Three and a Half Minutes of Madness.

When I was twelve, I listened to a radio show that wasn't exactly a radio show. It was called "Hour of Madness," and aired on a station called WNYT, originating from the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury on Long Island. The station broadcast at the campus and on cable TV, where one could catch it on the "Swap & Shop" channel, playing over televised classified ads. I forget what night it was on, but I'm guessing Saturday as its slot was from midnight to 1 a.m., and on Fridays that would have cut in on my SCTV Network 90 viewing (unless I'm getting my timeline screwed up). My pal Jeff would sleep over and we'd call in requests for the show, which consisted of Doctor Demento-type novelty songs.

I still have a few tapes of the show, which I made by pressing a recorder up to the TV speaker. Jeff and I were well-known to host Gail Massey, probably too much so, as I recently found a tape of us pre-recording our requests to play over the phone to her as a strange sort of prank, with pauses and responses to what we thought she might say. I'm sure an NYIT student deejay loved nothing more than dealing with a couple of squeaky-voiced Plainview punks while stuck working late on a Saturday night.

Anyway, here's an audio file from the show, recorded courtesy of Audioblogger. I thought I'd give the service a try, and achieved mixed results. It was fairly easy to use, but there are brief drop-outs at the beginning and end that aren't on the original tape. Be patient with the eight second pause at the very beginning and you will be rewarded with "My Name is Larry," one of my favorites from back then, by the indomitable Wild Man Fischer.

October 2021 add: Okay, that link's been busted for a hundred years, so poof, gone. Instead, there will soon be a link to another HoM-related post I'm about to work on. Stay tuned, no one!