January 11

My general feelings of ambivalence of late may explain the zig-zagging between lively and subdued tracks at the top of the show. and perhaps the rowdy punks thrown in throughout.

Stay tuned all the way through to hear excerpts from The Complete Cockatiel Training Album (which, amazingly, still is being sold). To me, this album begs multiple questions. Why would anyone want to standardize their cockatiel by teaching it canned phrases that can be found on an album sold in pet stores? Furthermore, why would anyone choose the particular phrases that can be found on that album? I can sort of understand “Hey, good lookin”, but surely cockatiel owners across the nation are tired of a bird asking if they want to play…

anyway.

(1 hour)

BONUS: Drink to WCBN!

DID YOU KNOW:
that in the year of our lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, WCBN-FM Ann Arbor was born? Which makes 2012 WCBN’s 40th birthday! On January 23, to be exact. Our lil radio station has plenty of plans up its sleeve to joyously commemorate our history and our future. So as always, stay tuned.

In a dazzling gesture of support and partnership, the Ugly Mug Cafe created a special coffee blend expressly for WCBN-FM. Instant karma = getting a bag of WCBN 40th Birthday Blend for yourself and a loved one. How amazing it is that merely by drinking delicious coffee, you can help keep an inimitable radio station alive.

I created a little blurb to get the word out. Whatchu think?

And would you believe that on the weekends, the Ypsilanti coffee shop brews the WCBN blend in the cafe and blasts WCBN from its speakers? Yessss.
[Nota Bene: "right now" means every Saturday and Sunday morning...]

Thank you, Ugly Mug.

aaand, whadaya know? Ann Arbor’s Arbor Brewing Company has brewed us up a special smoked English pale ale to celebrate 40 years of freeing your mind. Ask for The Listenership, and drink what happens…

January 8, 2012: Expletives

oohhh, here is a special show.

in which I present a full 3 hours of music to your ears and revel in the magic of late-night radio, when the FCC doesn’t punish people who want to publicly appreciate art that refers to sex and drugs and naughty words! There. You’ve been warned. This show contains a decent amount of “indecent” content.

Between academic semesters, our student-run community radio station grows even more anarchic during a period called “open signup”. For open signup, DJs grab whatever slots they want until the new semester’s programming schedule is set in stone. I snagged a Sunday morning 3-6am slot and loved every second of it. I hope you do, too. You can listen to it here.

This is some serious (listener-approved!) freeform, as it contains everything from Tom Waits to Lenny Bruce to Queen Latifah to Nine Inch Nails to Hot Hot Heat to Hot Chip to the artist formerly known as Prince (nice ‘stache!!) to Frank Zappa to a handful of local artists.

Don’t you ever wonder how the hell does Stevie Wonder see things?

(3 hours)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 21: HAPPY CHRISTMAKWANZAAKKAH!

Yes, indeed! I can’t say it enough: Happy Christmakwanzaakkah!

This post is a little late for that, but here’s what I like about late greetings for things like Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, birthdays, the 4th of July, Martin Luther King Day, etc: it means you can extend the celebration. So by all means, extend Christmakwanzaakkah into the new year by listening to this special holiday show!

You can even celebrate with rubber bands…
and R2D2…
and C-3PO…

I know you’re aware that Bob Dylan sings Christmas songs from time to time. But did you know that Jimi Hendrix made a Christmas album? You do now. Also, it is no secret that one of my favorite things about this time of year is that I get to play the Destiny’s Child Christmas album on the radio. If the gods are a-listening, hear my plea! Revive Destiny’s Child! They are queens of the musical world.

(1 hour)

December 14

ooo, I found a box full of soul/blues/R&B 7″ records, and that’s how the show begins. Well, really it begins with James Brown (a new live album of a 1962 show at the Apollo!), just to set the mood.

I became preoccupied with some musicians’ nicknames…I suppose you can’t really choose your own nickname, unless you’re Marcel the Shell. Like Lynda Barry sez, you can only hope that you don’t get stuck with something like “The Smell”.

(1 hour)

December 7

I don’t intend for the following statement to be a deterrent to listening to this show, but: the first half of this latest installment consists of a failed experiment.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to accumulate the acumen and screw up the courage to fill an entire hour’s worth of air time solely with sound effects. I put together enough of em for today to occupy about 30 minutes. I built something like a narrative, which culminates in a rather creepy ambiance. And then, simply due to momentum, I keep the creep for a little while after the sound effects have done their business. My mood might have something to do with staying up all night and heading in to the station, buzzed and nearly hallucinogenic.

In any case, I think a new tactic is in order when it comes to utilizing sound. I really like an element of surprise, which often happens when someone follows a musical track with a straight-up sound. I’d like to apply that effect to a whole show’s worth of soundy sounds. This project is a work in progress.

Curious? Here ya go.

(1 hour)

November 30: ALL CAPPELLA #3

It’s what you’ve been waiting for! The latest installment of ALL CAPPELLA! All a cappella alla the time, or at least for a full hour.

I got some fantastic requests for vocal musics, and I even got to play a handful of them.

There’s a great series of backcountry vocalizations near the top of the show, which includes hollerin’, whooping, eephing, and ringing the pig. Not only that, but I opine that this hour spans the spectrum of styles–traditional, quirky, classical, religious, frivolous, and moving. It’s more than worth a listen; this stuff requires that you pay attention.

(1 hour)

hey, and check out All Cappellas one and two, while you’re at it.

November 23: Thanksgivingish

The day before Thanksgiving! cluck.

I finally had a chance to play the seminal Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue.

Also here is an Ann-Arbor-native-turned-Snoop-Dogg-collaborator-in-California, Mayer Hawthorne. I discuss his sartorial proclivities herein.

You’re intrigued, aren’t you? Well, click on the little triangle.

(1 hour)

November 16

You know what’s great about radio?

It allows you to simultaneously have one ear in the tropical rain forest and one ear in the temperate forest.

old and good = Kimya Dawson

new and good = Feist

always good = Rob Crow

I pulled a big stack of new vinyl off the shelf, much of which was culled from the WFMU record fair last month by our music directors (an event they attended with other DJs representing WCBN, which you can read about here and here). Many of these new records were described by their reviewer as “new-wave synth” or something like that. Many were re-releases which first came out in the ’80s.

(1 hour)

November 9

After a one-week hiatus from Break Your Radio, The Liz returns with the good stuff.

This particular show centers around the recordings of a guy named David Greenberger. I’ll just transcribe a WCBN DJ reviewer’s description of one of the Greenberger CDs here: “In 1979, David Greenberger started writing a zine called ‘Duplex Planet’ in which he interviews residents of the nursing home at which he works, getting strange philosophical musings from them in a way that is very amusing but not at all exploitative. This is one of several CD releases on which he reads monologues based on these interviews, with musical backing.”

True enough, the Greenberger tracks are at times amusing, humorous, devastating, thoughtful, bizarre, relatable, and a bla and the bla and gabla. Which means, don’t take it from me. You really have to hear this guy artfully interpret the touching stories of a bunch of old people.

(1 hour)