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From my collection of open reel tapes, here is a 60-second radio commercial for Mayfair Markets, a grocery chain from the 1960’s and 70’s. My favorite line ,”The second thing that happens is that the butcher loses control.” More about this grocery store chain can be found here, here, and here.

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This is a recording from January 1988 of mobile phone calls. The cellular phone system was analog and could be eavesdropped on if you had a radio that could receive between 800 and 900 megahertz, frequency modulation, or FM. I had access to such a receiver as an employee of Televents Cable TV in Martinez, California. Many of the service techs were issued an AOR, model AR-2002 communications receiver with an antenna tuned to around 150 megahertz. During times when there weren’t many service calls, we would drive slowly through neighborhoods with our radios tuned to one of the video carriers of the “midband” cable channels listening closely for the distinctive “sync buzz” (very close to 60 hertz with lots of higher harmonics). If the noise was detected, that was “signal leakage,” cable TV signals radiating out from the cabling, acting like a radio transmitter. This violated FCC rules as it potentially could interfere with aircraft communications. We would then start looking for loose, corroded connections. Often the culprits were “F fittings.” We didn’t stop checking for problems until the signal was at an acceptable low enough level. I noticed the radios we were using for our work, the AR-2002, tuned up through 1300 megahertz. On my days off work, I’d take the receiver home and record cellular phone calls. I’m quite sure the radio I’m demonstrating in Sonic Outlaws is the company issued unit, before I bought my own.
Most of the calls are not complete because as people driving would get out of range of one cell tower and connect seamlessly to another, the frequncy would change. I did a lot of filtering and a liitle noise reduction to clean up the audio quality. The frequency range is from just under 200 hertz to a little over 4000 hertz with extra notch filtering at 120 and 240 hertz.

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Made this from a MIDI file and a trial version of Reaper without much thought or effort.

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Here is another recording of cable television employees being dispatched to various jobs around Contra Costa County, California. This time I’m on my job as service technician number 73. This was recorded on my Superscope C-104 cassette recorder with my Bearcat 300 police scanner. The Bearcat has the ability to turn a tape recorder remote switch on and off when the squelch opens and closes. I simply set it up before work and the recorder was able to capture at least part of a typical work day of myself and other workers being dipatched to service calls.

Part 1

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Part 2

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Here is a recording of Richard Lyons and myself on the first Thanksgiving I celebrated after my parents and grandparents passed away. It features the sounds of kitchen appliances, pots, pans, and it takes place at my parents home in Martinez, California. Richard’s wit and my obsessive compulsiveness show throughout. I used my Superscope C-104 cassette recorder and a RadioShack condenser microphone capsule for recording. You may have noticed I categorized this as a “Family Tape” as Richard was pretty much like a brother and a member of Negativland, as well.

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I made this recording on a day off from my job as a service technician at Televents Cable TV in Contra Costa County, California. This is a new capture just today, using my Sony TCD-5M cassette recorder. The sound is stereo with two scanner/communications radios. Most of the audio is  radio channel 1 for service techs (463.875 MHz) and the other is radio channel 2 for installers (464.175 MHz). Most of the time the audio is playing channel one, but because there is a different receiver panned left and right, there is a stereo phasing and different EQ effect. I think I used an AOR AR-2002 and a Bearcat 300 for receiving. The Bearcat has more rolled off highs. Might be good listening with headphones for a binaural effect. I did not apply any noise reduction which is proper for archiving.

Sony TC-D5M

Bearcat 300 Scanner

AOR AR-2002 Communications Receiver

Here I am, seven years old with an inflatable buddy in 1961. This at my grandmother’s house in Santa Rosa, California. Kennedy was president, I had my pipes and pet toads. What more could a boy want?