Your Sound Choice
How many places have you called ‘home’? This popped in my head when I found my old American Federation of Musicians Local 219 card in one of my high school yearbooks. I was sixteen in 1970 when Mike, Gene, and I applied for membership the summer before we started playing paying band jobs as […]
One must tread carefully when making comments comparing the worth of employees in one profession to those in others. These days, any career involves some form of education, be it on the job, in a vocational program, or professional preparation. For one to truly understand what it takes to work in any field, the song […]
Greetings Great Lakes fans: I recently made contact with author Jerry Dennis about using a segment of his boot The Living Great Lakes in a future article. Dennis graduated from Northern Michigan University and now lives in Traverse City, MI. When he answered my inquiry (affirmatively I should add), he also mentioned that The Living Great […]
When Mother Nature serves up a particularly violent weather event, it will undoubtedly get the tag ‘100 year’ attached to it. In the summer of 2018, the Houghton / Hancock area experienced a 100 year flood that caused extensive damage all across Houghton County. The only reason the city of Hancock escaped worse damage was […]
Memories are those things that sometimes pop into one’s head in a seemingly random manner, but there is just something about music that tends to trigger very specific memories in my brain. When others refer to ‘the soundtrack of their life’, it makes me think of things that I associate with certain songs. For […]
Astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen stared out the aft window of the Space Shuttle Columbia as Crippen opened the two 60-foot-long payload doors. This was a necessary step designed to expose the aluminum honeycomb radiator panels that would help regulate the spacecraft’s temperature. Beyond the open doors they could see some dark areas on […]
Looking back, there were a lot of great teachers in my life who got me interested in a variety of things, many of which I am still interested in today. By far, one who added the greatest value to my education was my first band/music teacher, Joe Patterson. When we took our ‘band test’ in […]
One of my favorite pastimes is reading books and articles about drummers. Of particular interest to me are three basics bits of information: 1) How old were they when they became obsessed with drumming, 2) When and how did they acquire their first proper drum kit, and 3) What path did they follow before […]
WOAS-FM 88.5 will begin the new year with a Schwans Cares fundraising campaign to help replace some of our studio equipment. The WOAS EQUIPMENT REPLACEMENT campaign will begin on January 1, 2019 and anyone who orders products from Schwans can donate to WOAS simply by including the campaign’s number 44259 . Schwans will donate […]
We left off Part 1 around 1997 with the newly remodeled WOAS-FM studio approaching the cusp of the new millennium with a new studio layout and all new electronic hardware. There were still things to be done but operating a radio station isn’t much different that owning a car or home: there is […]