Raising a Glass to Cobaltia

Folks,

raising a glass to all the good people, past, present and future who call the Cobalt Club Home.

It's always good to come through those doors and hear the music and laughter of the Club in full swing on a Saturday night.

Seamus.....

Yes, I also opened a bottle of champagne and drank a glass. (until I realized it was cheaper prosecco). but no matter: cheers on cobalt Club and all the members!!!

Keep boppin´
Marcel (hicks....)

To old friends... new friends... and those who are no longer with us...

Have we done a roll call lately who is still around?

I found life got very busy. I moved countries I travel all over the world for work.

I can stream or download shows from loads of places. I still remember the heady days of finding the original club and its slow downloads. Its limited storage we could only keep about 1 Gig of shows at any time. We had to delete and rotate shows all the time.

I joined and got to know Nick he made me a mod on the board then an admin. The we rebuilt the club so many times I lost count. At one time we were the most popular OTR site on the Interweb. Then came the spammers and hackers and boy it was hard to keep up. Along the way the Interweb grew speeds increased storage grew larger and the main purpose of the site to store and distribute files became less important.

Along side that growth came the host or personalities that shared their knowledge their humour their shows and the fun of being together a special club that did not tolerate any nonsense at all. We were and still are a haven for those who come together in genuine love for the genre of entertainment that does not exist today. When everything was new and the world of knowledge was contained in books and the heads of those who created the new world of wonder.

Nowadays you can look up anything. Knowledge is not hard won its not passed on by those who struggled to discover its a search away. I do love the access to information. I moved from University to the C-suite in my career by reading more, studying more, working harder and I think lots of my creativity came from listening to these shows. The ability to construct whole worlds inside your head the sense of hope wonder that anything is possible.

Okay folks I just went off on a crazy tangent but I am just happy to be back .......

Glad to have you back CCSeamus
It's been almost 6 years here for me and almost 20 years since i began in the OTR clubs. Lots of changes, lots of old friends departed.

All the best

Art

Art,

great to see you if I am not mistaken I started in the Cobalt club in early 90's while I was still in school. its been over 20 years at the Old Club.

Seamus wrote:Have we done a roll call lately who is still around?

Boss, I prefer to think of those who no longer visit, as just being busy elsewhere. I know that Mars and Bill_Atkins are just that. I worry that some have moved on to "The next plane of existence." Others, I'm sure just grew bored with OTR collecting or just moved to the many other available sources.

We fall pretty high in the search engine weight matrix, for both OTR and Cobalt Club. So, I'm pretty confident that those who want to find their way home, they can. And, of course they'll be welcome.

Space

Great stuff.

Hows everyone doing this fine Monday. In Dublin today it was 60F and spring is in the air.

Hope everyone is having a good day....

Tax time... ugh....

I was very happy to find this thread by Seamus and read about what he has been doing.
Also, the postings of the other members of this fine Old-Time Radio organization.

I joined Cobalt Club in October, 2004.  Really wasn't very active until October, 2008 when I retired.

I realized many years ago that niche hobbies such as Old-Time Radio
tend to have a lot of inaccurate information floating about.  
My OTR focus has been research:
correctly identifying shows
and
finding accurate information about individual shows, series,
and the people involved with them.

Most of this research has been at public and private archives
around the country that have Primary Source OTR materials
(personal collections, scripts, network production information,
and transcription disks.)

I have also helped several OTR authors with research for their books. Additionally,
I wrote or co-wrote  several chapters of the collaborative book on OTR Western series:
Radio Rides the Range.
https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Rides-Range-Reference-1929-1967/dp/0786471468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381977080&sr=8-1&keywords=radio+rides+the+range

Also, I have been involved in writing articles and compiling series broadcast logs
about what I find.  
You can find my OTR broadcast logs at:
http://www.old-time.com/otrlogs2/index.html
The broadcast logs contain much background information about the individual series.


One of my most interesting research projects was a very small one.
It  involved gaining access to the scripts of the 2 missing episodes of
one of my favorite series:  The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen.
I then wrote plot summaries about these two episodes.
They were published in the RADIO RECALL of the Metro Washington OTR Club
and can be found at:
http://www.mwotrc.com/rr.html
Look for Missing "Scarlet Queen" Treasures.


Since 1998 I have also been documenting, with broadcast logs and articles,
the over 1,000 contemporary radio programs of the late Jim French.
(I first met Jim in the mid-1970’s when he was writing, directing, and producing radio shows for Seattle radio station KVI.)
When I interviewed him in 1998 for an article, I asked Jim for and received permission to produce broadcast logs of his programs.

