[
temperedsteelradio.blogspot.com] You might ask, why have a hardcore 1990's metal program be mentioned under a bit on Pirate Radio History? For about 2 years, Dale Early did the show on flame thrower, WAYJ, (Way-FM), from 1989 - 1991. [
radio-locator.com] A well produced 2hrs program indeed, that was fast paced, with Dale's energetic announcing. There was really no other show like it, and he recorded his shows off-air. Then, when his show was cancelled on-air by WAYJ, he put in an ad in Heaven's Metal Magazine, and mailed out hundreds of his shows on cassettes for free. I was one of the recipients. (Thanks, to The Lady Stranger for seeing the ad and telling me about it.) Incidentally, many of those shows were aired on pirate FM stations. And, it was from the requests of these stations that Dale then produced the 1hr version of Tempered Steel, using WAYJ's production statudios. Some college stations even picked-up the show, and Dale even bought an hour each week on shortwave's WWCR late Saturday nights. (I may have had something to do with that one.) However, Dale didn't care if the stations were licensed, or not, he just wanted to get the shows out and give bands, that you'd never hear anywhere else, on-air exposer, like Mortification, Corpse, Vomitoral Corpulence, Decision D, The Lead, Torn Flesh, Possession, Drop dead, Sacrament, Royal Anguish, Oblation, Erase, and a host of many others. Well, here's a site that someone has made to download 40 of these shows. (40 out of hundreds.) By the late 1990's, Tempered Steel made it on-line via the pioneering streamer, at the time, www.solidrockradio.net . However, the majority of the shows were via radio, mainly unlicensed stations. Somewhere, I have two over-the-phone interviews with Dale Early that I need to dig-up. Anyway, from 1989 - 1999, there was no other metal show like this, and with the advent of music, and on-air talent, getting pretty stale after Y2K, there hasn't been such a show since.
