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Nov 30, 2015

Thanks so much for all your support and patience! It's been a rough year, with not much time for relaxing things... like listening to OTR and updating my website. With much luck, I am reaching a new plateau and I'll be updating the site regularly throughout the next year.

A special thanks to those who have sent me reviews and plot summaries. I have not forgotten you. (At least I hope not -- how would I know?) I'll be adding your contributions starting in January... right after I exercise... and start my new diet. ;)

In the meantime... I have updated the Listening Booth for the first time since June 2014.

Enjoy.

_________________

Added (3) new shows and a repeat song to the Listening Booth:

"Berlin, 1945" - Quiet, Please (1956)

American soldiers struggling through the last days of WW II find solace on Christmas Eve from an enigmatic stranger who appears from nowhere. "At Christmas, nothing tugs my heartstrings more than stories about friends and family... especially when they are separated by distance and time and can't be together. This is an atmospheric little tale about five soldiers sharing a Christmas dinner. It starts out with laughter, drinking and joking... but then settles down as, one-by-one, the soldiers remember their families back in the States and their comrades fallen in battle. [8/10] --- zM"

"Christmas Carol, A" - Campbell Playhouse (1939)

Charles Dickens oft-told tale of moral redemption. With Orson Welles as the Narrator and Lionel Barrymore as Ebenezer Scrooge in a repeat of their 1938 performance. Miserly Scrooge is visited by three ghosts: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. He relives a bleak past and is warned of a bleaker future if he does not change his ways. Music by Bernard Herrmann.

"The Solstice Grouch" - Dr Seuss (1966)

Audio-only from the classic Dr Seuss animated television special, featuring Boris Karloff (1887-1969) in a late-career surge as the story narrator and the voice of the grouch. The iconic song "You're a Nasty One, Mr Grouch", however, was not sung by Karloff; it was sung by voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft.

"Auld Lang Syne" - Frank C. Stanley (1910)

An old cylinder recording from 1910... or maybe 1909. I downloaded this as part of a "public domain" folder from the Internet Archive, but it seems possible that it is part of the Cylinder Preservation and Digitazation Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Frank Stanley was a bass-baritone... which means that his voice comes through quite clearly on early cylinder recordings... even though the background music sounds quiet and a little bit tinny. If you're trying to figure out what a "right gude-willy waught" is, you might try the Wikipedia article.


Mar 07, 2015

Added (8) new reviews and (4) new plot summaries for various Dimension X, Best Plays, CBS Radio Workshop, Quiet, Please!, Lux Radio Theatre, Suspense, and Columbia Workshop episodes, courtesy of Anonymous.


Mar 01, 2015

Just a head's up...

The following information was sent to me by Darkman. He asked me to share with any who may be interested...

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This has been quite literally YEARS in the making. But it has reached a milestone moment that I am now very happy to give to you. GO HERE NOW!!

https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410

This is the new and VASTLY improved Mind Webs collection!! Get it all NOW. I am so proud of this and so happy to finally be sharing this with the world. Please feel free to spread this link around. I will be keeping it active for quite a while so everyone should be able to get this. My hope is to have this all up in the Internet Archive soon. Included are all currently available episodes in the highest quality available. This includes 30 HIGH QUALITY copies that were personally recorded by me with many, many other new encodes created directly off newly discovered reels. Most of the worst sounding shows available in the low encode series have been dramatically improved. Also included are SIX, you read that right, SIX previously un-circulated episodes!! They are:

At this time I again want to personally thank Jim "Boxcar" Blackson for his assistance in this project. He fulfilled a dream of mine and played a great part in making this release possible. I cannot thank him enough.

This set is not perfect by any means. There are still missing episodes and some episodes remain in poor condition. Some of the shows are remixes of the previously released low bit rate versions. It is hoped that this release will spark others to come forward with tapes of this series till a true final catalog of the show in highest quality. I did not included dates as I have not been able to verify current suspect dates and because of these shows having been assembled from various versions of the episodes. Audio quality can drastically change at any time. Sometimes for good others for bad. For me however, this is as much of the puzzle that I am able to put together and I think it is an important document to share. This shows what can be done in progressive forward thinking radio and I am proud to say it originated here in Wisconsin.

I honestly envy you who are getting to hear all of this for the first time. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do and HOPEFULLY someday I will have even more updates for this amazing series.

This set is my respectful documentation of a great radio production put on by a truly great local public broadcasting radio station. They would not do things like this today and so my deep thanks to Michael Hanson and the rest of the WHA staff that created this show. This stands as a testament to not only some of our greatest speculative fiction authors, but just how well simple dialog and music minus major sound effects can convey stories so well when done properly. These stories stand the test of time and it is my sincere hope that this collection stands as the new representation of the show for future generations to hear. It is my hope that this also shows more respect to the engineers who assembled these shows. Hearing these stories in such horrible low bit rate quality copies is not the right way.

Enjoy!

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I have spot checked some of my favourite episodes ("When It Changed", "Hell-Bound Train", and "The Night He Cried") and all are much improved over other encodes that I have.

I'll be listening to a lot of Mindwebs in the next few months!


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