March 2008 Archives
I hope everyone had a merry Easter (though the other one's next week for the Orthodox) or at the very least, a great start to spring.
I must've sounded exhausted on air, though that was no fault of the programming — my brother had flown in for the long weekend and we spent some time up in Whistler skiing and then touring around town. As well, it was my first day at a new job, so that evening's broadcast had me nearing the end of my day instead of the middle (or the odd start). Reading off a printout from the dying gasps of a printer toner didn't help me either.
Nevertheless, the songs were generally mellow, though I had to start off with Portishead now that the first single has entered our lives. That led to the Portishead members' work inbetween releases (Geoff Barrow producing Stephanie McKay's (mostly unheard of) debut and Beth Gibbon's partnership with Paul Webb, since aside of a cover for a Serge Gainsbourg tribute, there's been nil since 1998.
Otherwise, the rest of the show was as forecast earlier: relatively mellow, mostly female and a look at the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. A mild British folk thread appeared, which I'd like to explore in some detail in a future show once I sort out some disk space issues on my laptop, which houses the bulk of my audio collection with my physical copies still residing in storage in Brooklyn.
And as you can hear at the end of the show, Gavin did arrive, barely in time since he had been at a birthday party. There was some confusion about if he would arrive for other reasons, but it's all my own.
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I've hit the double-digit mark in scheduled programming, which isn't substantial in an epic sense but it's a nice monument as beginnings go. With it being Saint Patrick's Day, naturally some tribute to Ireland was in order, hence The Muppets' rendition of Danny Boy as the opening. As well, the featurette on Gavin Friday and his old band, The Virgin Prunes made sense. I honestly wish Gavin would release tonnes more music but I can sympathize with the concept of following one's muse, since it's an ideal I'm fairly stuck with.
Naturally, based on the age of most of the material I was dealing with, it was time to dive into the next step in studio comfort as this was my first show that rocked the wax. This meant that this show ran into some novel technical issues as I learned how the mixer and the turntables interacted. This accounted for the miscue with the Captive soundtrack as I discovered the console controlled the turntable remotely. Then there was the late start to the first Gavin Friday song when I spun the record back to the start of Side A, but into a point where it would skip along the introductory grooves, requiring manual intervention. That doesn't fully account for the weird problem in the midst of the Santogold where the iPod elected to skip ahead to the Rautakoura song; on air, I faulted it to a sneeze but realistically, I have no clue what happened since I was far away from it and by the wheels of steel, figuring out which turntable was labelled #1 and #2.
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Did a quick fill-in for what used to be the program The Great Canadian Way, which had recently fallen off the schedule. In between the news programming and special sports programming (semi-final AAA high school basketball action), an hour need to be filled on Friday afternoon, so I stepped in, in one of my last days with ample time to spare. (The big news in the background is personal; after months of searching, I finally landed a job.)
As per last Monday's regular radio free gak, I had gutted one of my running themes, so I resurrected part of it and fleshed it out with a handful of other songs I could find on the subject of happiness, which fit topically (for me anyways). Every song either had "happy" or "happiness" in the title, though one had "joy" and one act had "happy" in their name. Other possibilities would've been; "robots", "burning", the moon, best songs from my shows, clips from my dreadful demo, and uh, good songs I guess.
I was told that the show could have run anywhere from 50-75 minutes, so flexibility was required. Naturally, the more obvious and well-known songs were left off, though unintentionally since I found out I didn't have any Partridge Family in my collection as of airtime (which remain like that for a while). I was hoping to close with Boards of Canada with Happy Cycling but it turned out I only needed 55 minutes.
One technical problem: the news team moved all the microphones around, so I initially was talking into Mic 2 thinking it was Mic 1. I didn't realize what was going on until the next song started playing, though I really cranked the levels thinking there was a technical problem that suddenly popped up. The sports host came in later with an update about the start time of the first basketball game and apologized for leaving the studio in a different configuration. I really have to take a bit more time to cursorily check to see what state things are before going on-air. But hey, campus radio and production values have always had a tenuous relationship.
Nothing ground-shaking but there was enough diversity for listeners. I normally loathe shows that hinge upon a titular theme, but I've done similar mixes in the past for friends, involving concepts for "space" or "monkeys". I could tackle another topic for future sets, but I would leave themes for desperate times.
Update: you know, for someone who finally found an MP3 of Cheech & Chong's Basketball Jones, you would've thought that it would be the perfect setup for the high school tournament broadcast. Me too, after the fact. I'm not sure when I'll lead for another game again, so I guess I can place that idea in the vault for a while. Dammit...
Playlist follows:
Several themes bounded throughout this episode:
Player pianos of the future. This was promised from last week's episode and promised to anyone I spoke with over the past few days, so I handcuffed myself to this segment. Part of the music came from Music for Maniacs, who had a feature on player pianos (as well as an obituary notice on Mort Garson that included the delightful concert listings background) that referred to Veronika Krausas' recent concert with the USC Thornton School of Music. I kept the set at 10 minutes since the constant percussive sound the player pianos use can get a bit extreme – that and the more experimental nature of the compositions are already a hurdle for the common listener to contend with. (Gavin, the host of the jazz show after mine, was shaking his head whilst listening, muttering admiringly about the insanity.) This meant that one omission was the song by James Tenney that was composed in tribute to the well-renowned composer Conlon Nancarrow.
