Episode 44: The Fun Stuff between the Songs

There’s no denying that the music is what attracted a small-but-mighty tribe of forward-thinking listeners to 97X. But the commercials, promos, contests, station ID liners and DJ breaks helped contribute to the freewheeling, fun-loving, anti-corporate nature of the station. In this episode, Dave and Damian play several bits and breaks from back in the day. We also have a listener who needs your well-trained ears to help him figure out a mystery song from 97X.

The 97X gang at Lollapalooza 1992, Riverbend. Kneeling: Damian and Rictile. Standing L to R: Steve Baker, Linda Balogh, Jae Forman, Julie Maxwell, Doug Balogh, Phil Manning, Joe Throckmorton, Brian Ewing, Dave Tellmann and Chris Adryan. Sitting atop the 97X Blazer: Laura Kim.

Station owners Doug and Linda Balogh were very hands-off when it came to station programming. They didn’t meddle with the music, and they encouraged the on-air staff to be creative. Sure, there were a few swings-and-misses, but the supportive atmosphere they fostered allowed us to screw up and learn from it. Having a audio playground like that was very rare back then. It’s damn near non-existent among commercial radio stations now.

Shout-out to longtime advertisers like Everybody’s Records, too. They supported the station for decades.

Most of the recorded material (commercials, promos, liners) and live on-air DJ talk from the 97X era has been lost to the ether forever. The stuff you hear in this episode is culled from crappy old cassettes that we were able to digitize. If you have any recordings of 97X, drop us a line at 97Xwoxy@gmail.com. We’d love to add to our archive.

0 Replies to “Episode 44: The Fun Stuff between the Songs”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *