WLUP

Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire for the first time on this date in 1967. He was playing at the Astoria Theatre in London and ended up in the hospital with burned fingers. He repeated the stunt a few months later at the Monterey Pop Festival (with no burns this time.)



A magnet from Classic Rock WLUP "The Loop" in Chicago, Illinois.

WCKG

Chicago's WAGO, a Top-40 station featuring John Records Landecker in the morning, flipped to AOR in 1985 and changed calls to WCKG.

This 1989 sticker dates to when the station had turned into a Classic Rock outlet.

Around the year 2000 WCKG became known as "The Package" which was a male-centric Talk station.




In 2005, many Talk stations owned by Infinity Broadcasting changed their names to "Free FM" including WFNY in New York and KLSX in Los Angeles. WCKG added Opie and Anthony in the mornings after Howard Stern left terrestrial radio.

Currently 105.9 FM is WCFS which simulcasts WBBM's News/Talk format. The call letters stand for We're Chicago's Fresh Station which was their Hot AC/Adult Top-40 branding and current HD-2 station. WCFS is licensed to Elmwood Park, Illinois.

WBMX

WBMX (W Black Music EXperience) was an Urban Contemporary station in Chicago, Illinois from 1975 to 1988. They also carried a highly influential Saturday night dance show hosted by the Hot Mix 5 which led directly to the creation of House Music. The city of Chicago even named a downtown street after them.

WBMX became Urban Adult Contemporary WVAZ "V103" in October, 1988.

WEFM

WEFM (W Eugene F. McDonald--an executive at the Zenith Radio Corporation) was a Top-40 station in Chicago, Illinois from 1978 to 1982. Prior to this they were a Classical station and the second station in the United States to broadcast in FM stereo. 99.5 FM is currently Country WUSN.

WVON

WVON (W Voice Of the Negro) is an African-American-targeted Talk station from Chicago, Illinois. In 1963, Leonard and Phil Chess of Chess Records fame bought what was then WHFC and turned it into a successful R&B station as WVON. Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, made sure that every song he produced was sent to WVON before any other station. After an ownership change in 1969, a frequency change from 1450 AM to 1390 AM took place which provided better coverage throughout the Chicago area. WVON flipped from music to talk in 1986 and now appears at 1690 AM licensed to Berwyn, IL.

WKQX

"Q101" WKQX is an Alternative station from Chicago, Illinois.

This sticker is circa 1986 when they morphed into a Hot Adult Contemporary format after having been an Album Rock station.

 

The logo on this "i101" decal dates to when WKQX had a Hot Adult Contemporary format circa 2012 to 2014.

National Tooth Fairy Day

Every February 28th is supposedly National Tooth Fairy Day.

The Secret Adventures of the Tooth Fairy was a two-minute comedic radio serial created by Dick Orkin in the early 1970s. 325 episodes were produced and eventually ran on over 2,500 radio stations worldwide.

This set of Tooth Fairy stickers was put out by 890 AM WLS (World's Largest Store-from when the station was owned by Sears) in Chicago, Illinois. Unfortunately, half of the stickers are missing but you can see the complete sheet here.

Tom Joyner Commutes / WGCI

On this date in 1986, Tom Joyner began working at two stations in two cities. He deejayed mornings at KKDA in Dallas then flew 800 miles to Chicago to do afternoons at WGCI. He did this 5 days a week for almost 7 years racking up 7 million frequent flyer miles in the process. This earned him the nicknames "The Fly Jock" and "The Hardest Working Man In Radio."

WGCI (W Globetrotter Communications Inc.) is an Urban Contemporary station licensed to Chicago, Illinois.

WNWI WSBC

WNWI is an Ethnic radio station in Chicago and licensed to Oak Lawn, Illinois. The call letters stand for NorthWestern Indiana because they broadcast from Valparaiso, Indiana from the mid-1960s until 1998 before moving into the Chicago market. WNWI's schedule includes programming in Polish, German, Serbian and Croatian.

WSBC (World Storage Battery Company) is a time-brokered Variety station licensed to Chicago, Illinois. They carry programming in Russian, Spanish, Greek, Ukrainian and Romanian.

This above image is a magnet from the Torah Radio Network which might not exist anymore as their website URL is defunct.
G'mar Chatima Tova.

WUSN

"US 99" WUSN has been a Country music station in Chicago, Illinois since 1982.  In terms of cumulative listeners, "US 99" is one of the largest Country stations in the United States.

Disco Demolition Night

On this date in 1979 the city of Chicago witnessed the infamous Disco Demolition Night, one of the most memorable baseball promotions of all time.
On Christmas Eve 1978, popular morning jock Steve Dahl was fired from 94.7 WDAI when they switched from Rock to an all-Disco format.

Dahl was then hired by WLUP "The Loop" (named after the historical center of downtown Chicago) and mounted an aggresive “Disco Sucks” campaign bent on destroying WDAI.



Despite Dahl’s best efforts, “Disco DAI” performed well in the ratings. So the 24 year old DJ along with Mike Veeck (the son of the owner of the Chicago White Sox) and other station personnel came up with the idea of Disco Demolition.
Fans who brought a disco record to the ballpark would be admitted for 98 cents, a number which also matched WLUP’s dial position. The event took place at Comiskey Park between games of a White Sox/Tigers double-header. Early fears of embarrassingly low attendance were squashed when 90,000 disco-haters converged onto a stadium that held 52,000. After the Sox lost the first game 4-1, during which time the increasingly-rowdy fans got drunker and drunker, the real fun began. Steve Dahl wore a combat helmet and rode around the ballpark in a Jeep. In centerfield a giant box was packed full of disco LPs and blown up which left a hole in the playing surface. People who didn’t get their Village People, KC & the Sunshine Band and Sister Sledge records in the box used them as frisbees and began flinging them through the air. Thousands of fans then swarmed the field, lighting fires and starting small riots. The bases were stolen, the batting cage was destroyed and chaos ruled. Chicago police in riot gear finally cleared the field which was so badly damaged that the second game could not be played. It was later determined that the White Sox would have to forfeit the game to the Tigers because they failed to provide acceptable playing conditions.

Steve Dahl's brainchild really did signal the death of disco. Around the time shards of vinyl were littering the Comiskey Park outfield, most of the Top 10 records on the chart would have been considered disco. By October there would be none. Billboard magazine even changed the name of their Disco Chart to the Dance Chart. An era was over.