A Tube for your next Build. "The Mexican Border Blaster

[jmohr58]

Just think of the fun you could have trying to get this tube to fit in the standard size chassis!
http://hawkins.pair.com/mexblast.shtml

[Gibsonman63]

I believe that tube enabled the inspiration for ZZ Top's "Heard it on the X".

[jmohr58]

You are probably right. Did you go to the web link and read about it?

[Gibsonman63]

Being from Texas, I pay attention to all things ZZ Top. I read an interview where Dusty and Billy both claimed to have been listening to blues broadcast from one of those really powerful radio statons across the boarder years before they met each other.

[jmohr58]

Big Fan of ZZ Top as well, never got a chance to see them in person, only on tv and internet. We had tickets a year ago to see them touring with Areosmith I think it was, but the show got cancelled. If I recall it was due to Steven Tyler's throat acting up. I like Aerosmith but was really going for ZZ Top.

In northern Missouri where I grew up there was a little AM station out of Little Rock Arkansas "KAAY" which was a low power local farm report station by day, but around 7 to 8 PM they would kick up the transmitter to something like 50K watts, and we got to listen to a great underground radio station for several years. I know it had enough power to reach Canada, because they had phone requests from there pretty often. Then around 5 am it would go dead at that point on the am dial. Black Oak Arkansas used to do a radio station promo for them. They called the program Beeker Street. Completely ruined me for Top 40 Radio. I believe it was where I heard ZZ Top for the first time as well.

[LeeMo]

I first heard Pink Floyd's Umma Guma on Beeker Street. Several Species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict. 1968 or 69 long after midnight on a weekend morning.
This was before we could get much on FM in the Delta.

LeeMo

[stelligan]

They called the program Beeker Street.

Grew up in the cornfields of Iowa rockin' out to that radio show. That brings back some memories.....

[jmohr58]

It was a great radio station. Always loved the strange sounds in the backgound as the DJ announced. That spacey weird sound, I always wondered how they produced it. At 2:00AM Beeker Theater came on and always had great horror/mystery Twilight Zone kind of radio shows before they went back to the music.
First time I heard "The sinking of the Titanic", "Cindy's Crying" and so many other song's that got abslolutly no airplay anywhere else, at least in the midwest at that point in time. One other song, a 25 to 30 minute story song like the Sinking of the Titanic, I caught once. It was called " The Great Grizzly Bear Hunt" I have tried to find it for years, have no idea who did it. Did anyone else ever hear it and if so do you know who recorded it? Would love to find it.
Never thought about it before, but Beeker Street could be the reason I've always been a Night Owl.