yourselves- FREE, all week-long. And not only are they free, there are no commercials. Comedy, drama, mystery, sci-fi, adventure, and more can all be found there.

If you never listened to a radio show, don’t expect to hear a boring audio book. These are full-cast shows with sound effects. Think TV but without the picture. And with (usually) better scripts.

Here is a breakdown and links to the various programs. And did I mention that they are free? And you can download them straight from iTunes? Listen on your commute, as you work out, in your car, anytime you want some good old-fashioned entertainment.

Relic Radio. The main program. Each week you’ll get two main shows and a short Believe It or Not for a full hour of entertainment. There is a nice variety to this show. This week you can hear Box 13 and The Saint, starring Vincent Price.

 

 

 

 

The Horror. My favorite show. Each week another classic program from Light’s Out, The Hermit’s Cave, or another spooky, creepy, horror show.

 

 

 

 

Strange Tales. Odd and mysterious, strange. Not quite sci-fi, not quite horror. This week: The Mysterious Traveler, one of the great anthologies of OTR.

 

 

 

 

Relic Radio Thrillers. As you’d expect, action and adventure from some of the big names of radio, like Escape and the Lux Radio Theater.

 

 

 

Relic Radio Science Fiction. Home of Dimension X, X Minus One, and more great sci-fi.

 

 

 

Case Closed! The detectives. Sam Spade, Boston Blackie, Dragnet, Phillip Marlowe, Broadway is My Beat, and a lot more.

 

 

 

Orson Welles: On The Air. Was there a more famous, more genius, radio personality than Orson Welles? Probably not. Find all his work here, from The Mercury Theater to Harry Lime.

 

 

 

Suspense Replay. Suspense is considered one of the best anthologies broadcast. It lasted decades and was one of the last two classic shows still on the air in 1962. When it ended so did the Golden Age of Radio. Here they are, rerun in chronological order.

 

 

 

Legacy of Laughs. Looking for a good comedy? Find Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Our Miss Brooks, My Favorite Husband, and a slew of funny shows in this podcast.

 

 

 

The Great Gildersleeve Replay. My other favorite show. This is a sitcom about the most pompous, most woman-crazy man you’ve ever heard. But Gildersleeve also has a heart and a soft spot for his family. The supporting cast is top-notch and the writing is superb. check this one out.

 

 

 

Radio at War. Just what it says. Old Time Radio tales of war.

 

 

 

But that’s not all. No mention of Relic Radio would be complete without a few words about the man behind it all, Jim. Not only does he work hard to get us these shows, but he also runs the Relic Radio Forum, some of the best message boards around with people like me who talk about everything and anything, including OTR once in a while. Many of the people featured in Mob Week can be found there. Drop by and say Mr. Blog sent you. They members of the board are very welcoming of new members, and that’s hard to find.

Now getting back to Jim, he’s a bit bashful but he runs his own blog which I feature in the sidebar. I grab his RSS feed and while he doesn’t post nearly as often as I do (Did you see all those podcasts? He’s busy!) when he does post it is usually a gem. Find his latest post right here at The Oddments.

I hope Jim doesn’t mind (he has no idea I’m doing this) but here is one of his recent blogs:

Going Back In 4/4 Time

Its been said that smell can trigger memories better than anything else. I’m sure that can be linked to the animal portion of our brains – some survival mechanism whose main purpose is forgotten, long ago replaced by logic and reason. While that may be true, I find it takes a far back seat to music for really dredging up the past.

There’s a CD case that stands against the wall in the other room, one of those glue, sawdust and wood-grain sticker deals, pretty much untouched since it was moved there years ago. It’s an artifact of a bygone age, and I can’t tell you the last time I slid a disc out for a listen. The truth is I’m a bit afraid to. The thing is a mausoleum, each dusty compartment holding a little bit of my past encapsulated with its musical accompaniment. Stacked one atop the other, with just a fraction of an inch worth of space between them, lay the polycarbonate corpses of my lost decade. There are a few happy times in the stack along the left side. Lots of loss on the top right, just above the melancholy. Then there is ‘her’ section. We’ll leave her out of this. The point is, the music was always playing back then, and to listen to it now doesn’t come without a price. It’s amazing what the brain can throw back at you with the proper stimulus, and how an old memory can still make you feel a bit of unease years after its interment.

“Well, certainly memory is a curious machine and strangely capricious. It has no order, it has no system, it has no notion of values, it is always throwing away gold and hoarding rubbish.” -Mark Twain

Anyway, I’m cautious touching the thing for all it might rattle loose. Remember what happened when they cracked the lid on the Ark? Not that all the memories entombed there are bad, but truth be told, the bad tend to be more sticky. At least during that era. I’m not sure why I haven’t gotten rid of the damn thing.

