I am a 70 year old physician and author, addicted since childhood to radio. I was absolutely blown away when I found this group -- eerily I had just been talking to a friend about QUIET PLEASE, and that wonderful organ/piano opening version of the Franck symphony quiet movement. I wonder if anyone could tell me how to get the original episodes. EBAY only has them in an MP3 format -- are they out there in the usual CD format?
Given the fact that this group is here, was anybody around to hear LIGHTS OUT, SUSPENSE -- in its 'nonsustaining' summer time format, without commercials. The version of THE DUNWICH HORROR scared me out of knickers.
One could go on and on, but it's certainly great to find people who love this wonderful show. I do not know the composition of the group, but wonder if there younger people who have gotten into the show, and if so, how -- through parents etc.
Thanks again. Please feel free to Email directly at HRGSMES@AOL.COM
Website is doctorgreenberg.net When I am not in the office, I write about cinema, media, and popular culture.
Most of the online OTR dealers offer QUIET PLEASE on cassette rather than compact disc, probably because of the poor sound quality of many of the episodes. Two that I know offer the series on CD are:
Dunno about finding CD versions of Quiet Please, but I'm definitely interested in higher-quality recordings. My experience with Quiet Please (and OTR in general) is MP3-exclusive. I guess I'm worried that what people sell is a MP3->CDDA conversion.
About age: I'm 20, and started listening to OTR when I was 18. Before then I had always wondered why radio drama wasn't produced / broadcast, and really hadn't even heard of the "golden age of radio". When I first found out about the OTR community I was ecstatic. I think I started with the over-the-top Inner Sanctum, but Quiet Please must have been the second or third show I downloaded. While I wasn't exactly thrilled with the series at first listen (Tanglefoot, I think), there was definitely something subtle that kept me listening. Years later, I can say that Quiet Please is the series I enjoy the most; each episode stands up to multiple listenings.
Edit: That http://www.otrsite.com/services/ site does look promising. They appear to know their trade. I wonder what kind of "masters" they have for Quiet Please.
fooziex wrote: Dunno about finding CD versions of Quiet Please, but I'm definitely interested in higher-quality recordings. ... That http://www.otrsite.com/services/ site does look promising. They appear to know their trade. I wonder what kind of "masters" they have for Quiet Please.
Yeah, Haendiges is one of the all-time great OTR collectors. He is pricey but had or has lots of stuff not available elsewhere. Haven't heard his QP episodes, though.
There was a site at otr-shop.com that seems to have disappeared but which apparently had some very good, cleaned-up QP episodes, according to a post on this forum a few years ago from Mark Martucci, who wrote:
]... the OTR Shop has THE BEST copies of Quiet Please episodes anywhere. I have gotten all the episodes he offers and they are heads and shoulders over anyone else's copies. He has the episodes second generation off the originals and is very knowledgeable in their reproduction. I was actually finally able to follow "The Ticket Taker" (probably the worst quality of all the episodes), while listening to his copy through good quality headphones. [
If you go over to http://www.sciencemonster.net/radio/radio.html and click on ScienceMonster Radio Library, there is a QP folder in the "horror" section with mp3 versions of The Thing on the Fourble Board and Tanglefoot that, to my ears anyway, sound a little (not much) better than the ones available here. In the "scifi" section, under "misc-scifi-episodes," there is a slightly better-sounding mp3 version of Not Responsible After Thirty Years. These usually take a while to download because it's a busy site but might be worth the wait. They've also got all of Cooper's circulating Lights Out episodes.
If anyone would like to send versions of specific episodes that are better than the ones I've uploaded here, I can replace them (email pgk at this domain). It's the sort of thing I don't actively do on my own since I like to torture my ears more than most.
An MP3 CD player is only about $30, so personally I prefer MP3 CDs like the ones at http://www.otrcat.com . Works out a lot cheaper buying one MP3 CD for $5 plus the player for $30 than buying 50 audio CDs, and my ears aren't good enough to tell the difference.
harvey greenberg wrote: I do not know the composition of the group, but wonder if there younger people who have gotten into the show, and if so, how -- through parents etc.
