January 2008 Archives

This show was sketched out earlier than the other shows, mostly since the weekend before airtime was when I moved to a new apartment. It's hard to say whether the additional time allowed me to spot the little patterns or commonalities with some of the selections, but the flow was quite connected.

The initial focus was on the Oscar nominations; I focused on score at first but upon finding one of the nominated songs, and then another song by the same act on another soundtrack, the sequence gelled nicely, especially since I threw on a few other older film songs too. The look at Last Gang Records was accidental but allowed for a nice spotlight on a recent Canadian label.

I had a minor spell of paranoia since during preptime at the station, I was somehow privy to a programmers' meeting, where critiques of other shows were discussed. Not that I was expecting much analysis on my show yet, but it's both good to know that there are critical listeners out there, but at the same time really awkward. I know there's room to improve, especially since I'm only three weeks into this gig, but yeah, my nerves were rattled for a bit.

There was the odd mixing snafu as I tried juggling more sources this time, including an attempt at talking over music, then changing to the next song afterwards. I have to map that out better, along with remembering to properly skip songs when running out of time.

Update: one factual error on my part in the show. V for Vendetta was written by Alan Moore, not Grant Morrison. I received an email after the show correcting me.

Playlist follows, with links to the acts, songs if possible.

The second show went a lot smoother than the inaugural, mostly due to comfort. I still have to remedy the pauses between fades but this time, I managed to use multiple inputs instead of relying on the laptop, along with properly cuing the next tracks for level checks. I also got my first call, which was startling due to the strobe indicator reminding me of a fire alarm firstly. The Ebony Bones track must've leapt out to the caller, which shows good taste for everyone involved. I definitely require time to get settled into the studio during the exciting DJ change, though Henry was a tremendous help with additional pointers.

The main thing I need to do is print out the script instead of constantly toggling back and forth between iTunes and the little word processor. Delays of a second or two really add up when I'm not only sliding the level bars but as well as unpausing the player or scrolling past the older verbiage.

Since I had to give a show name to the programmer in order for me to provide proper playlists for content requirements (yea Canada! 35% mandatory anything), I ran with radio free gak for now, until I come up with a better, wittier show title.

Playlist follows:

Technically, the show remains untitled, but giving it a temporary name helps clarify what actually happened, and what actually happened was almost 90 minutes of airtime. The prior show, Radio! Radio!, ran a few minutes long and I played a few longer PSA's as my inital panicky realization that I was live to air set in.

The learning curve was steep as panic set in when a faulty RCA cable meant that the first half hour of the show was either in mono or double mono until I could replace the cable. I do have an MP3 (or two) of most of the show recorded through another studio, but before I upload them here (preferably as a single file), I need to re-listen to the show and see what I did wrong, which would be plentiful upon reflection.

Still, no major dead air, along with no complaints (thus far; I didn't even give the number on air), means a raging success until proven otherwise.

Playlist follows:

For the benefit of several readers:

This blog will be set up for the purposes of cataloguing my grand radio experiment, which should include playlists at first. Hopefully, as I roll along, this site will expand in a fruitful way to incorporate more musical interests and not devolve into a random funniest video collection.

Until then, enjoy a random photo from my Flickr stream: