Instrumental Invasion, 9/29/21 September 30, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, News, Personal, Radio, Rock.add a comment
The September 29 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over three days. The first hour was recorded on August 12, two second hour segments on the 13th, and the last segment on the 14th. It marked the end of an 11-day stretch where I worked on three shows. A pickup was recorded a week before air to acknowledge the passing of percussionist Doc Gibbs, heard at the top of the show on “Marco Polo” by Bob James.
The playlist was created and annotated on August 11 with the script drafted before recording on the 12th and 13th.
Midway through recording, I received a liner from fellow WCWP alum Alan Seltzer, who hosts The Grooveyard on Saturday nights. The liner debuted on this show after, fittingly, “Groove On” by Euge Groove.
“Deep Into It” by Paul Brown was originally heard last October 7. It was Paul’s latest single at the time of recording, as was “Right Around the Corner” by Nick Colionne, which was new to the show.
There is a music video for “Last Train” by Bill Heller, shot in part at Bill’s house and the Huntington LIRR station. Watch:
As for the show, click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 9/22/21 September 23, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, News, Personal, Radio.add a comment
The September 22 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the second straight recorded over three days: one segment on August 8, three on the 9th, and two on the 10th.
The playlist was created and annotated on August 7 before the last two segments of last week’s show were recorded. The script was drafted on the 8th before recording this week’s first segment.
This was another show with segments containing songs 8 or more minutes long and only two songs in a segment.
I began the second hour with a Bob Hope catchphrase, “but I wanna tell ya,” and ended it with Edward R. Murrow‘s sign-off, “good night and good luck.” My use of the latter was to extend the last talk break so that I’d hit the post for “Day One” by the Jeff Lorber Fusion. This was the second week in a row where the Fusion closed the show.
As I noted after “Kari” by Bob James and Earl Klugh, the song was sampled on “Bob Ross Goes to Hollywood” by Birocratic:
Click here to download this show’s aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 9/15/21 September 16, 2021
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The September 15 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over three days. The first hour was recorded on August 5, while the second hour was recorded on the 6th (segment one) and 7th (segments two and three).
The playlist was created on August 4 and annotated on the 5th. The script was drafted before each recording session.
I made a programming mistake in the third segment of hour one, which required careful editing and cutting down on the second talk break. Otherwise, it was the usual instance of segments running short with extra liners and elongated speech to compensate.
With construction in progress at the new neighbors’ house next door, I had to limit some recording to the evenings. Evening sessions are not easy as drowsiness sets in and my nose stuffs up. So, you can tell when I recorded based on the sound of my voice.
My talk-up for “Up All Night” by Kim Waters referenced USA Up All Night, USA Network’s Friday and Saturday night series. When Rhonda Shear was host, she read the title as “USA Up!…All Night.”
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 9/8/21 September 9, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Video Games.add a comment
The September 8 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP, the 75th show overall, was recorded from July 26 to 29, alternating between one and two segments per day at times when construction was not in progress next door.
The playlist was created on July 25 with annotations carrying into the 26th, followed by the script draft.
As noted at the top of the show, I played through two versions Super Mario World over a couple of weeks in July, beating the game and finding the last of the exits on the 24th.
I played the Super Famicom version on an FXPak Pro flash cart…:
…and the North American Super Nintendo version via Nintendo Switch Online:
It was the first time I had completed the game in over 25 years. For more on my experience with Super Mario World and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, check out my post on Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the SNES Library by Pat Contri.
As for the September 8 show, I chose not to acknowledge the 75th show milestone. I’ll save that for the 100th, if we get that far.
I learned last Friday that I had been mispronouncing trumpeter Tyler Mire’s last name while talking up “(It Gets) Better” by Ken Navarro. During the live listening party on Facebook for I Will Still Be Here, Ken pronounced it “meer” while I thought it rhymed with fire. I had submitted this week’s show, wherein I played “Straight Out the Gate,” the morning before. So, it was too late to correct my mistake, the third time I’d played a song with Tyler on trumpet. If I ever play any of those three songs again, rest assured I will use the correct pronunciation.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 9/1/21 September 2, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Film, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Video, Video Games.add a comment
The September 1 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded an hour per day on July 22 and 23 amid construction next door.
The playlist was created on July 21 and annotated on the morning of the 22nd. The script was drafted before each recording session. That means the first hour was drafted on the afternoon of the 22nd and the second on the morning of the 23rd.
As usual, some segments ran long, requiring fast delivery or removing sentences, while others ran short, requiring padding, swapping out short liners for longer ones, and extra info. For example, I wasn’t planning on listing all the Hubert Laws albums Chick Corea played on.
I referenced the 1989 film The Wizard while back-selling “The Wizard” by Joyce Cooling. It’s a film I had heard about, but didn’t see until last September on HBO Max. It surely made moviegoers want a Nintendo Entertainment System, Power Glove (Lucas Barton loves it!), and Super Mario Bros. 3, key to the film’s climax. SMB3 was released in North America two months after The Wizard released.
The Power Glove was mentioned in The Gaming Historian‘s video on the U-Force, which creator Norman Caruso posted eight hours before airtime. Watch:
As for my show, click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
The stream audio was fine this week, clear as a bell in both channels, but there was a glitch toward the end of the first segment of hour 2. The stream (or automation) froze for about three minutes, resumed, froze again for several more seconds, resumed again, then jumped ahead to the next segment. For the part that didn’t air, I copied from my segment files and applied a multiband compressor filter.
9/3 UPDATE: Ken Navarro hosted a listening party tonight on Facebook for I Will Still Be Here, and I learned I’ve been mispronouncing the last name of trumpeter Tyler Mire. It’s “meer,” as in meerkat. It doesn’t rhyme with fire. Last week’s show and next week’s show, which I submitted yesterday morning, also have that mispronunciation.