I'm 25, but I became interested in radio drama by listening to the radio as a kid. I was probably about 8 or 9 when I got interested. There was "When Radio Was..." and the KNX Drama Hour, and although they weren't on any local stations I'd strain to listen through the static at night (I liked to see how distant of a station I could pick up anyhow). I heard one episode of Quiet Please on When Radio Was, but I really discovered the series on the internet much later and eventually collected the episodes on this site.
My parents are hopeless, they're the TV generation. My grandparents are more open to enjoying it, but didn't introduce me to it.
fooziex wrote: Before then I had always wondered why radio drama wasn't produced / broadcast,
It still is, we just live in the wrong country. Check out BBC7, it provides endless hours of entertainment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/saturday . I've been enjoying "The Gibson", "Mort" and "Deadlock" recently.
Paul wrote: It still is, we just live in the wrong country. Check out BBC7, it provides endless hours of entertainment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/saturday . I've been enjoying "The Gibson", "Mort" and "Deadlock" recently.
Yeah, the BBC puts out some great stuff. I really liked their adaptation of "Small Gods" and have a copy of "Mort" but haven't listened to it yet. I like a lot of their comedy shows too, from the older "Yes (Prime) Minister" to the new "Down The Line". The SF/Horror shows "Nightfall" and especially "Vanishing Point" from the CBC in the 1980s were really creative as well. "Vanishing Point" has quite a few episodes that can still deeply unsettle me.
Nightfall is one of the more visually gotesque radio series I've seen (kind of like Lights Out)... the guy cutting off his own hands to throw them to the dogs in "Hands Off" sticks in my mind as making me cringe. Haven't heard as much of Vanishing Point, I'll look for it more.
When it comes to American stuff I used to listen to Imagination Theater on the radio, but it's not really that good. I also heard CBSRMT on the radio, but that was the 1998 Himan Brown special edition, not the original run.
I'm in my twenties as well and got hooked as a kid when hearing OTR on the local public radio broadcast each sunday night that we have here to this day, still run by the same host too. That show is itself becoming OTR by now I guess.
It sort of gave me an idealizd view of OTR though, since they only ran the "good" stuff, classics such as Suspense and the best of the comedy shows. So I grew up thinking that all OTR was like that and wondering why quality in storytelling had declined so much since the radio days.
Of course, in reality, OTR had many often imitated cliche plots and lame series much as other mediums do. Hell, after listening to enough of it, you could be forgiven for assuming that the writers were all copying each other to varying degrees. And I suspect that some of them probably were. But it just goes to show how good the best shows really were and how rare a thing truly creative storytelling is. There is a reason why shows like Quiet Please are still well remembered to this day despite how the episodes were missing for so long, while the more typical hokey shows are largely forgotten.
> Dunno about finding CD versions of Quiet Please, but I'm definitely interested in higher-quality recordings. My experience with Quiet Please (and OTR in general) is MP3-exclusive. I guess I'm worried that what people sell is a MP3->CDDA conversion. <
I have been collecting for over 30 years now and Quiet, Please was one of the early one's I collected. Many of mine are on "reel-to-reel" though I tend to listen to the mp3. If I get some time, Paul, maybe I'll compare quality to see if I have something better.
otr-shop.com is no more. Essentially, the owner has pretty much disappeared from the Internet. I tried to contact him as well as several others I knew some time back to no avail. The last email address I had doesn't bounce, but no replies are returned.
Another place to find reasonably good quality analog versions of QP is Ted Davenport's Radio Memories. He is located at:
I have been collecting OTR for about 25 years now, mainly because I wanted a hobby that no one else in my family was into. My parents were (and still are) fortunate enough to remember the Golden Days of Radio. As for Quiet Please... I didn't really get into it until I discovered this website, and was instantly hooked
MS, If you have copies of the superior OTR-SHOP episodes (now apprently unavailable as per Zorka), is there any way you can make them availble to replace the lower quality copies online here? Paul has indicated he would be happy to upload them if made availble....
Is/was OTR-SHOP's the best quality copies of the episodes out there?
