Oceanside Tape Project: Recovery Speaker Tapes

Oceanside Tape Project
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The Oceanside Tape Project is a recovery audio preservation project focused on digitizing old A.A. and AFG/Al-Anon speaker tapes and helping move them into XA-Speakers for long-term public access. These recordings come from conventions, conferences, roundups, workshops, group anniversaries, central office collections, tape libraries, and local rooms across the recovery world. Many were recorded decades ago on cassette and passed from hand to hand before podcasts, streaming, and digital archives existed. Our role is simple: find the tapes, digitize them, identify them as carefully as possible, and help keep the message available. This podcast shares selected recordings as part of that preservation effort — voices from A.A., AFG/Al-Anon, and the wider recovery tape tradition, carried forward one tape at a time. oceansidetapeproject.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Annie P. — Lancaster, CA — AA

    Annie P., known on AA tapes as “Irish Annie,” was a Southern California AA speaker whose recordings place her in the old-timer current of the Fellowship: Huntington Beach, Orange, Westminster, San Bernardino, Burbank. Public listings say she got sober in the summer of 1968. By the late 1990s, she was still carrying the message through Southern California rooms, including the 11th YPAA Conference in San Bernardino in 1998 and a Burbank recording in March 1999 circulated as “Irish Annie’s Last Talk.” That title has weight. Not because we should turn it into biography we cannot prove, but because the tape world does not use a phrase like that casually. It suggests a voice people remembered, saved, copied, and passed along with care. Irish Annie’s public tape trail gives us the outline of the woman without pretending to own the whole portrait: an AA old-timer, sober since 1968, known enough to be cataloged by nickname, and vivid enough that one preserved story carries the title “Always Running Down Alleys.” That is not polished convention language. That is AA language — the kind that still smells faintly of cigarettes, coffee, fear, and rescue. She appears to have had the necessary old-timer mixture: edge, humor, survival, and the plain ability to make staying sound possible. Not pretty. Possible. Her 1998 YPAA tape matters especially because young people’s AA rooms need old voices that do not patronize them. They need someone who has been through the alleys, the bargains, the dodges, the escapes, and can say: keep showing up anyway. Irish Annie did. Summer 1968 to Burbank 1999. Thirty years of sobriety, one sharp Southern California voice, and a message that kept running long after the running was over. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Annie P. — Lancaster, CA — AA

  2. 2d ago

    Chuck Kelly — AA

    Everything will be free forever. But your donation will help us continue the work and perhaps hire help because 100.000 tapes is a lot of tapes and currently its just me doing the work when I can. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Chuck Kelly — AA

  3. 3d ago

    Chuck C. — Laguna Beach, CA — AA

    Everything will be free forever. But your donation will help us continue the work and perhaps hire help because 100.000 tapes is a lot of tapes and currently its just me doing the work when I can. Chuck C. — Chuck Chamberlain of Laguna Beach, California — was one of AA’s great spiritual voices: sober in January 1946, recorded across decades, and remembered most widely for the talks later published as *A New Pair of Glasses*. His central subject was vision. Not eyesight, of course. Alcoholics can see the bar, the exit, the lie, the loophole, and the bottom of the glass with supernatural precision. Chuck spoke about the other kind of seeing: the spiritual reorientation required to live without the old poisonous lens. He had the old-timer’s gift for making surrender sound less like defeat and more like finally putting down a weapon you have been sleeping with for years. His message was direct, searching, and unsentimental. He did not decorate recovery. He described the change that had to happen if an alcoholic wanted more than abstinence with a clenched jaw. The 1975 Pala Mesa talks gave AA one of its enduring pieces of speaker-tape history. *A New Pair of Glasses* is not famous because it is quaint. It is famous because Chuck understood that sobriety without a changed perception can become a dry little kingdom of resentment, ego, and fear. Chuck C. gave the rooms a language for spiritual awakening that still cuts cleanly. A new way of seeing. A new way of living. And, if one was lucky, a new way of getting out of one’s own damned way. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Chuck C. — Laguna Beach, CA — AA

