Instrumental Invasion, 11/25/20 November 26, 2020
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, TV, Video.add a comment
The Thanksgiving Eve (November 25, 2020) Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over three days. The first hour was recorded on October 29, the first segment of the second hour on October 30, and the last two segments on Halloween (October 31). On November 11, the show was re-edited to 18:45 and a pickup was recorded. Despite this, the second spot break of hour 1 ran twice as long as normal, which led the last segment of the show to be cut off with 1:36 remaining.
The playlist was created and annotated on October 26.
Like two weeks ago, I played a song from an unaired segment: “I Told You So” by George Cables, which would have been heard on April 8.
There wasn’t enough time to acknowledge that prior to Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown!, David Benoit recorded “Linus and Lucy” along with other cues for episode 6 of This is America, Charlie Brown, “The Great Inventors.” It was interesting hearing David’s work playing underneath dialogue by voice actors Frank Welker and Gregg Berger. I watched This is America, Charlie Brown on DVD back in August while my cable was out following Tropical Storm Isaias. (The outage meant I couldn’t aircheck the August 5 show.)
I made a rare (at the time) dated reference (in the original cut) – in this case, Thanksgiving being the next day – when I quipped that “tomorrow,” “The Chicken” would be known as “The Turkey.”
The end of the October 31 session was prolonged by needing to tweak the last talk break. David Mann is credited for the horn arrangements on “Musaic” by Alexander Zonjic, but I didn’t hear horns. So, that credit was removed and I had to redo two sentences at a slower pace to fill the gap. I had to reprise the faster pace when re-redoing the talk break, not that it mattered since the last 1:36 of the segment went unheard.
Click here to download this show’s aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Like last week, I’m also including an unfiltered scope of the original 19-minute segment cut:
Instrumental Invasion, 11/18/20 November 19, 2020
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Video Games.add a comment
The November 18, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded one hour per day on October 22 and 23 with a pickup recording on November 11.
The playlist was created and annotated on October 19 with additional annotations during the recording sessions.
This is the first show where I scripted out every talk break, though I give myself freedom to ad-lib. (The remark about “a lot of classic rock in this show” was an ad-lib, for example.)
The show was originally recorded with 19-minute segments, but they all had to be trimmed down to 18:45 through editing out portions of talk breaks, and even speed compression. I had to do the same to the November 25 and December 2 shows. This is another danger of recording shows well in advance.
My reading of “Lucky,” while talking up the Fourplay song, was an homage to Mario‘s exclamation in his eponymous Nintendo video games when he snags a 1-Up Mushroom.
I originally recited the joke that inspires Jeff Lorber‘s “He Had a Hat” while talking up the song, but it was ten seconds over. I’m proud of the talk-up that made the show as I still shouted the punchline. Here is the joke (which Jeff told differently in a promotional interview):
“The Jewish Grandmother”
A Jewish lady’s grandson is playing in the water, she is standing on the beach not wanting to get her feet wet, when all of a sudden, a huge wave appears from nowhere and crashes directly over the spot where the boy is wading. The water recedes and the boy is no longer there. He simply vanished.
She holds her hands to the sky, screams and cries, “Lord, how could you?
Have I not been a wonderful grandmother?
Have I not been a wonderful mother?
Have I not given to B’nai Brith?
Have I not given to Hadassah?
Have I not lit candles every Friday night at dusk?
Have I not tried my very best to live a life that you would be proud of?”
A loud voice booms from the sky, “Okay, okay!”
A few minutes later another huge wave appears out of nowhere and crashes on the beach. As the water recedes, the boy is standing there, smiling, splashing around as if nothing had ever happened.
The loud voice booms again “I have returned your grandson. Are you satisfied?”
She responds, “He had a hat.”
Incidentally, I recorded the segment, and the entire second hour, on a Friday afternoon.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
As a bonus, I made a scope of the original 19-minute segment cut of the show. No broadcast compression filter was applied:
As still another bonus, here is how Jeff and Pat Kroll signed off my lead-in, a live edition of The Rock Show:
11/21 UPDATE: I forgot to note in this post that I swapped out an extra 2017-present segment for another 2007-2016. When I made the playlist, I didn’t have much material from the last four years to fill a second segment. Since then, I’ve received five more albums, which you’ll hear in the coming weeks, except for the last two weeks of December.
Instrumental Invasion, 11/11/20 November 12, 2020
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, TV.add a comment
The November 11, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over two days: the first hour on October 15 and the second hour on the 16th.
The playlist was created on October 12. The first hour was annotated that same day and the second hour the next day.
For this show only, segments are 19 minutes long, expanding from 18 minutes in the first 31 shows. Next week and beyond, segments will be 18:45 a piece.
Most talk breaks were scripted as I had no faith in my ability to ad-lib.
Four songs were included to make up for unaired segments. “Off Broadway” (not to be confused with “On Broadway”) by George Benson and “Snake Eyes” by Grover Washington, Jr. were part of two segments that didn’t air in the second show on April 8. “Mr. Rodriguez’s Opus” by David Benoit and “Something About You” by Jeff Kashiwa were part of the unaired July 8 segment.
My reading of “percussion…by Henry Gibson” while back-selling “Michelle” by Ramsey Lewis was an homage to the actor of the same name. Henry Gibson was a player on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a show that I watched from start to finish on Amazon Prime Video over 58 days in 2018. One of Henry’s characters was The Poet, a southern man who recited poetry while holding a giant flower. Here’s an example (along with a Dick Martin elevator sketch):
Sadly, both Henry Gibsons passed away in the 2000s.
I had to redo the line later because I forgot to write flugelhorn player Arthur Hoyle’s name while annotating. Art passed back in June.
I was glad to debut Nelson Rangell‘s new liner after playing “Nana’s Song,” and I’m equally proud of the grandma synonyms riff I went on afterward.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 11/4/20 November 5, 2020
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Travel.add a comment
The November 4, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over four days:
- September 25: Hour 1, Segment 1
- September 26: Hour 1, Segments 2 and 3
- September 27: Hour 2, Segment 1
- September 28: Hour 2, Segments 2 and 3
The playlist was created and annotated on September 22.
I made up for last week by successfully including “Beyond the Seventh Galaxy” by Return to Forever.
I had to script out all talk breaks in the first segment, but only two others after that.
I was interested to learn about Larriland Farm after including Ken Navarro’s tribute to them. In addition to their website, this video neatly explains them:
The stream was down, so I couldn’t aircheck the show, but I was assured that the station was still broadcasting over the air. To make up for that, just as I did three months ago, I combined the segment files into one big file in Adobe Audition, applying the broadcast multiband compression filter to each segment.
Click here to download the scoped “aircheck” MP3 or listen below:
11:05 AM UPDATE: I was wrong to refer to TLC as a band when talking up Steve Cole‘s cover of “Waterfalls.” Bands play instruments; they just sang. They were a group.
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