The Big Ron O'Brien Collection
KTLK, Denver 
WCFL, Chicago
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I got to know Big Ron O'Brien (October 24, 1951 - April 27, 2008) when he returned to Philadelphia in 1996. Thanks to Big Ron's mother Phyllis, along with Matt Seinberg at Big Apple Airchecks, Rochelle Rabin and a few others, including consultant J.R. Russ, I somehow got the privilege of obtaining and sifting through his life's work and archiving it for the rest of the world. I wish to thank those of you who felt I was qualified for this task.
There were over one-hundred reels in Big Ron's collection, about eighty-percent of them were not labeled. This actually made the dubbing process lots of fun, since I never knew what I was going to hear each time I would thread the next tape on the machine. All I needed was a sports score or a news headline and the Internet to identify the exact date of the aircheck. Some headlines took longer than others to check out. Ron also had a lot of aircheck material on CD. Unfortunately, none of that is included here, because they were stored with his music collection, which was sold before anyone realized all that was there. I like to think of this project as something like when they digitally restore old movies in Hollywood. Much care has been put into each transfer with the highest degree of scrutiny, and has been rendered with meticulous care. I had to add leader tape to most of the reels and fix more than a few splices. There was great attention to details for each tape, such as re-aligning the azimuth of the playback heads to maximize frequency response and keeping the heads super clean. Tape decks were connected directly into a professional computer audio interface (not cheapo sound cards). None of the audio was passed through a mixing console, processor or anything else that might add noise or loss. Some of the reels were originally recorded on a consumer quarter-track stereo deck and the rest were either professional full-track mono or half-track stereo. There were many cases where Ron attempted to record over an old full-track tape using a quarter-track deck. Luckily when you do that, some of the previous recording still remains on part of the tape. I like to refer to these as hidden recordings, tapes that Ron attempted to record over, but, with the right playback machine, they can be retrieved. Otherwise, several of the above airchecks (including a few from KUDL and WCFL) would have been lost forever! Also included here is audio that Matt Seinberg acquired from Ron shortly before his passing. Craig Allen also contributed a few unscoped items that he personally recorded off the air in Philly. There were a few stations that employed Ron that were not represented, so I added a few extras from my own collection to make the archive complete. |
The Repository thanks Big Ron O'Brien's friends for sharing!
Unscoped
This is the first hour of an overnight debut appearance of Big Ron O’Brien on WOGL-FM (Oldies 98.1) in Philadelphia on October 3, 2001.
Maybe he just wanted to practice a bit, or maybe the details of his employment were not yet final, but he is identified only as The Unknown Disc Jockey. This was Big Ron’s last station. He worked there for almost seven years, until a few weeks before his death in April, 2008.
One of the great things about this station in 2001 is that they formatted their hours like a traditional top 40 station. Music, ID, Music, ID – there were NO iPod seques (song-to-song without ID). And there was only ten minutes of commercial time in this hour, comparable to limited spotloads of the ’70’s.
The difference? There are only two stopsets. The first is 4:30 in length, the second is 5:30. There are also apparently mandatory music sweeps with recorded promos. Would an hour with four stopsets of half the length and more of Big Ron be a more listenable hour?
Unscoped
The original aircheck was very tightly ‘scoped, so there’s very little of the commercial sets. This aircheck is EXCLUSIVE to The Big Ron O’Brien Collection at REELRADIO, and the music was flawlessly restored by Scott Lowe.
Scoped
Scoped
Unscoped
Prior to joining KUDL, Van Cleave was heard on KISN/Portland, Oregon, and WTIX/New Orleans, Louisiana. In August, 1970, he changed his name to Adam North at KDWB/Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This aircheck was originally ‘scoped. Thanks to Joe Accardi from WTSR/Trenton, New Jersey for help with music restoration.
Scoped
Big Ron O’Brien is cookin’ in the second hour of this high-energy almost full-fidelity capture of New York’s competively-processed WXLO-FM. Big Ron has a phone babe do the legal ID, a fine application of regulation for identification.
Unfortunately, something was “sticky” on the original recording machine, and infrequently, you’ll hear the “p-tooey wow” sound as the reel goes ’round. It becomes more obnoxious toward the end. Big Ron also tries to simulate Casey Kasem, but since there were technical issues, we’ll avoid evaluation. Still, we gotta love this rare aircheck of Big Ron on 99-X. It’s fun!
Unscoped
Scoped
The show was provided to stations on a barter basis, that is, stations would air commercials included in the program. Three classic Levi’s 501 Blues jingles are included in this show, which was distributed on vinyl. You’ll also hear pre-recorded comments from Sting, Christine McVie and the late Michael Jackson.
The show was provided to stations on a barter basis, that is, stations would air commercials included in the program. Three classic Levi’s 501 Blues jingles are included in this show, which was distributed on vinyl. You’ll also hear pre-recorded comments from Sting, Christine McVie and the late Michael Jackson.