Even though Jim passed on in December, 2017, new shows under the
Imagination Theatre banner are being produced at a much reduced rate
by his former production manager, Larry  Albert.
You can find my Jim French broadcast logs at the above link I posted for my OTR broadcast logs.


Signing off for now,
otrwash
aka
Stewart  Wright

Hey Stewart, really enjoyed post. Great contributions to old time radio. What a storm of creativity. Radio just an involved medium of entertainment that requires the brain to construct. Whole worlds spun out of each listeners mind. No two mindscapes the same.

When we are on the road driving we play the shows. Whole family loves them. My wife loves Let George Do it... the kids X-Minus 1 and Gildersleeve...

Seamus wrote:. . . Radio just an involved medium of entertainment that requires the brain to construct. Whole worlds spun out of each listeners mind. No two mindscapes the same.

When we are on the road driving we play the shows. . .

The late Harry Bartell once said about radio, "Every listener had to create their own mental pictures of a radio show. And each listener's mental pictures were absolutely correct."

I always drove from Colorado to the archives where I conducted my research and I always took shows along. Several times I would re-listen to shows of series that I was going to research.  I was doing "binge listening" years before the term "binge watching" existed.

I just learned something new today by listening.  The script for an episode of Broadway is My Beat was modified and reused about 10 months later as the audition show for another CBS Radio series: The Line Up.


Signing off for now,

I love Broadway is my Beat total Noir voice over Detective .....

Hey Folks,

how is your Friday? whats everyone up to?

Whats everyone listening to? I am looking for good show suggestions for the weekend. Have to work on some projects so need good shows to listen to.

Getting ready for snow storm on Saturday into Sunday. The Denver metro area might get up to 8 inches.  It is already snowing in the mountains west of here; they might get up to 3 feet.

I would recommend The Line Up.
or
The fine AFRTS docu-drama, Horizons West
about the Lewis and Clark expedition.
13 half-hour episodes.
In it Sebastian Cabot plays a Frenchman.


Signing off for now,

Fine recommendations. I am listening to some Tales of Tomorrow I dug out and Murder at Midnight. Very enjoyable. Will go searching for those selections, thanks...

Seamus wrote:Have we done a roll call lately who is still around?

Hi, all. Just thought I would sound off and let you know that while I dont really post much anymore, I am,, as they say "still on the right side of the dirt".

I still remember posting the entire run of Fibber Mcgee and Molly from a dial up connection. Although, fortunately another member did start assisting me part way through.
So happy to see so many of the old guard still around.

latriv, great to see you.

I love stories of the early days of the club. I to remember downloading 50 meg of shows from an early dialup board it took me a week LOL.

I can remember sending shows on CD to other Cobalt Club members to upload because my slow dial-up connection.

I remember those days. And I'm incredibly proud of the work done, by our dedicated band of researchers, sharers, sound experts and just plain collectors. If it hadn't been for the collective efforts of this group and others, much of this content would have surely been lost for future generations.

And I still have the original disks from many of the trades, made way back when.

I remember Woody uploaded over 2000+ shows by himself. I remember in the early days I found this server on the Internet he had maybe 2Gig of shows in Total it took me over a month to download the shows I wanted then I found the Cobalt Club there was only about 5 regular posters and about 50 members. I am trying to remember the name of a guy who was on with me. I was in University he was in high school. He went onto Yale I went onto to four degrees so CC members are no slouches. It was great distraction and at that time we were getting popular Omaha had shown up and lots of people had no idea how to ask for things.

Common post to drive Omaha nuts. I need all 500 shows of series whatever I posted this request 13 seconds ago and no one has responded what kind of crap club is this? I would see this and count to 30 by then Omaha had posted a burn so hot it would remove tarmac. LOL.

Have to say, have not met a better bunch of people online. We built this site together as the Internet went from concept to centre of the universe. So many great people have come through that door. Some may have gone on to the radio show in the sky but they are never forgotten here.

The Cobalt Club is a living breathing thing and we move forward into the future we respect and celebrate the past while enjoying the present. I sound like a commercial for life insurance LOL

I wonder where Strobesml is today? Every once in a while, one of those names will pop into my head and I start to remember the conversations we had.

I think that the greatest tribute ever paid to an online group by it's members happened way back then. When you and Nick had patched and whacked the old server so many times, trying to keep it from giving up the ghost. But finally you had to admit that it's days were numbered. But the members of the club came to the rescue, by taking up a collection to buy a new server. With the much appreciated final purchase price being paid by a nameless benefactor. That effort certainly defined the love and dedication of many members of the group.

Space