Released Mid February 2003            Mercury Records
CD(440 063 335-2), CAS(440 063 335-4)
Compilation Produced by Mike Ragogna, Digitally Remastered by Bob Ludwig
Cover Art by Hugh Syme

Tracks
01. Working Man
02. Fly By Night
03. 2112 Overture/The Temples Of Syrinx
04. Closer To The Heart
05. The Trees
06. The Spirit Of Radio
07. Freewill
08. Limelight
09. Tom Sawyer
10. Red Barchetta
11. New World Man
12. Subdivisions

    In February of 2003, Rush's latest CD The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974 - 1987 was offered to the public.  I, personally, had been waiting for the arrival of this CD with great anticipation because the artwork that is to be found throughout the CD features various vintage radio items that are actually from my antique radio collection.  This special page of my web site is devoted in showing what items of my collection are featured on the CD.  In a small way this could be considered as my "almost" 15 minuets of fame.

    The front and back cover pages of the booklet which accompanies the CD features a one of a kind radio of fantasy which has the Rush logo as the speaker grill.  In reality this radio is my 1933 RCA model 140.  If you look at the base that connects one pillar to the other, you will notice that the wood coloration gradually gets darker as it extends from the center to the right. On the other hand, the wood coloration maintains it's light color when extending from the center to the left until it just reaches the right pillar when at that point it quickly gets dark.  This feature is the same on the Rush radio.

Click here to learn more about the RCA 140.

    The radio speaker shown on the back cover is an Orchestrion DeLuxe horn speaker that was manufactured in Indianapolis, Indiana during the mid 1920s.  I regularly use this speaker when I enter a 1920s radio in an antique radio contest where the radio must be hooked up and playing.

Click here to learn more about the Orchestrion DeLuxe.

    This three tube amplifier is featured in the center pages of the booklet.  This amplifier was manufactured around 1925 and was primarily designed for the installation in a radio.  Amplifiers such as this one are commonly found in homebrew sets.  All three tubes ,being the UX-201A type, were manufactured by Gold Seal Products, 250 Park Avenue, New York, New York USA.

    When the CD is lifted from the CD case, a photo is revealed of a radio chassis.  That chassis belongs to my 1937 Wilson radio.  It was manufactured by the Wilson Radio Laboratories, located on a farm, about 2 miles east of Alexandria, Indiana.  The factory building was the size of a one room school house and the average daily production was around two sets per day which were sold within a nine county area in east central Indiana.  Wilson produced a wide variety of radios from 1930 to 1943 of which I have only a few examples in my collection.

    The dial was patterned after the dial of my 1936 Zenith model 12A58 radio. Also the booklet has what looks to be veneer wood along the edge of each page.  That veneer wood is actually the upper sides of this radio.

    I got this picture off of an ebay auction but it shows what the promotional poster looks like.  2-11-2003 was supposed to be the release date of the CD but it didn't actually come out until a short time later.

Click here to learn about how radio station CFNY became the insperation of the song "The Spirit of Radio".