Spring, 1984
Nick mans his spot in the living room in front of the entertainment stand at a time when no one needs to hog the TV or complain about the music.
For most folks an outdoor TV antenna is just that, a way to bring in signals when the bunny ears won't do it. Jameson sits about 50 miles from the nearest full-power TV station, with most a bit further than that.
So when the Swansons first settled into their Cape Cod, Ned went ahead and put in a 40 foot sectional tower and secured it to the side wall at the apex of the roof. Being familiar with the staff at the local electronics retailer he was able to get the longest Channel Master plus a downlead amplifier. With the rotor normally parked northward they could get the Springfield-ish market channels, or turning the other way it would bring in those from Terre Haute. Sometimes in the mornings they would get the big Chicago guns, or those drifting in from St. Loo or Indy.
At times Nick could make a day out of chasing signals, running it all over the map whenever no one else wanted to watch, and when the signals seemed to come from a particular direction. Sometimes he would get Louisville and those down down by Evansville. Sometimes he could get one from Lafayette, Indiana, and even South Bend, and sometimes up into Michigan. A few times Rockford drifted in, and the Quads, and the grand prize was a Channel 12 from Milwaukee.
At some point Ned spent a bonus on a decent Marantz receiver and Pioneer speakers. This brought a wide, selective FM tuner into the mix and opened up a whole new world with the regional drift of signals. With the antenna toward Chicago he could pick up some of the ones from Sears tower just about any time, and there were very few quiet spots. He had a notebook just for this. The first pages were things as he could ID them, then the latter were attempts to organize by city or area, which the industry would just term a DMA. Naturally Tim gives him shit for geeking out but then Tim doesn’t seem to have purpose in life so who cares.
Eventually he got a low-power stereo for his room and hooked it to the antenna. Sometimes he could just lie there and listen to B96 out of the big town, with just a bit of hiss in the background. This was the soundtrack for the confident, well dressed people who went to parties, those who lived in a fascinating world. As a bug to a flame, Nick could bask in the energy that an equally confident major market Top 40 FM gave off, they were in the middle of it all, whatever that really means, if any one really knows. His parents say that WLS was the big deal at one point but Nick can’t even imagine AM having this kind of impact, with out that crisp (albeit compressed) stereo sound.
Nick had a scale of classifying stations on the FM dial, at least those that played some kind of rock. There were the ones that seemed to appeal to a more adult type, what we'd call Adult Contemporary or Soft Rock would go in the notebook as Rock I. Then the Top 40 is Rock II, since they are more daring and sometimes whip out the hard stuff or with edgy lyrics.
At the top of the scale were a few of the Rock III that were almost purely the hard stuff. Once in a while one of those would hit his room like a storm, as if the sound could hurt you if you took in to much or played it too loud. Tim had gathered a few tapes so far of bands like Triumph and Helix, even Iron Maiden, but to Nick these were still a bit much and he'd still run out of the room when Tim would crank it just enough to get yelled at from downstairs.
That hard guitar stings like a bee with nothing to lose, and the lyrical freedom, some say she do...some say she don't...some say she will...and some say she won't...does that have to do with the stuff that older guys like to do if they can lure a female into the back of their van at night? The sound is a lot like Rick Springfield but harder, but not as heavy as Quiet Riot that everyone keeps talking about.
Late one night one of the Rock II stations whipped out a pretty hard one, chorus goes Rock You Like A Hurricane, had the fastest guitar playing he had ever heard. How is that humanly possible, is it a tape trick of sorts? (For the record, NO, not a tape trick!)
There were some good ones that got obscured from local stations, since all Jameson had was a powerful Country Lovin' on FM 94 but actually 93.9, and then the easy listening, Sounds Of The Good Life, Stereo 102. The latter was the only thing his mom approved of after the station "we" support, the Christian WJLT up in Colton, which part of the church-school where some of his classmates ended up over the years. Although, the public classical stations seemed acceptable too but no one was really interested.
Some of the guys at school would rave about what they could pick up on AM at night, Boston, Minneapolis, Toronto, New Orleans and even Spanish stations that had to be way south. Whenever Nick tried AM, even on the Marantz he would just get a buzz. It seems he would be able to mess around with his own radio upstairs and pull those in, but all he could hear was a buzz, even behind the local 1280. His dad didn't know what would cause it, but then one night, Nick was messing with an old transistor radio in the den and turned off a dimmer switch they used on a lamp, and voila, the skies opened up.
Signals would drift in, sometimes over top of each other, then one would take over, then they both fade into the distance. There's be the old-time jazzy music, with the brass going WHUH WHUH-WHUH...WHUH...WHUH...floating in and out of the ether without a care in the world.
Time for a new notebook.
All said, it's more about the journey than the destination, and to some, even when there's nothing on, the signal is a bigger deal than the content.