This is the sound of Matthew Shifrin using his BrailleNote—a computer for the blind that pushes plastic nodes through tiny holes to display text in braille.

Five Days after I began broadcasting classical music over one of St. Louis' existing Christian stations Albert Pujols announced he was leaving the St. Louis Cardinals for the Los Angeles Angels. Now what does Albert Pujols have to do with JOY-FM you might be asking. Pujols was one of the major donors to the down payment fund for the purchase of KFUO. I propose Pujols take JOY-FM with him and in exchange we get one of L.A.’s classical stations. We would even settle for kMozart 1260 AM.

For this episode of Random Tape I hit the streets to find out what people in St. Louis think of Pujols’ departure.

Classical music station KFUO in St. Louis was one of the oldest radio stations west of the Mississippi. The stationed was owned by the Lutheran church up until last year when it was purchased by Gateway Creative Broadcasting’s JOY-FM. On July 6th, 2010 KFUO broadcasted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor and then went silent. The following morning JOY-FM began it’s broadcast of Christian contemporary pop music. There are now six christian stations in St. Louis and zero classical stations.

On Saturday December 3rd, I powered up the 40-watt FM transmitter I built and “tagged” a Christian station (89.5 FM) with Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor K. 626: Sanctus. For a couple square miles at least, you can hear classical music on the radio again coming from high atop the chimney of a former convent.

This is a recording of the moment my signal went live.