rfg #42 - "The ecstasy of gold"

It's the third annual CITR Fundrive (donate now) and my inaugural take on the whole endeavour on soliciting funds live on air. Since the bulk of my dialogue was pre-written, I elected not to write up anything else, relying primarily on old notes. Since I had no idea how much I'd be talking, I had way more music queued than time to play; regular listeners can calculate that with about 10 minutes less music, I spoke for 10 minutes more than usual, which left me rather parched...especially since I'm actually recovering from a recent sinus infection that had me homebound and somewhat rested today.

This show became a best-of due to many reasons; mostly due to the fund drive formatting, but parts related to my lack of laptop and a delay in its replacement. I did have a loaner from work but it has its own unreliable history along with lack of space for me to restore anything from my backup drive. Thankfully, the iPod had a good chunk of this week's show preloaded and I could recycle the bits I had for the previously aired songs whilst giving updates. However, Cancon leapt up along with a few playlist requirements thanks to the new Dears and the CFCF EP.

The radio free gak prize pack at airtime was as follows: any pledge over $101.90 included a copy of the Fountain soundtrack (as composed by Clint Mansell, not as whoever I said during showtime, and performed by the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai — I have not yet seen or heard the film or soundtrack but I'm tempted to open one of the copies lying around), a button I made and some Finnish salmiakki candy. As well, anyone who would've pledged $20 on top of any additional gift would have it hand-delivered (within reason) instead of having the donor pick it up from UBC campus.

However, there was only one caller during my show and he took a tax receipt, so I'll leave the existing gifts for next week and try to throw some more into the gak prize pack. This may rely on me coming into the station to make a mixed CD, along with hitting up a friend for some silk-screened shirts. Podcast listeners are wholly encouraged to donate despite the lack of immediacy offered by the prizes, though the logistics of getting those gifts out would need to be sorted, since the existing fund drive budget does not include postage costs. Still, I'm on the board with $170, which is a good step towards $15 000. At the end of my show, the total amount collected was over $6000 – fantastic for 5 days.

Naturally, the technical faults appeared, sensing the time was ripe to directly solicit the listenership as things broke down. The primary CD player refused to open and the secondary started to skip during certain songs, meaning that I had to creatively cue things so that the third player was the primary, using the second one for short songs on trusty discs. As well, the turntables were a fiasco and a half, as the left turntable was only mono in the left speaker and the right turntable's levels were bleeding already when nothing was playing. That meant that the Max B. track was in double mono for the last half of the song as I tried to figure out how on earth the mixer was miswired (again) and scrapping my other vinyl selections. I was forced to rely on my iPod heavily, which is ironic since I was moving away from relying too heavily on using that as my primary device as I got comfortable with my show. Someone pledge more money now to get that stuff fixed!

Of course, the entire show wasn't a "clip show"; the last 20 minutes included my first profile on Ennio Morricone, which had been long gestating but the sheer size of my collection is already monstrous, and I barely have the surface scratched. The five tracks I played covered a wide range of his wilder and generally known compositions, including some of his spaghetti Western works plus some more psychedelic pieces. I should devote a whole show for him in the future and Morricone was one of the few acts that survived completely on my iPod after my stolen laptop.

Adding to the madcappery of the show was a good friend photographing me during the last 45 minutes. Due to his time, he'll send all the photos for me to sort through, so there's bound to be a few keepers, along with evidence of my moustache for November.

I touched upon Burli briefly as part of my pitch appeal, and there's a world of information on its history and its founder Stefan Ellis along with the interconnectedness with CITR, but it shows how community radio can extend further into the community. I have a couple other stories similar to that I can share next time.

Meanwhile, here's what was heard.