The Howard Stern Show: Musical Memories (live; WIZN 106.7 FM ('The Wizard'), Burlington, Vermont, USA)

Howard Stern's long-running syndicated morning FM radio show aired for the last time on Friday, December 16, 2005. In January 2006, Howard and crew took up residence at Sirius Satellite Radio. Howard's old FM show featured many great musical guests and performances over the years. An FM station that aired the Stern show, WIZN ("The Wizard") in Burlington, Vermont, played 45 previously taped Stern Show musical performances over four hours during the afternoon following the final 2005 broadcast. I recorded the WIZN "Musical Memories" tribute broadcast using a Sansui TU-9900 FM tuner directly to hard disc and then edited out the commercials and as much of the between-song DJ banter as possible. What is left are nearly three hours of classic performances in stellar FM sound quality, thanks in large part to the legendary Sansui super tuner. The relaxed vibe of the Stern Show always seemed to bring out the best in musicians who were not used to waking up and performing so early in the morning!

Some of these tracks have circulated previously as substandard MP3 files sourced from a low-bit-rate Sirius Satellite Radio broadcast, but this FLAC file set, which has not circulated previously, is the genuine lossless FM high-fidelity article. Listen to James Taylor's guitar on "Woodstock" or Alanis Morissette's voice on "Ironic" for examples of the Sansui's incredible combination of analog musical warmth and detail, which somehow managed to survive largely intact despite the necessary evil of the FM > WAV > FLAC digitization process.

These tunes were either performed in Howard Stern's New York City FM studio or in front of live audiences at remote Stern Show broadcasts. The in-studio tunes include several great acoustic versions of electric favorites (e.g., "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by Def Leppard). There are also some outstanding cover tunes, including Kid Rock doing the Charlie Daniels classic, "Long Haired Country Boy" and Train performing a rocking Led Zeppelin medley. One Stern Show inside joke is Blues Traveler's version of "This Is Beetle." 'Beetle' is Stern Show "Wack Pack" member Lester "Beetlejuice" Green, who wrote the song spontaneously one day on the Show.

DETAILED LINEAGE:
WIZN 106.7 FM (Burlington, Vermont, USA) > Fanfare FM-2G Antenna > Sansui TU-9900 AM/FM Stereo Tuner > custom silver braid RCA-to-miniplug stereo cable > Toshiba Satellite P15-S479 laptop computer with Realtek AC97 Soundcard > Audacity 1.2.3 (32-bit float / 44100 Hz) > WAV (16-bit) > CD Wave Editor 1.97 (track splitting + FLAC encoding) > FLAC 1.21 (lvl 8) > Trader's Little Helper 2.4.1 (build 160) (SBE fix) > FLAC 1.21 (lvl 8).