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| 36 Radio Building ("The Tape Pit") building sign Events at Interlochen Bowl and Kresge Assembly Hall were sent by "the lake cable" to the radio building. The actual recordings were made in the tape pit. |
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| 38 The Radio Building was next to Green Lake. This photo shows the building looking toward the lake. |
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| 39 Radio building from lake |
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| 40 Roy Wetzel in the tape pit. The recorders were Ampex Model 350. |
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| 41 Jim McEachern editing tape in the tape pit. Jim was a U of Mich student. After graduation he took a job with NPR in Washington, D.C., where he worked for the rest of his career. He was the "principal technical leader for the Public Radio Satellite System for its first two decades and was a key planner of NPR’s technical facilities." He died in 2010 at age 71. http://tinyurl.com/lnnomug |
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| 42 Bob Burd in the tape pit. Bob was an engineer at WUOM in Ann Arbor. He spent several weekends at NMC as a volunteer assistant to the Radio Department. He was a close friend of NMC radio staff members Jim McEachern and Neal McLain. |
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| 43 Recording session in Radio Dept. Lou Paskoff, producer, at piano. Bob Elson, vocal, at microphone. Paskoff was a U of Mich student. Elson was head of the NMC Radio Department. |
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| 44 Recording a children's program in the radio building studio. |
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| 45 Control Room at Radio Building. John Sargeant, standing, Dick Merz at control board. Merz was a Purdue University student. |
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| 46 Arnie Amstutz at the "patch panel" in the tape pit. Amstutz was a radio engineer at the radio department and an MIT student. |
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| 47 John Reiser at the disk cutter. Riser was Chief Engineer at the radio department and a student at U of Mich. He subsequently worked for the FCC in its International Division. The radio department manufactured LP records of musical performances for sale to visitors. For small orders Reiser cut the disks using the disk cutter. For larger orders we sent a tape of the recording to the RCA record production facility in Chicago that produced vinyl pressings. |
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| 48 Lou Paskoff creating art work. Lou was a producer whose primary job was producing music programs for distribution to radio stations. He was a U of Mich student. |
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| 49 Donald Wallace MacLennan writing a script. Don was a producer who wrote scripts and directed recordings. He was a U of Mich Student. |
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| 50 Recording a dance concert in the Dance building. Dick Merz at the controls. Radio Department did not have an electrical connection to the Dance building so the recording was made on site, not in the tape pit. All equipment was portable and was moved to the Dance building when needed. The tape recorder shown is an Ampex model 600. |
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| 51 Another view of the dance concert in the Dance building. |
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| 52 The "Bomb Mike" gag. Every year, before the regular 8-week camp opens, all staff members assemble in Kresge for a getting-to-know-you meeting. As each department is introduced the employees of that department stand to a round of applause. Some departments take the opportunity to do something more dramatic. In 1958 the radio department tech crew created a fake microphone that "exploded" when we were introduced. On cue, we pushed a button and the microphone exploded with a satisfying boom and a puff of smoke. Fortunately it was not a real microphone. |
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| 53 Cable splicers repairing damage to the lake cable. |
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| 37 Map of The Lake Cable. The cable was buried in the sand along the beach. It carried audio from Kresge Assembly Hall and Interlochen Bowl to the Radio Building. Events taking place at Kresge or Bowl were recorded at the tape pit. Not to scale. |
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| 54 Concert broadcast live by WKAR, East Lansing. From left: Larry Parker, recording the event for NMC. ... Norris Grover, WKAR engineer with WKAR's own equipment. ... Harvey Herbst, NMC Radio Department manager. ... Lou Paskoff (in announce booth behind the window), announcer. WKAR is the Michigan State University FM station. |
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| 55 Interlochen Bowl radio control room. Larry Parker at the controls |
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| 56 Interlochen Bowl radio control room. Larry Parker at the controls
The story of the 1812 Overture BOOM!
It guess it's time to retell my favorite 1812 Overture story. Back in the 50s when I was working summers as a Radio Engineer at the camp, one of our jobs at Radio Department was to run PA systems for events and to record every orchestra concert. Both of the big concert venues (Interlochen Bowl and Kresge Assembly Hall) were fitted with electronic organs with powerful amplifiers and huge speaker systems. Although we radio guys weren't responsible for operating or maintaining the organ electronics, that didn't stop us from monkeying around with them.
On the night that the High School Orchestra was scheduled to play the 1812 Overture, the conductor arranged with us to have the bass drum (and its player) located *inside* the radio booth so that we could pick up the sound independently of the rest of the orchestra. We fed it into the organ speakers. The bass drum player played his part perfectly. Right on the conductor's cue, he hit the drum fortissimo. The booms blasting out of the organ speakers shook the entire building. The first time we did it during rehearsal, half the orchestra stopped playing and turned around to see what was happening. When we did it during the live concert, the audience was equally shocked. The next day it was the talk of the camp . Apparently it was all the audience talked about as they returned to their cars after the concert. We radio guys had sort of a reputation for doing weird stuff, but nobody could fault us for doing something weird if was the conductor's idea |
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