MikeChimeri.com 
9/11: A 20th anniversary retrospective September 13, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Baseball, Commentary, Fire, History, Internet, Media, News, Personal, Photography, Radio, Travel, TV, Video.add a comment
Saturday marked 20 years since the September 11 attacks. On the tenth anniversary, I posted part of an essay where I recounted my experience on that morning. I wrote it in December 2001 for an end-of-semester portfolio. Following the excerpt, I elaborated on the events of the day and how I coped.
In this post, I’ll elaborate further and share what has happened in the years since.
There were increased expressions of patriotism after 9/11, including flying American flags outside homes and wearing American flag lapel pins. We flew a flag and, for about two years, I wore a lapel pin, usually with a red, white, and blue ribbon attached. For a while, I also wore a patriotic button, but I don’t remember what it said. Here are photographic examples, starting with my friend Joe Horst’s 20th birthday party on October 3, 22 days later:
Side note: Joe was wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers t-shirt that day. Coincidentally, it was the 50th anniversary of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World: Bobby Thomson’s home run off Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca to win the National League pennant for the New York Giants. As Russ Hodges said on the Giants radio broadcast: “The Giants win the pennant!”
Back on topic, my 20th birthday, November 17:
Christmas at the Falco house:
Joe Falco, a family friend and FDNY firefighter in Engine 1 Ladder 24, survived the South Tower collapse. He was the subject of a documentary that served as my senior project. You can watch it here:
Ringing in 2002:
For eleven years, inspired by a news report I saw on New Year’s Day in 1994, I saved each year’s desk calendar pages and had friends and family throw them as confetti:
I saved and scanned the September 11 pages:
It’s ironic that the Millionaire calendar question involved the Department of Defense. The Pentagon was one of the targets that morning. 9/14/21 UPDATE: Further irony involved a PAMS jingle for WABC (770 AM) during its Musicradio era: “Flight 77, WABC, nonstop…music.” Earlier in 2001, I discovered Allan Sniffen’s Musicradio tribute site and that was one of the jingles I listened to obsessively, assuming I heard it there if not elsewhere. Obviously, I could never listen to it the same way again. A variation was among jingles recorded by JAM Creative Productions, PAMS’s spiritual successor, for SiriusXM’s
60s on 660s Gold (revised 9/11/22).Hosting The Mike Chimeri Show on March 1, 2002:
One last photo: July 12, 2002, heading back from Atlantic Canada aboard the Carnival Triumph:
The cruise embarked from the Hudson River side of Midtown Manhattan, taking us past where the towers fell ten months earlier:
I still have the lapel pin, which I showed on social media Saturday morning:
On September 12, 2001, I added angel wings and a halo to the twin towers portion of a backdrop I made five years earlier for a home video/audio show I did with my cousin – The Chris and Mike Chimeri Show – based on a video bumper for The Late Show with David Letterman. I kept the backdrop up until September 30, 2019, during a basement cleanup. I photographed the backdrop for posterity before taking it down (for privacy, I’ve blurred my signature):
My family lit memorial candles in the backyard, as seen on the 14th, three days after the attacks:
I did not know any of the victims personally, but Cynthia D’Arpino, my learning assistant in ARC (C.W. Post’s Academic Resource Center), lost her brother-in-law Tim O’Brien who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. On the tenth anniversary, I photographed the TV when his name was read:
I did the same for Richie Muldowney:
Like Joe Falco, Richie was a Freeport native and firefighter, also serving in the FDNY, Engine 16 Ladder 7. He was among the 343 FDNY firefighters lost on 9/11. Beginning in 2011, I got to know his niece Lauren, mother Anne (who passed away in 2020) and surviving siblings: fraternal twins Kevin (Lauren’s father) and Colleen (Andello), and Mary (a.k.a. Mary Mo). I have yet to meet Brian, but for all I know, I met him, and Richie, when I was younger. (9/11/22 UPDATE: I met Brian at Kevin’s surprise 60th birthday party two months ago, along with Brian’s stepdaughter Gracie and uncles Kevin and Eddie.) My father Bill says it’s possible I saw Richie when I worked in Ehrhart’s Clam House (May 2000 to November 2001). In April 2012, Kevin married my mother’s friend and co-worker Mandy.
In 2013, I attended Freeport’s 9/11 memorial ceremony. The attacks led my dad to become a firefighter himself in 2002, in Truck 1, Joe Falco’s Freeport Fire Department company. I took a photo of him before the ceremony:
During the ceremony:
The following year, Dad and I ran (and walked) the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers 5K.
Along the way, I photographed the new One World Trade Center (a.k.a. Freedom Tower)…:
…and a banner with Richie’s photo:
It’s become a 9/11 tradition on Facebook to link to the 2011 “My 9/11 experience” blog post, the Joe Falco documentary, and sometimes, a photo of the World Trade Center that I took in December 1999, after touring the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park:
Last year, a podcast host discovered my documentary and asked to use portions of it in a special 9/11 episode. I happily agreed.
A wealth of retrospective documentaries have aired on various channels this year and I’ve watched them all. It may be a cliche, but we can never forget. Those documentaries are a permanent reminder of what happened, along with stories of survival and how the victims’ children have grown into adulthood.
I wasn’t sure I would be able to muster up a blog post to mark the 20th anniversary, but here we are. Thank you for reading.
9/16/21 UPDATE: Game Dave‘s latest video is a Q&A edition of Digitally Distracted. For that video, I submitted a 9/11-related question, which he answered (video cued up to relevant portion):