Monday, October 11, 2004

This one's just for fun - Jonathon, our tireless engineer, posted the first live-in-the-backyard recording from this year's 4th Annual Jamfest & BBQ (a joint production of the Home Recording BBS and the Recording Project BBS), held in Connecticut in August each year. About 60 of us this year, but I was the only keyboardist. LOTS of guitar players - not sure what that says about home recording demographics in general...

Jamfest '04

Of all the keyboard classics I've ever played, this is definitely one of em, LOL. That's me on QS-8, VTGreen81 on stix, and FMMahoganyrush (our host) on guitar and vox. I believe we had a bass player along for the ride on this - sure sounds that way - but I'm drawing a blank on who it was.

I was really pleased with the QS-8 sound on this. Think I was using the 3BarsFull patch on the Vintage Keys card. Yay for Dave Bryce and the other sound designers from Alesis. These guys are scattered to the 4 corners of the world by now, I'm sure - for example, Dave's working for Dave Smith (of Sequential Circuits fame) Instruments now.

I was telling the guys at RP that this was one of the first rock/pop songs I ever learned, 30+ years ago now. I've never gotten tired of it.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Grrr...

Remember the Scene?

The one in Anchorman, where Christina Applegate (mmm... Christina...) thinks she's being helped by the PBS news guy, and he pushes her into the bear cage?

http://www.folkslikeus.org

Welcome to the modern world of public radio. I have always loved WDET for its eclecticism - and weekend shows like Folks Like Us, Blues From the Lowlands, and Arkansas Traveler were a truly refreshing part of the mix: a nice change from the hipper-than-thou trendy "eclecticism" of the weekday shows.

Well, no more. I have to admit, I love John Penny's show, and I think rebroadcasting all the great live-in-the-studio music that's happened at WDET is a great idea. but not at the expense of the ONLY folk music show on the Detroit airwaves, and the ONLY bluegrass show.

For all the edgy music they play, there's a sort of bland sameness to what's on at DET anymore. Thank the Lord they got rid of Jim Bauer's ridiculous AOR-for-Moderns format. But what's left isn't much better - lots of techno, nu-garage, lounge, and jazz. Rumor is they'll be changing their nickname from "Detroit's Public Radio" to "The River".

Okay, I made that part up. There are still breaths of fresh air - Chris Felcyn's Listening Room, Michael Julien's carribean/afro/pop show, and Kim Heron pushes the jazz envelope some (the rest of it, sorry Ed and Gene, just sounds like WCHD - the 60's version of smooth jazz - all over again. And Ed is fast turning into Bill Kennedy. Grumble). The news programming is still superb, of course.

But I hope they're not counting on my check too much. It may be a year or three before I'm willing to cough up more dough for a station that ignores its listeners like that....