Forensic Work Rebuilds Radio Special
This weekend Westwood One News presents a special retrospective, Summer of Love; Fall of Innocence 50th Anniversary, a look back at the counter-culture revolution that defined the summer of 1967 from a 50-year perspective. The half-hour special is available to all Westwood One News affiliates, Westwood One music format stations, and Cumulus stations. Hosted by Westwood One News correspondents Jim Roope in L.A. and Steve Kastenbaum in New York, the special features some of the iconic pop and rock music of that that summer, along with stories from the Westwood One News archives.
The real story here is the extensive behind-the-scenes maneuvering that had to happen in order to salvage this irreplaceable audio archive, which was initially discovered on a 1987 Summer of Love 20th Anniversary cassette tape unearthed during Westwood One’s recent move to a new facility in Washington. Longtime Westwood One producer George Achaves, who produced the original 1987 special, tracked down the master reels — and here is where the real science began… Westwood One News VP Kevin Delany loaded the tape onto a salvaged reel-to-reel machine but it failed to play. He noticed the audio was recorded on Ampex 406 stock, which was a high quality tape in the ’80s but was also known for “sticky shed syndrome,” which clogs tape heads and guides and renders the tape unplayable without treatment.
Undeterred in his quest, Delany purchased a food dehydrator, which removes moisture. He then “baked” the tape in the dehydrator for five hours at 130 degrees, turning the tape every half hour. Delany reports, “After letting it cool for another 18 hours, I rewound the tape, letting it pass through two cotton balls, one on each side of the tape, to remove any remaining loose oxide particles. Finally, I attached cotton balls to the tape guides to reduce tape friction as much as possible, leaving the tape to touch only the heads of the machine. After hooking two separate digital recorders to the outputs of the machine, we were ready for playback… and it worked! The tape played successfully and history was saved.” Achaves added, “We captured the moment in time and it sounds as good to me today as it did then. This was done before digital editing, on reel-to-reel tape and news carts, edited with razor blades and splicing tape.”
Stations interested in the Summer of Love; Fall of Innocence 50th Anniversary special can contact Jim Jones at jimjones@westwoodone.com or 202-895-2339.
