July 2008 Archives
The first-ever CITR Show Swap Week went quite well, right to the bitter end as Sunday featured perhaps the finest example of the ethos behind the campaign: indie rocker Chrisariffic, host of Monday afternoon's Parts Unknown (and a beast of a blocker at soccer) took on Anoop's Rhythms India to charming effect. It'll be hard to recap the entire week's efforts, but word is that we may try to top that shortly.
On with the regular programming and without overthinking this plate of beans, things were locked into a groove, with the usual mish-mash of genres. You get your Canadian content from Wolf Parade and Telepathic Butterflies and you get your soundtrack exposé with Repo Man. One of my segues had me caught in mid-laughter as Gavin Walker was doing one of his great impersonations in the background as I did my utmost not to utterly lose composure on air. And there were an inordinate amount of cool covers here too, which wasn't planned, but as with most things, overplanning can often ruin the experience (so yeah, no covers show redux for a while).
There have been two things I've neglectful of, which need quick highlighting:
- When I was away earlier in July, Gavin extended his jazz show to cover my block. Oddly enough, the podcast software caps out at four hours at a time (though somehow, I managed to hear the unrecorded half hour through the online stream from Kitchener), but if you're keen, you can listen to at least an hour of how he used up my time. Not only that – along with an extra-special version of the Jazz Show with not only increased Canadiana but some of the distinguished Mr. Walker's own compositions. The Jazz Show from 2008 June 30th [240 minutes, 200 Mb or so? — it's big, you've been warned].
- Now, for the sound of my voice, I actually debuted on air through the gracious hospitality of Duncan McHugh of Duncan's Donuts [podcast]. I show up 20 minutes into his Thursday nooner show and we get silly, including some assistance from music coordinator Luke Meat, whose show ANoiZE scares the elderly Wednesday mornings. There's a playlist on his site and more importantly, the show itself: Duncan's Donuts from 2007 December 6th [58 minutes, 50 Mb or so — it's not so big, but it ain't wee].
After Darren filled in for my regular show, it was time for my turn for the first-ever/best-ever CITR Show Swap Week by taking the reins of a show I've done twice before: the soul/R&B wonder that is Shake A Tail Feather. In many ways, I was hoping to land a show I hadn't done before along with a format I had no hope in tackling, but I didn't envy the programming co-coordinator's task this week of working with everyone's schedules. That and some of the DJ's have tight schedules outside of radioland, meaning that not every host could participate. There's been some delights throughout the week and I'm hoping someone's compiled a list of which person tried which show after it's all done on Sunday.
As I found out when I showed up for the show, the programming co-coordinator, show swap organizer and host of Tuesday mornings' Third Time's The Charm Bryce Dunn took over DJ B-FAD's Rainbow Groove, trading his garage rock crunch for classic 80's-inspired dance. In fact, I wound up speaking with him for a good chunk of the middle half of the show, hence the possible wonderful side-effect of an invisible DJ for at least a 20 minutes. That forced me to really quickly identify the seven songs you heard in a row, and unfortunately, I let my tiny profile on the Daptone singles collection go unnoticed as it was in the midst of the epic set.
Otherwise, fun transpired as the turntables were previewing fine and misbehaving live, making for a couple madcap moments as I dove to recover off the iPod, which earned its stripes this week. Towards the end, I sorted it out as I checked the console settings when using the mixer and remembered to check the headphones, but hey, what's campus radio without the occasional blown cue? Oddly enough, I finally ran into the notorious Chris Dryden, host of the genre-blending I Like the Scribbles, as I spilled over the midnight hour and he showed up earlier than usual.
Next week – or more specifically, on Monday – everything turns back into a pumpkin and all the shows turn (more or less) back to normal. All signs point to a successful first deconstruction of regular programming, with increased ambitions for future attempts.
Playlist follows:
It's the inaugural CITR 101.9FM Show Swap Week! Filling in for your regular host is the impeccable Darren Gawle, host of Thursday evening's Stereoscopic Redoubt and carpenter extraordinaire. I can be heard this Friday as I take over Shake A Tail Feather, but here's this week's recap with Mr. Gawle (why did I spell it "Fowle" before!? Aye yi yi):
Greetings, and welcome to... Radio Free DCG? No, we'll stick with GAK shall we? Very well. For those of you who haven't met me before, I host the psych/garage show on Thursdays at CiTR. I've covered other shows outside my usual idiom before, but this was the first time I've had to follow someone else's format.
I thought I had the Zbiegniew Preisner angle covered until I discovered earlier today while prepping that I had hawked the Red and Blue soundtracks some time ago, leaving me with only the Double Life of Veronique score... enter Piccioni's Camille 2000 soundtrack to fill out the second half of the soundtracks feature. You'd think after hanging with my Polish grandparents for so many years that I'd have covered the pronunciation a bit better, so bardzo dzienkuje to the Polish contingent out there if they'll forgive me on that point.
The rest of the set followed as you'll see printed - if anyone recognizes the Richard Hawley song I played please let me know what the title is because I haven't a clue.
Playlist follows. It's good.
Has it been half a year? In many ways, having the radio show still feels fresh new but at the same time, it's definitely picked up a weird life of its own.
Sukia's wonky little song started the show off, a song I've held dear for a while for how spooky it is, mostly as my name gets chanted during the second half. From there, after a little stop in Canadiana, it was time to storm the floor with some of that blog house the kids are into. [Please reset your sarcasm metres.]
I was a tad sloppy with things as I was juggling a bit too much after forgetting to write up a few things towards the end, so there were stretches where I'm reaching for music to cue up and tripping over the poorly writ words at times. My throat was starting to feel scratchy too, which didn't become a problem during the show but it's something I need to monitor, especially since my day work involves talking on the phone a lot.
The profile on John Carpenter could've been a bit longer, personally, but there's not too much variation in his music. That said, it definitely inhabits a sinister vibe, which is becoming an influence amongst some recent acts, including the latest Portishead album.
Playlist follows:
Hello again. After taking a week off (thanks again to Mr. Walker for filling in for my time slot with an extended version of The Jazz Show) and having the web server take a nap whilst I was on vacation, I arrived back in Vancouver late Sunday night, leaving little time to prepare for this week's show. I fell back on a script I had setup a few weeks ago, involving longer-than-usual songs. Particularly, the Boredoms tracks, which easily took half the show to fully play.
Naturally, a forty minute track presents some problem for covering all the important nitty-bitty details which act as the grout that connect the songs together. The script I came up with at the last minute held up until the end, when I flopped around with additional information and tackled a few too many cart requirements that broke the flow. As well, dropping in a station ID in the middle of the song came off as clunky as the levels were off.
Overall, the longer songs allowed for a great arc to the show as they all took their time to build up to their climaxes. The Beck track acted as a gentle bridge from the generally mellow introductory pieces towards the heavy drones of the back half from Japan. If I had time, I would combed through the latest Boris album — I also had The Orb's comeback album cued to a track before deciding to let the show ride out as it had.
The only major change in the background is that I worked off my new laptop, which has a good chunk of my music from the older one, except that due to the file table differences between Windows and Mac OS X, some files wouldn't copy over due to funny characters. The good news is I figured out how to copy over the Romantic languages, but I still have to figure out what to do about the Eastern European characters. I also formatted the iPod for the Mac now, which posed no problem.
Playlist follows:
