If Gerber's Fanfare matches Ives's "Variations on America", I'll be fine
with it.  I'm going nonmusical here, but I do know something about
shortwave radio.

Leon Le Leu:

>I did hear that it was blocked inside the U.S. so that citizens could
>not hear what their own shortwave radio station was broadcasting; that
>may be a myth.

The VoA won't reply to letters or questions from Americans living inside
the US.  Nor will they allow Americans to partake of the "culture of
goodies" (QSL cards, keychains, refrigerator magnets, &c) that pervades
international shortwave.  VoA's charter precluded it from "competing"
with privately owned US stations by marketing to Americans, a stricture
that they have traditionally taken to an extreme.  Americans overseas
were part of the target audience.  There was never any problem with
listening to it, it was just unpublicized.

Steve Schwartz:

>during the Solidarity crisis in Poland, the US government made a huge
>mistake by airing a broadcast intended for VOA audiences to the US one.

How did they air this to the US audience?  I don't remember that particular
incident, but Solidarity would have been in the Reagan administration,
a low point in VoA's history.  Better management was brought in mid-decade
and they returned to being reliable, though not as widely listened to
as the Beeb.

VoA _was_ popular in Eastern Europe, largely due to (zounds!  a musical
theme!) legendary jazz programme host Willis Conover.  Few Polish, Czech,
or Russian jazz artists are well known in the United States, but adventurous
musicians built an underground network around Coltrane and the hard-bop
artists whose records they heard via VoA.

Eddie