  4. Aug 21

    Cecil C. — Prince Albert, Canada — AA

    Everything will be free forever. But your donation will help us continue the work and perhaps hire help because 100.000 tapes is a lot of tapes and currently its just me doing the work when I can. Cecil C. of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, was an AA speaker with old-school mileage: sober in 1952, recorded at Blackstone in 1970, listed at Lakeside in 1992, and still speaking in Marietta in 2003 with fifty-one years of sobriety behind him. That is a long time to stay useful. Cecil’s public tape trail has the feel of AA before polish got anywhere near it: retreats, roundups, conference rooms, cassette tables, and stories passed hand to hand because somebody in the room heard something worth saving. Sober Cast describes him as a popular speaker of the 1970s and 1980s, and Gopher State preserved *The Cecil C. Story* as its own recording. The title is plain, almost blunt. Good. AA does not always need poetry. Sometimes it needs a man from Saskatchewan telling the truth until the room stops pretending. His story carries the authority of distance traveled — not just geographically, from Prince Albert into the American circuit, but spiritually, from whatever wreckage brought him to AA in 1952 into more than five decades of carrying the message. Cecil C. had the older rhythm: humor, memory, confession, and the hard little shine of gratitude earned the expensive way. Prince Albert to Superior. Blackstone to Marietta. A Canadian AA voice with half a century of recovery in the bones. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Cecil C. — Prince Albert, Canada — AA

  5. Aug 20

    Pat Y. — Pasadena, CA — AA

    Everything will be free forever. But your donation will help us continue the work and perhaps hire help because 100.000 tapes is a lot of tapes and currently its just me doing the work when I can. Pat Y. — publicly listed in recovery-audio catalogs as Pat Yeo — was an AA speaker from Pasadena, California, with a tape trail reaching from the Pacific Group in the late 1980s through Atlanta, Yosemite, Helena, Virginia Beach, Indian Wells, Vancouver, and Girlstock. Her known recordings show a long arc: Pasadena in 1988, the Atlanta Roundup in 1991, Yosemite in 1993, Pockets of Enthusiasm in the late 1990s, and later talks still circulating well into the 2010s. That is not a cameo. That is a message with a suitcase. Pat Y. spoke at the AA Desert Pow Wow in June 1999, part of a wider circuit record that places her among the women whose AA stories traveled far beyond their home groups. The public listings keep the details spare, but the pattern is clear enough: Pasadena AA, story speaker, Steps speaker, convention rooms, roundup rooms, and a voice people kept preserving. There is a particular authority in a woman who stays on the circuit that long. Not volume. Not performance. Endurance. The kind of authority that comes from telling the truth often enough that the truth begins to travel under its own power. Pat Y. carried the message across decades, from Pasadena to Indian Wells and beyond. No costume. No embroidery. Just AA mileage, a microphone, and the old impossible transaction: one life spared, then handed on. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Pat Y. — Pasadena, CA — AA

  6. Aug 19

    Chuck C. — Laguna Beach, CA — AA

    Everything will be free forever. But your donation will help us continue the work and perhaps hire help because 100.000 tapes is a lot of tapes and currently its just me doing the work when I can. Chuck C. — Chuck Chamberlain of Laguna Beach, California — was one of the great old voices of Alcoholics Anonymous: sober in January 1946, widely recorded, widely quoted, and dangerous in the best possible way. His message did not flatter the alcoholic. It did not pat the disease on the head and call it misunderstood. Chuck spoke about surrender, vision, awakening, and the necessity of a new way of living with the authority of a man who had stopped negotiating with the bottle and found, to his own apparent surprise, that God had better terms. He became best known through the talks later circulated as *A New Pair of Glasses*, recorded at the Pala Mesa Men’s Retreat in 1975. The title is not ornamental. Chuck’s great subject was perception — the alcoholic’s poisoned little lens, the terrible private logic that makes ruin look reasonable, and the spiritual change required to see anything clearly at all. His tape trail reaches back into AA’s early recording history: Beverly Hills in 1953, St. Louis in 1955, state conventions, roundups, retreats, International Convention appearances, and late talks still circulating from the early 1980s. He also testified publicly in 1969 as a recovered alcoholic and AA member, speaking for recovery without turning anonymity into theater. Chuck C. belongs in the archive because he helped shape the language of AA spirituality for generations of listeners. Not soft spirituality. Not parlor spirituality. The kind with consequences. A new pair of glasses, yes. But first, darling, the old eyes had to surrender. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Chuck C. — Laguna Beach, CA — AA

