Kiss Classics was a show that featured classic dance music and was hosted by Chris Walsh (Joe Roberts was the producer and sometimes appeared on the air during the show). Originally the show was called "Kiss Club Classics" and it aired on Sunday nights from 6pm to 9pm but was later changed to "Kiss Classics" with a time slot of 6pm to 8pm. The show made its debut in late summer of 1989 and ran for about 8 years. In the early years the show featured music from the period from around 1975 to around 1985, however as time went on the show started to add more of the hits from the late 1980s. The show was nearly always done live from the Hartford studios. This was one show where we actually played a signficant number of records (very few large commercial stations still used records in the 1980s)! The station had some classics in its music library, but quite often a good portion of the music was brought in from personal record collections. Kiss Classics had a loyal following of listeners, the show received a healthy number of phone calls. Listeners would be looking to request some of their favorite old classics... sometimes we would not have the song but we made notes and would bring the song in for the next show.
Chris Walsh hosted the vast majority of the Kiss Classics shows, however from time to time a sub would do the show (typical subs included Mike Murray, Michael Maze, and Steve McVie). Every once in a while the show would be pre-produced, meaning that Chris would pre-tape the voice breaks during the week and then a board tech would play the music and put Chris' voice in at the proper time. Except for an occasional screw-up, almost no one knew when the show was pre-produced, as people would call in and say "Hi Chris!" Kiss Classics was a fun show to do. Hear some Kiss Classics air checks below!
Below are links to a number of audio clips from various Kiss Classics shows. These clips are what are known as "air checks". Air checks are recordings of talk breaks, mixes, going into and out of spots, etc. Most of the air checks were recorded on 60 and 90 minute cassettes (I have a large number of these yet to digitize and post). All of the audio clips below are MP3 format, they should be compatible with virtually any Ipod or similar player. Be warned however that the files are big and will be painfully slow to download if you do not have a high speed connection to the Internet!
MANY more Kiss Classics air checks yet to be digitized and posted! Please check back now and then!
This page is part of the Kiss 95.7 Tribute Site.