That’s the odd thing about nostalgia, and revisiting the past whether by choice or errant thought. It’s the part people may forget. By its very meaning, there’s some pain involved. In fact, for a time it was considered a disease; one serious enough to lead to death (allegedly), usually afflicting soldiers unable to go home. But I ask you friend, are we all not soldiers at war with our pasts at one time or another?

Back to the front.

This man needs to write more! Follow him and give him some encouragement.

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Spotlight: Threedayfish

1 Dec

December 1, 2011

According to JRD Skinner, Threedayfish is a mystery to man, woman, and child. As master of the FlashCast’s first recurring segment, and sole film reviewer, Fish has begun to build an empire of internet notoriety which can only end in a flame-out of booze, drugs, and easy women.

While always listening, Fish currently occupies most of his time with his education, and has been known to delve into the world of war game miniatures.

I’d like to note that it says “sole” film reviewer. There is a good reason for that. While my New York Minute segment of FlashCast may often touch upon movies, and this website may on occasion do a feature on some of the worst that movies have to offer, I am not nearly the reviewer that Threedayfish is. I would hate to try to put into words what I feel about movies. I would not dare step on his toes. The old cliché “I may not know about art but I know what I like” applies to me. It definitely does not apply to Threedayfish.

You can find him online and like him on Facebook right here.

Read on and discover how some modern films carry on the tradition of a classic American genre.

Fish’s Guide to Judging Pulp

            Special guest Threedayfish here helping out bmj2k, a guy I’ve never even met. Why? Because I am a nice guy. He didn’t give me much to work with. He just said “Hey Fish, you’re a handsome guy, mind helping me with my blog” and I said yes. Why? Because I am a sucker for flattery. Enough about what I am, now for who I am. I am a contributor to a podcast known as Flash Pulp. Flash Pulp tries to revive an American genre that has left a lasting impression on its media. I specialize in reviewing movies worthy of the title pulp. It was easy at first, thanks to the slew of super hero movies. Comic book heroes are a direct descendant of pulp fiction magazines. But as summer waned, and the easy pulp picks thinned, I had to decide for myself how to distinguish pulp flicks from any other old movie?

            Well, looking back on pulp’s history and evolution, I have determined three hallmarks that separate a true blue pulp movie from a look alike. The first genetic trait in pulp DNA is how the movie ends. The movie has to make the audience feel like things worked out for the best. There are a couple of ways a pulp movie can achieve this. Super hero movies have the most familiar form of this kind of ending: the hero, after coming to grips with his new identity as an individual with the responsibility to help others, has saved the day and things look brighter until the inevitable sequel. However, that isn’t to say the ending has to be all smiles. An example of this would be when John Hartigan saves Nancy Callahan then kills himself in Sin City. Not exactly uplifting, but the hero’s moral code was upheld and the girl was saved. A warrior’s death. While not a happy ending, it was virtuous. Sounds predictable? Of course! A pulp movie must leave the audience reassured that good can triumph over evil. The exceptions to this rule would be your Lovecraftian horror and your film noir. But that has more to do with the goals of the genre.

            So, we have eliminated kiddie movies and tragedies. C’mon Fish, we need specifics. Okay. Here’s another give away. Pulp will experiment in story lines and style. A great example of this is Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Movies like Tron experimented with being sucked into a video game, but Scott Pilgrim put on display a world where video games were reality. This made for a visually humorous and charming movie. This narrows down our picks. While dramas can be pulp-y, a good drama will often try to make some point, one that may challenge your beliefs or defend others with a new perspective. This is all well and good, but it’s not the way pulp operates. This eliminates dramas, documentaries, and a through and through comedy which aims to parody rather than experiment.

            So what does this leave us with? The pulpiest of genres: Adventure, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Horror/Thriller and Crime. But Fish, you have yet to really narrow things down. Well, to be honest, it’s not hard to fall into the pulp category. But there is one more necessary quality. Pulp heroes are static, predictable, expected. These have a negative connotation from  movie critics, but an audience member may see it differently. An audience member may see them as reliable. “Count-on-able” if you will. So what’s so great about this predictability?

 Pulp is a genre that doesn’t try to invent, rather to improve and innovate. Humans have created anything original in art, music, or literature for thousands of years. Pulp-influenced writers have no illusions about this and so they reinvent whatever and wherever they can. This can be in the setting as in the Scott Pilgrim example, or with pseudo-science in Sci-Fi. Any new discoveries in science lead to new pseudo-scientific problems and conflicts in our movies and books. It is what society at large calls ‘progress’ that pulp tries to shield us from. Often it seems to just add more problems and more stress to our troubled world. Pulp ultimately tries to reassure the public that things will work out, even if their world was just turned upside down and we hit our butts hard on the unfamiliar ground. Pulp will do this by any means, even if that means avoiding thought-provoking and ‘smart’ plots.

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