A Really Good Obsession

If you are going to have an obsession, make it a good one! What makes a good obsession? It should be legal and not harmful to your body. A good obsession should also be mentally challenging. That means smoking marijuana would not be a good obsession and fixing old clocks would be. To be an exceptionally good obsession, it should also have an end goal, such as completing a collection of rare coins. And since I have an exceptionally good obsession, I will share it with you! I am collecting a complete set of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater shows on mp3. It is legal: I am not buying these episodes; I am only sharing the files. It is not harmful to my body: I just might not get a ton of exercise while I am making CD's. It has an end goal: 1399 episodes to be gathered. I should start at the beginning with an explanation of what "CBS Radio Mystery Theater" is. Some of you may have heard of it; some of you may have listened to it. This was an hour-long radio drama aired nightly from 1974 to 1982 known by its acronym "CRMT" in the internet forums. Not all episodes were mysteries; some were spooky supernatural tales or classics adapted from Conan Doyle or Poe. Each one started the same way though: A creaking door opening up and E.G. Marshall welcoming you in to a story of the supernatural, mysterious, and macabre. And that is what was heard every night for 9 years on the CBS radio network. I heard it just a few times on the radio, but it was enough to hook me. Most often I remember driving around the country-side with my mom listening to WBBM-780 AM and getting very scared. I couldn't touch the floor of the car or the monsters would get me. There was the episode where Celeste Holmes played a mother who was convinced she could hear her dead daughter calling to her from the crack in the basement wall. Darren McGavin, the father from The Christmas Story played one of the 36 righteous men who must live to keep the world from being taken over by the devil. Tony Roberts and Fred Gwynne were other actor's whose voices kept listeners coming back again and again to CRMT those many years ago. And now I am obsessed with collecting and listening to as many as I can today. Thank goodness for the internet. There is a community of other people as obsessed, or even more, as me with CRMT out there on the information superhighway. Starting just a few weeks ago, I have found MP3 format versions of almost all of the shows and have begun to download them. The amazing thing about these recordings is they were made back when the episodes were played for the first time on radio. Americans of all stripes were recording CRMT from the AM band and keeping them for future listening. Now those recordings are being shared on the internet. Some copies are spectacularly clear. Some have the commercials and newscasts still included. Others are copies of tapes that aren't clear or even. For some reason, Himan Brown, the director and copyright holder, does not want to sell copies of his work so no masters are available to the public. Until Mr. Brown re-releases these shows, I will be one of the many fans downloading and burning CD's like mad. I have a goal: all 1399 episodes on CD's in MP3 format and the best episodes also in the audio format as a present for my mother. (I figure she won't see this article so my secret will be safe.) So far I have 1037 episodes in MP3 format covering 6 complete seasons with 55 on audio CD with really cute cd labels I have pieced together. What is more obsessive than that? Well, if you have a copy of episode #238, entitled Death Pays No Dividend which aired originally on March 13, 1975, drop me a line. Maybe we can set up some sort of trade. You can reach me through this website or through the http://www.cbsrmt.info/forum, my user name is scarlson33. But until then, pleasant... dreams?