A Prairie Home Companion

Friday night.  A Prairie Home Companion and AT40.  I've been listening to the former off and on since'78, not quite the beginning.  It's changed a lot since then.  Haven't we all?  I don't even remember how I came to listen.  I lived in a city in New England and the folk music and old fashioned format was quite different from the rock I heard on the radio and even my tiny record collection.  I wanted to escape the disco music all around me too.  I was even younger when I listened to American Top 40 with Casey Kaycem back then.  WRKO-AM with Dale Dorman.  Haha, those were the days when I recorded songs from the speaker on my transistor radio to the built-in mic on my portable cassette deck.  I'd know when to start it because if I heard a song I liked, I'd just look at the clock.  They'd play it again at the exact same time the next day.  Each day wasn't exactly like the next, not like it was all taped.  But they followed a pretty strict playlist and it seemed to work just about anytime I tried it.  Now I listen to archives on the computer (run through my stereo-not a 5-1 home theater.  Maybe next time I buy)  I finally had to get rid of my NIKKO PRO amp and preamp I had bought in the early eighties.  They were demo units.  I played the shit out of them before I bought them from Tech Hi-Fi (Remember them?).  I told the salesman, "I want something to last.  I want something I can take a hammer to."  He said, "Try this."  I was still happy twenty years after they had spent a night playing while underwater (basement apartment in my parents' house).  Anyway, I'm still here.  PHC and AT40 have changed, but their still here too.