Too many write-ups for the player piano depend on alliterating the letter "P", which I tried to avoid when dealing with pianos, pedals, paper and perforations. But then, things got worse when the one song title I ought to have written down ended up tripping me royally: I'd Love to Live in Loveland With a Girl Like You. What a perfectly-executed problematic performance.
- The RZA's soundtrack work. This spotlight was going to be a lot longer since most of his tracks tend to be quite short (as most movie cues tend to be). However, a late attempt at locating the Afro Samurai ended up nowhere after the copy at the station vanished, so I left what I had as is.
- The Blocks Recording Club. Blocks has been a great artist-run community for the past seven years, with their emphasis on spunky "you can do it!" pop with anyone and for anyone. However, the set had to be tinkered a bit after I mistook Republic of Safety as being a Blocks booster (though Owen Pallett has recorded numerous times with them), so it was time to brush up on the compilations in the studio, then add another song based on the RZA snafu.
- German pop. Utterly unintentional since I had some other songs set aside for a future show dealing with music from that country. Klee had been bouncing around in this playlist for a while, but Siriusmo was a late addition (and I only discovered their Germanness later), the Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet cover of Kraftwerk's Autobahn was a must-add the second I found it via Chunklet and deploying the Cloudland Canyon motorik-styled song afterwards became mandatory. Of course, I found out later that they were half-German, which solidified the Teutonic theme. The lyrical imagery in the Arcade Fire B-side sealed the deal (along with the Hungarian military choir that raises the second half of the song into majesty).
I thought with all my last minute modifications, the show would've run short, so I threw on the Goldfrapp song midway to fill out the time. Turns out I was wrong; one song near the end got bumped into the future, which killed off one additional unintentional theme that was lyrically present: happiness. I think the subtext of that positivity rubbed off on the entire show nonetheless.
Playlist follows:
This episode went all weird.
Firstly, there was a meeting before airtime that took a good chunk of my concentration, leaving me to scramble to the studio and quickly prepare some ancillary bits for the show. The first half hour was a blur as I focused on filling out bits of information and sneaking into the corridor for a quick snack at times. That first half hour included a good dose of songs I had tried sequencing into previous shows, but failed for various reasons, which meant either an overfamiliarity (to my ears, at least) with those songs or the sense that these songs were cast offs for a long time. Furthermore, it didn't help that I power-talked my way through certain segues; that said, I practiced reciting the blurbs quickly in a fit beforehand to ensure that I didn't write any icky sentences, so there's a good chance that rubbed off with what I read on air (unintentionally, mind you).
One important thing to remember: when modifying the song sequence in iTunes, remember to synchronize the iPod after finalizing. Hence, the confusion of when the Dayglo Abortions song would play. Originally, there was going to be a three song punk set, with X-Ray Spex lumped together with Brazilian Girls beforehand. However, the original ending set was junked, so instead of creating a new ending, I fleshed out other parts of the episode, including the late addition of the Fila Brazillia track into the mix. That said, guess who forgot to copy the changes to the playback device — w00t.
This forced me to instantly reword on-the-fly a good section of what I had written earlier, which at least shows that I don't have sound like a complete tool, um, when deviating from the given text. Hopefully this means I can start scripting less of future shows explicitly. However, by now, I haven't taken to writing in the cart additions, meaning I can check the clock and know when the best time to drop a PSA, promo or station ID.
Then there was a ticket giveaway — my first — which lead to two calls, but no one wanted the ticket to the Beach House concert (March 19 at the Media Club). The callers were pleasant enough, though, so I didn't mind the failed attempt at free stuff. Still felt weird but perhaps the listenership wasn't properly familiar with them, despite Henry with the show before mine playing one of their other songs.
Musically, the punk from the eighties makes for a great listen, partly from a nostalgic point of view though more from the DIY production values as some of the higher-end mixing gear of the time become more accessible. The Pocket Fishermen track is a great example, with the samples at the beginning (and briefly at the end, which the iPod clipped for one dumb reason or another) and the awesome compression on the guitar solo.
I'm definitely feeling a strong South American vibe now, so there's the potential that a near-future show will be devoted specifically to the sounds, both traditional and new, of bossa nova, funk and dance. An early scan of my current collection has a strong Brazilian pull, but I'm going to see if I can dig up songs from the lesser-heard countries. I have friends from places like Colombia and Ecuador, so guidance is doable in case I get stumped. Peruvian folk looks feasible, oddly. If any of you have any recommendations, do email me.
I wish I had found more Vangelis soundtrack work, though. I didn't really want to go with the obvious Chariots of Fire theme, or what little I remembered from his work for 1492: Conquest of Paradise, but I did want to look into his scores for some early Jacques Cousteau documentaries, amongst others. Time cut that plan short, but I'd like to return to him at some point.
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