:: Hollow Earth Radio ::

just outside the door to the control room at hollow
earth radio, there is this 5′ tall bookshelf full of
5″x5″ reel-to-reel boxes (1800ft of tape sized). this
bookshelf has maybe five shelves and is about 3′
across. looking at this bookshelf, its a bit daunting
to calculate how many hours of listening are sitting
there, waiting - especially when you realize those
shelves are 10″ deep. yep, there’s actually twice as
much tape there as you can see at once.
my job at the station (which i happily volunteered
for) is to organize, catalog, and digitally archive
this tape. or whatever part of it seems of interest.
home recordings, live concerts, radio programs, stuff
that’s not recorded in some other format. those reels
that have four of herb alpert’s, or nancy sinatra’s or
bob dylan’s albums recorded on them are not that
valuable to those of us who are intrigued by original
local sound recordings. those boxes marked ’standard
school broadcast, 1968′ or ‘christmas concert 1970,’
or ‘ron and leslie’s wedding’ or ‘nature lectures on
the olympic national forest,’ or ‘JFK speech–cuban
missile crisis’ or (im not kidding) lt. col. glenn,
astronaut, between 4am and 5am on january 27th 1962,
those are the ones that make me want to strap on a
good pair of headphones and attach myself, and the
reels, to one of the 4 dinosaur reel-to-reel machines
strewn about the studio and stay curled up with eyes
closed for hours.

time traveling. feeling the intervening years impose
their crackle and hiss on these transmissions from a
time before i was born. a time when everyone’s
handwriting on the labels was the palmer method–that
old-school script with the flowy capital
letters–always impeccable, like grandma’s. a time
when this kind of 1/4″ magnetic tape was made by
companies like scotch, irish, and shamrock. when track
listings might have been mimeographed or typewritten
and the clear tape that affixed them to the box hadn’t
yet yellowed and flaked.

im excited to bring you along for the ride. this
process of discovery fills me with awe, and i hope
soon to bring you some jaw-dropping aural experiences,
but before that, i want you to taste the pleasure of
rummaging thru these forgotten recordings, seeing for
yourself what its like to get your hands dusty from
these crazy bits of history, these dead ends of
technology, these throw-backs to a time before digital
media. come with me, this stuff is too good not to
share.

-ray vanek, reel to real volunteer at hollow earth radiooo

this photo captures one of the oldest “mixtapes,” i mean, mixreels ever.