I did this a lot. My white whale was Krokus' "Screaming in the Night," a 6-min power ballad w/ no radio edit. 40-sec gutair-and-wind-fx opening kept it out of heavy rotation. Finally caught it on Detroit's WLLZ (98.7). Heard it starting over the outro of "Flight of Icarus" and smashed "record"!
Prior to that it was sitting next to the radio with a tape recorder and pressing “record”’when you heard one you wanted. I can still name some of the songs I got this way circa 1978