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I am a 70 year old physician and author, addicted since childhood to radio. I was absolutely blown away when I found this group -- eerily I had just been talking to a friend about QUIET PLEASE, and that wonderful organ/piano opening version of the Franck symphony quiet movement. I wonder if anyone could tell me how to get the original episodes. EBAY only has them in an MP3 format -- are they out there in the usual CD format?
Given the fact that this group is here, was anybody around to hear LIGHTS OUT, SUSPENSE -- in its 'nonsustaining' summer time format, without commercials. The version of THE DUNWICH HORROR scared me out of knickers.
One could go on and on, but it's certainly great to find people who love this wonderful show. I do not know the composition of the group, but wonder if there younger people who have gotten into the show, and if so, how -- through parents etc.
Thanks again. Please feel free to Email directly at HRGSMES@AOL.COM
Website is doctorgreenberg.net When I am not in the office, I write about cinema, media, and popular culture.
Best. HRG
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Most of the online OTR dealers offer QUIET PLEASE on cassette rather than compact disc, probably because of the poor sound quality of many of the episodes. Two that I know offer the series on CD are:
ATG Enterprises (at four dollars per disc):
http://www.goldenagesounds.com
Jerry Haendiges Productions (at sixteen dollars per disc):
http://www.otrsite.com/services
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Dunno about finding CD versions of Quiet Please, but I'm definitely interested in higher-quality recordings. My experience with Quiet Please (and OTR in general) is MP3-exclusive. I guess I'm worried that what people sell is a MP3->CDDA conversion.
About age: I'm 20, and started listening to OTR when I was 18. Before then I had always wondered why radio drama wasn't produced / broadcast, and really hadn't even heard of the "golden age of radio". When I first found out about the OTR community I was ecstatic. I think I started with the over-the-top Inner Sanctum, but Quiet Please must have been the second or third show I downloaded. While I wasn't exactly thrilled with the series at first listen (Tanglefoot, I think), there was definitely something subtle that kept me listening. Years later, I can say that Quiet Please is the series I enjoy the most; each episode stands up to multiple listenings.
Edit:
That http://www.otrsite.com/services/ site does look promising. They appear to know their trade. I wonder what kind of "masters" they have for Quiet Please.
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fooziex wrote:
Dunno about finding CD versions of Quiet Please, but I'm definitely interested in higher-quality recordings. ... That http://www.otrsite.com/services/ site does look promising. They appear to know their trade. I wonder what kind of "masters" they have for Quiet Please.
Yeah, Haendiges is one of the all-time great OTR collectors. He is pricey but had or has lots of stuff not available elsewhere. Haven't heard his QP episodes, though.
There was a site at otr-shop.com that seems to have disappeared but which apparently had some very good, cleaned-up QP episodes, according to a post on this forum a few years ago from Mark Martucci, who wrote:
]... the OTR Shop has THE BEST copies of Quiet Please episodes anywhere. I have gotten all the episodes he offers and they are heads and shoulders over anyone else's copies. He has the episodes second generation off the originals and is very knowledgeable in their reproduction. I was actually finally able to follow "The Ticket Taker" (probably the worst quality of all the episodes), while listening to his copy through good quality headphones. [
If you go over to http://www.sciencemonster.net/radio/radio.html and click on ScienceMonster Radio Library, there is a QP folder in the "horror" section with mp3 versions of The Thing on the Fourble Board and Tanglefoot that, to my ears anyway, sound a little (not much) better than the ones available here. In the "scifi" section, under "misc-scifi-episodes," there is a slightly better-sounding mp3 version of Not Responsible After Thirty Years. These usually take a while to download because it's a busy site but might be worth the wait. They've also got all of Cooper's circulating Lights Out episodes.
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If anyone would like to send versions of specific episodes that are better than the ones I've uploaded here, I can replace them (email pgk at this domain). It's the sort of thing I don't actively do on my own since I like to torture my ears more than most.
An MP3 CD player is only about $30, so personally I prefer MP3 CDs like the ones at http://www.otrcat.com . Works out a lot cheaper buying one MP3 CD for $5 plus the player for $30 than buying 50 audio CDs, and my ears aren't good enough to tell the difference.
I do not know the composition of the group, but wonder if there younger people who have gotten into the show, and if so, how -- through parents etc.