  7. Aug 18

    Joe T. — AA

    Joe T. spoke at the Opening Meeting of the Desert Pow Wow in Indian Wells, California, on June 20, 1997. An opening meeting has a dangerous little job. It has to tell the truth before the weekend gets comfortable. Before the banquet, before the applause, before the hallway reunions and the old-timers comparing mileage like retired smugglers, someone has to stand up and remind the room why everyone is there. Joe T. carried that first assignment. There is not enough public record to give him a hometown, a surname, or a decorated speaker-circuit biography. Good. The archive is not a costume shop. What we have is cleaner: a name, a date, a room, and the opening voice of the 1997 Desert Pow Wow. That matters because first voices set the temperature. They decide whether a convention begins as entertainment, ceremony, or something closer to rescue. In AA, the opening message is not pageantry. It is the door being unlocked in public. Joe T. belongs here as the man who helped open that weekend. Indian Wells. June 1997. The lights come up. The room quiets. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Joe T. — AA

  8. Aug 16

    Brenda Lindgren — AA

    Everything will be free forever. But your donation will help us continue the work and perhaps hire help because 100.000 tapes is a lot of tapes and currently its just me doing the work when I can. Brenda Lindgren, also listed as Brenda L. from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an AA speaker whose known tape trail runs from the Desert Pow Wow Closing Meeting in Indian Wells in 1997 to the Capital City Conference in Des Moines in 2007. A closing meeting is not a casual invitation. It asks a speaker to gather the weekend’s noise, gratitude, fatigue, laughter, and private little bargains with God, then send the room home with the message still breathing. That is delicate work. Alcoholics are famously capable of turning inspiration into a souvenir by Monday morning. Brenda’s place in the archive begins there: at the end of a Desert Pow Wow weekend, carrying the closing message. Later public listings place her still on the circuit a decade later, speaking as Brenda L. from Minneapolis. That gives the record a useful shape — not a passing appearance, but a message that kept traveling. There is not enough public biography here to gild the frame, and we will not. The tape does not need borrowed ornaments. It has the better thing: a woman in AA trusted with the final word of a convention. That matters. The last voice is the one people carry to the parking lot, the airport, the long drive home, the family waiting in the kitchen, the hotel room where the minibar looks very pleased with itself. Brenda Lindgren carried that voice. Indian Wells to Des Moines. A closing message with its coat already on, still doing the work. Get full access to Oceanside Tape Project at oceansidetapeproject.substack.com/subscribe

    Brenda Lindgren — AA
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About

The Oceanside Tape Project is a recovery audio preservation project focused on digitizing old A.A. and AFG/Al-Anon speaker tapes and helping move them into XA-Speakers for long-term public access. These recordings come from conventions, conferences, roundups, workshops, group anniversaries, central office collections, tape libraries, and local rooms across the recovery world. Many were recorded decades ago on cassette and passed from hand to hand before podcasts, streaming, and digital archives existed. Our role is simple: find the tapes, digitize them, identify them as carefully as possible, and help keep the message available. This podcast shares selected recordings as part of that preservation effort — voices from A.A., AFG/Al-Anon, and the wider recovery tape tradition, carried forward one tape at a time. oceansidetapeproject.substack.com

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