Instrumental Invasion, 6/1/22 June 2, 2022

The June 1 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the third of three shows produced in eleven days. Recording took place from April 4 to 6 in the same 2-3-1 configuration as the May 18 show: two segments on April 4, three on the 5th, and the last segment and pickups on the 6th. An additional pickup was recorded on April 18.

The playlist was created on April 2 after recording the first hour of last week’s show and annotated on the 3rd before recording its second hour. The talk break script was drafted on the 4th before recording the first two segments for this week.

June 1 was the first day after Dan Cox’s retirement as Director of Broadcasting. Long Island University is going to make that position part-time upon hiring his replacement. At Dan’s request, I continue to work on shows even if some of them don’t air, assuming the worst case scenario: where the university terminates WCWP after 57 years on 88.1 FM and 61 years since its carrier current launch. This is the only time I’m acknowledging the station’s uncertainty unless the worst comes true. (6/9 UPDATE: Pete Bellotti became the new director on June 6 and stated that the current FM lineup will continue through at least Labor Day.)

Getting back to this week’s show, in my back-sell of “Vinyl” by Euge Groove, I referenced an (original) Animaniacs segment called “Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation” (from episode 73):

I’ve since watched the first two seasons of the reboot, which I enjoyed.

This show’s second segment was the hardest to record, compounded by my new habit of zooming in the waveform to see mouth clicks I can edit out. If every song fades out and you’re light on information, the last resort is to do the talk breaks at a slow pace. I recorded the third talk break slow, but there was still too much left, so I had to redo the second. The third segments of each hour required careful editing of their second talk breaks to avoid running over. It was in the last segment that I realized it makes more sense looking for mouth clicks in a talk break after editing out flubs, but I’ve since reverted to the old way.

It marked the second time I paired songs by Wes Montgomery and Earl Klugh, coincidentally recorded the week of the show with the first time. The inclusion of “Midnight Madness” by Skinny Hightower after “Midnight Sun (Extended Version)” by Darren Rahn was serendipity. The first segment of hour two needed a song around 3:45 and I came across “Midnight Madness.” Then, I noticed it had vinyl record crackling just like “Vinyl”; two callbacks in one.

Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below: