Washington Post., April 9, 2005 With a typical hyper-cheerful jingle -- "Who's got the Beatles? We've got the Beatles!" -- wonderful WEAM, Washington's fast-talking powerhouse from the long-gone golden age of Top-40 radio, was back on the air yesterday.
Okay, so it was only for a few hours and it was only a simulation of Top-40, circa 1966, but you got the idea from the very first mention of "the WEAM Team." In the decidedly 21st-century studios of XM Satellite Radio in Northeast Washington, Terry "Motormouth" Young reached back into the stacks of wax to re-create the sound and feel of WEAM, AM 1390 on your radio dial, on his weekly tribute to 1960s radio on XM's Channel 6.
You didn't have to live in Washington in the 1960s to know what WEAM -- and its rivals WPGC and WINX -- were all about. Every city had a WEAM. It was to Washington what WMCA and WABC were to New York, what KFWB and KHJ were to Southern California, what WLS was to Chicago. The stations played only a few popular hits (the playlists were often considerably tighter than 40 songs) and featured insanely energetic DJs whose voices were the height of radio artificiality (anyone can imitate a 1960s Top-40 jock: just talk really fast and pretend you're about to puke).
Long before Walkmans and iPods, stations like WEAM rode to glory with the help of cheap and widely available portable transistor radios, which made it possible for the first time to listen almost anywhere.
And so, for a few hours that won't be reaired or archived online, XM subscribers across the country heard the voice of DJ Russ Wheeler announcing that it was "61 WEAM degrees" outside. Young, in the guise of a WEAM DJ, talked up Milt Grant's upcoming dance-party TV show on Channel 5, plugged a sale at Woodies (Levi's for $4!) and mentioned that the latest hits were available at Waxie Maxie's and Swiller's Records. As for entertainment, he suggested young listeners check out "the submarine races at Rock Creek Park and the Tidal Basin." For more read here...
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