I'm 25, but I became interested in radio drama by listening to the radio as a kid. I was probably about 8 or 9 when I got interested. There was "When Radio Was..." and the KNX Drama Hour, and although they weren't on any local stations I'd strain to listen through the static at night (I liked to see how distant of a station I could pick up anyhow). I heard one episode of Quiet Please on When Radio Was, but I really discovered the series on the internet much later and eventually collected the episodes on this site.
My parents are hopeless, they're the TV generation. My grandparents are more open to enjoying it, but didn't introduce me to it.
Before then I had always wondered why radio drama wasn't produced / broadcast,
It still is, we just live in the wrong country. Check out BBC7, it provides endless hours of entertainment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/saturday . I've been enjoying "The Gibson", "Mort" and "Deadlock" recently.
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It still is, we just live in the wrong country. Check out BBC7, it provides endless hours of entertainment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/saturday . I've been enjoying "The Gibson", "Mort" and "Deadlock" recently.
Yeah, the BBC puts out some great stuff. I really liked their adaptation of "Small Gods" and have a copy of "Mort" but haven't listened to it yet. I like a lot of their comedy shows too, from the older "Yes (Prime) Minister" to the new "Down The Line". The SF/Horror shows "Nightfall" and especially "Vanishing Point" from the CBC in the 1980s were really creative as well. "Vanishing Point" has quite a few episodes that can still deeply unsettle me.
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Nightfall is one of the more visually gotesque radio series I've seen (kind of like Lights Out)... the guy cutting off his own hands to throw them to the dogs in "Hands Off" sticks in my mind as making me cringe. Haven't heard as much of Vanishing Point, I'll look for it more.
When it comes to American stuff I used to listen to Imagination Theater on the radio, but it's not really that good. I also heard CBSRMT on the radio, but that was the 1998 Himan Brown special edition, not the original run.
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I'm in my twenties as well and got hooked as a kid when hearing OTR on the local public radio broadcast each sunday night that we have here to this day, still run by the same host too. That show is itself becoming OTR by now I guess.
It sort of gave me an idealizd view of OTR though, since they only ran the "good" stuff, classics such as Suspense and the best of the comedy shows. So I grew up thinking that all OTR was like that and wondering why quality in storytelling had declined so much since the radio days.
Of course, in reality, OTR had many often imitated cliche plots and lame series much as other mediums do. Hell, after listening to enough of it, you could be forgiven for assuming that the writers were all copying each other to varying degrees. And I suspect that some of them probably were. But it just goes to show how good the best shows really were and how rare a thing truly creative storytelling is. There is a reason why shows like Quiet Please are still well remembered to this day despite how the episodes were missing for so long, while the more typical hokey shows are largely forgotten.
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> Dunno about finding CD versions of Quiet Please, but I'm definitely interested in higher-quality recordings. My experience with Quiet Please (and OTR in general) is MP3-exclusive. I guess I'm worried that what people sell is a MP3->CDDA conversion. <
I have been collecting for over 30 years now and Quiet, Please was one of the early one's I collected. Many of mine are on "reel-to-reel" though I tend to listen to the mp3. If I get some time, Paul, maybe I'll compare quality to see if I have something better.
otr-shop.com is no more. Essentially, the owner has pretty much disappeared from the Internet. I tried to contact him as well as several others I knew some time back to no avail. The last email address I had doesn't bounce, but no replies are returned.
Another place to find reasonably good quality analog versions of QP is Ted Davenport's Radio Memories. He is located at:
http://www.radiomemories.com/radiomemories/index.html
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I have been collecting OTR for about 25 years now, mainly because I wanted a hobby that no one else in my family was into. My parents were (and still are) fortunate enough to remember the Golden Days of Radio. As for Quiet Please... I didn't really get into it until I discovered this website, and was instantly hooked
btw: Welcome aboard Dr. Greenberg
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MS, If you have copies of the superior OTR-SHOP episodes (now apprently unavailable as per Zorka), is there any way you can make them availble to replace the lower quality copies online here? Paul has indicated he would be happy to upload them if made availble....
Is/was OTR-SHOP's the best quality copies of the episodes out there?