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Vibrating stars

Listening to AM at night

Spencer Tweedy
Jul 1, 2023
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Vibrating stars

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My car radio’s screen tuned to AM 1610, a Chicago street at night seen through the windshield.

Lately I’ve been listening to a barely present AM radio station when I drive home after local shows. I turned it on by accident. I was trying to press “next track” but hit the radio switcher instead and it was already tuned to AM 1610, apparently the perfect ghostly frequency to soundtrack empty Northwest Side streets at night. As I drove, the signal sounded like it was bobbing around and through the squat 1950s buildings up there, squeezing itself past the door to listenability. During the day it’s fully engulfed by noise—the course of normal broadcasting and whatever radio chatter goes on during business hours is too much for 1610 to overcome.

It turns out that it’s a Spanish-language community radio station from Toronto. But when heard through static at night, the songs they program sound like they were purposely created for eery, lonely listening. Upbeat Latin music plays against the weak signal like a clown. A chipper attitude out of place.

I’ve heard that carmakers are getting rid of AM radio. I think that, all things considered, that’s probably OK. On one hand, when technologies fall out of use, it doesn’t make sense to hang on to them too tightly. On the other hand, I love turning on the radio at night and hearing mystery—active, real-time, human activity from a distance that asynchronous digital listening or even livestreaming, with all its buffering and mediation, can never provide. Some in Congress agree and say AM is a crucial emergency broadcasting tool (though we can’t be sure they’re not just trying to protect their beloved conservative talk radio shows). Tens of millions of people, after all, still listen to AM. If it’s not in our cars, we should probably still protect its frequencies for regular ole portable radios to pick up. We can tape them to our dashboards for post-show drives.

I know I’m not alone in liking the sound of a radio signal shining down through the haze but I also can’t help but feel, unreasonably, that it’s hereditary, because my dad has been enamored with that sound since he was a kid and enshrined shortwave numbers stations so prominently in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Almost a hundred years after its “golden age,” radio still feels like magic. You can understand its physics and remain in disbelief that we live in a universe where the basic building blocks allow for invisible action like that.

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A clergyperson holds up a bottle at a christening event for AM 1610 community radio station circa 2004.
The christening of CHHA 1610 AM? Circa 2004. Source: CHHA1610AM.ca
A woman signs the base of the radio broadcasting tour for CHHA 1610 AM circa 2004. Other people look on and look at the camera.
People signing the base of the radio tower from which AM 1610 is broadcast circa 2004. Source: CHHA1610AM.ca

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Vibrating stars

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Mark Greenberg
Writes Starship Casual
Jul 2

Thank you Spencer! You hit on it. That feeling of hearing through a peephole. That magic of pulling sound from the ether and that real-time shared experience of radio. It’s always been special to me too and passed down to me from my dad as well.

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Donna J. Murphy
Jul 1

I'll always have a soft spot for a.m. radio. One of my most memorable childhood gifts was my own small radio. I carried that everywhere, listening to the Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Herman's Hermits as I biked around.

Also my dad worked for awhile in Leo Fender's radio repair shop.

The gods of radio have been good to me.

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