About PlaybackShack.com

Playback Shack is a clearinghouse for my rather large collection of personal audio and video. Since I was a child (I’m now strolling toward middle age), I obsessively recorded audio and eventually video, all the way until… well… present day. My youthful days were spent recording candid moments with my family or friends, until eventually my brother (David P. Foy or just “Dave”) and I formed our own “radio network” of original programming. It was called the Mida Programming Network, with “Mida” standing for the first two letters of each of our first names. We’d record programs on 60 to 90 minute audio cassettes via various old school boom boxes. Some programs were comedy based, others were about our own “professional wrestling” league, the Foy Wrestling Alliance, and so on. There are over 60 of these tapes alone still in my possession. There are days of audio content waiting to be rediscovered and digitally shared with the world. A pretend network finally becomes a real, live, worldwide one. Thanks to podcasting and the web.

Along with the Mida tapes, there are countless other audio and video recordings waiting for digital conversion. In my early 20s, I first became a mobile event disc jockey along with my friends Andrew Beauchamp and Carl Lorio. That lead to my meeting up with my dear friend Rachael Fyke – who was the star of her own television dance show, “Teen Videos,” along with her brother Jeff Fyke. Eventually, they needed a fill-in DJ, and my real broadcasting career was born.

Teen Videos evolved into other television projects and broadcasting opportunities. The show was relaunched a couple of years later as “In The Groove,” as we ventured into national syndication. During those times, I also began to more and more work on camera, hosting various segments or interviews. I went on to host the pilot of a show named “Kid Power.” I also was involved in hosting and producing a little-known weekly radio version of In The Groove at a local Philadelphia radio station. All of these audio and video recordings will be one day be available here on Playback Shack.

Though I loved those years, they were certainly lean, and the opportunities didn’t necessarily help my finances. What little money I was getting, I was putting back into my mobile DJ business. It was a cycle I became addicted to. Potential fame. Potential fortune. Potential, potential, potential. I had to make a change.

By 26, I sought a bit more stability and decided to walk away from the TV and radio parts of my life for a while. That also eventually meant I’d give up the brutal lifestyle of being a mobile DJ. I worked in Loss Prevention busting shoplifters, then I worked as a private investigator busting insurance frauds, until finally, I took a leap into computer work as a programmer for a direct mail company.

All the while, my little brother Dave pursued reinforced his love of broadcasting with an education in broadcasting. He studied film at Florida State University and after graduation, went out to stand his ground in Hollywood, California. Today, he is a successful television and video editor and a voiceover artist. Some of his contributions to entertainment, both good and bad, will also be featured here on PlaybackShack.com.

As my own work in direct mail took me to work throughout the country, I began to explore podcasting. I had all of these tapes following me from new hometown to new hometown. I had to do something with them.

Around 2006, I started the MTFX Radio Podcast, my first podcasting venture, hosted on mtfxradio.com. There, I became my own boss and my own biggest fan. I played great independent music, produced new funny segments, and began to unearth a small sampling of the audio and video I had compiled through the years. I shared it all with my friends, family, and the world. The program became pretty popular for such a little project, until my personal life began to fall apart. I was living in Florida at the time. The MTFX Radio Podcast would not survive much longer in the midst of my move to New Jersey. Despite all of that, the various episodes of MTFX Radio will be resurrected to live on here at Playback Shack.

I was still working in direct mail, yet I knew I had to satisfy the creative side of me to really dig myself out of depression and despair. My very good friend Nathan White and I were working together for a high-stress company. He needed to blow off some steam too and had the technical curiosity to explore another podcasting venture we’d go on to create together, a video podcast about the direct marketing industry, Junk Mail Galaxy. We recorded 17 episodes of the show, which also gained a decent audience. Those programs will also be featured here on Playback Shack.

So here we are. A clearinghouse for all of this stuff. Plus, who knows what other kind of creative ventures I’ll get myself into. I’m now living in Ohio with my girlfriend Misty Bay. Oddly enough, she has her own body of television and radio work, which I’m sure will find a spot on here too.

It’s true that you only live once. However, you can certainly squeeze a bunch of lifetimes into that one life. I’m living proof, and I’m not even 40 yet.

- Michael T. Foy, aka, MTFX, aka, “Mad” Mike Foy, aka, Mike Foy, aka “Mr. DJ” Michael T. Foy