Way back around 1972-1973 time frame, a good friend and fellow music-nut had a Saturday night "oldies" show on WLTI 91.5 FM, which was then Lowell Tech's college radio station (1KW out before it hit the antennas).
I often helped out, and once in a while, filled-in when Dough was too drunk / stoned / incoherent to be on the air.
In those days, just about all the various radio programs on LTI, were "assisted" along with various adult beverages and no small quantity of "exotic herbs and spices"
I used to tape some of our shows, on the big Scully tape decks, for fun and posterity (and possible future blackmail)
As I was later playing a tape of one particularly "well-lubricated" show, I noticed a very deep bass "thump", occuring at seemingly random periods, something that would not be heard on a typical radio or cheap stereo, but was quite pronounced on a decent system.
It took a while to figure it out: someone had brought in a half-gallon bottle of whiskey (I no longer remember the brand, I'm sure it was some cheap rot-gut).
Every time someone poured themselves a drink, they placed it back on the studio console, right next to one of the two turntables. hence the mystery "thump"... :o
If subwoofers existed back then, we probably would have blown out some windows...
Then there was the show, when the entire LTI Karate Team showed up with a full keg of beer, in order to celebrate their victorious season, live and on the air. Now THAT was a really "wild" show :o One of the LTI Karate Dudes generlusly brought in the half-keg of beer (15.5 gallons) and after we all determined that it was far too warm for normal human consumption, one of the crew came up
withthe somewhat warped "genius" idea of filling an empty 5 gallon water cooler jug, and then putting it on the station's water cooler. It worked very nicely, (just not too nice with the hot water tap) and for some mysterious unexplainable reason, the water cooler had a rather strange lingering stale beer flavor to it, for a few months after the fact...
The hotw ater tap was never the same,
I still have some of these "incriminating" tapes, someday, I'll "rip" them to MP3 CDs... If the 35 year old mylar tape hasn't turned to dust.
Latest update - unfortunetely when I dug up the R2R tapes in summer 2008, they had dry-rotted and disintegrated into brittle and unusable oxide-coated "noodles",
I guess that they were never designed for being stored in all sorts of damp and musty sheds and basements for nearly 36 years.
/ed B in NH