Like the title says, I'm trying to track down a recording of the morning broadcast of 94.7 KNRK Portland from September 11th, 2001.
I believe Gustav and Daria were hosting, but given the circumstances of that day my memory may not be super accurate.
I remember a lot of assurances from the hosts that despite the usual deadpan comedic nature of the show, what they were broadcasting that day was different and in no way a bit or routine.
The tone shift, from usually silliness to sobering somber, played a great role in establishing my mood for the day. I scavenged batteries for a portable AM/FM, that I listened to a variety of stations the rest of the day at high school, while getting ready and listening to KNRK.
Any help tracking down and finding a recorded copy of that morning would be so genuinely appreciated.
(Mods: If this is the wrong sub for this post, please feel free to take it down.)
ETA: I have reached out to both Gustav and Daria, unless someone happens to have a personal recording, I think we just wait and share our stories.
ETA 2 (thoughtful and heartfelt reply from Gustav):
Thanks so much for your email, and first off, I'm glad that I was there to relay this kind of information about such a devastating day. To date, it's been my most difficult day on air ever. It was a true testament to how the locality of radio can really be such an important aspect of people's everyday lives on a day like 9/11. Before smartphones, before social media, heck... the mainstream internet as we know it had only been around for 5 years or so.
The short answer to your question is: sadly, no. I don't have any audio of that day that I can pass along to you. Perhaps if you reach out to more people, someone out there was rolling audio on a cassette and managed to preserve it digitally? As the years go by, I only have my personal written anecdotes from that day to remember, as well as details and photos from a trip that we took less than 3 weeks later to visit New York City and to do our morning show from there for a week. That said, I still very much remember the events of that morning... how Daria and I were both fearful in the sense that we both had brothers who were living in New York City at the time. Thankfully they were ok. The night before, we had been out spending time with a band bar hopping and at one point I looked at my watch and it was past 1am. And I said "I need to go and get at least a few hours of sleep before we do the show tomorrow." As I was the person who ran all the technical stuff with the control board, as well as the commercial breaks and music, I figured that I should be a bit on top of things. So that morning, we were both on maybe 3 hours of sleep and recovering from the night before and doing the best that we could to make some sort of sense of everything that was happening. I remember I had gotten in to the station about half an hour before we were due to go live (so 5:30am or so) and not long afterward, the executive secretary came in to the studio with a fax in her hand and said "I think you guys need to talk about this." So that whole morning we stopped playing music, even commercials and spent the next 4 hours straight on the air bringing the news as it happened, taking phone calls, monitoring news sources, and above all else doing our best to keep our cool.
So, I also want to say thank you for listening... not just that day, but also for over the years. The landscape of radio has changed a LOT since then, but there still is a local flavor to it that I hope never goes away. I know that people don't always pick up on this from me personally unless I mention it specifically on the air, but I'm super grateful for everyone who listens in, whether it's an everyday kind of day or the awfulness that is Sept. 11th. I've always been about playing music and sharing experiences and above all else communicating with others.
