2022 LIU Post & Homecoming Weekend, WCWP Hall of Fame Announcement October 22, 2022

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Football, Internet, Interviews, Media, Music, Personal, Photography, Pop, Radio, Rock, Travel, Video.
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Other recaps: 2008, 2009, WCWP 50th Anniversary (2011), 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021

Four months after going into the WCWP Hall of Fame, I returned to the campus of LIU Post for part of WCWP‘s Homecoming Weekend programming block, the first under new station manager Pete Bellotti. (The list of 2022 HOF inductees comes later in this recap.)

Friday, October 14

This year, Homecoming Weekend started an hour earlier, at 11AM, making for 61 hours of alumni-run shows. In August, Bernie Bernard earned a Master of Arts degree from Florida Atlantic University. Her aural thesis on pirate radio led off the weekend:

The second show, at noon, was also prerecorded: a compilation of select episodes of Bill Mozer’s WCWP Alumni Career Path Podcast:

I have a dedicated blog post for my live edition of Instrumental Invasion at 2PM, but here is a snippet:

… I did not draft a talk break script; a live show calls for spontaneity, albeit with annotations to work from. I ended up referencing [my family trip to Dutchess County, subject of a blog post next week] during the show.

I feel like I wasn’t my best without a script, but all that matters is what listeners thought, and they liked it. Naturally, [the show] started with a technical glitch. Automation didn’t switch off [after Bill’s show ended], allowing me to go live from studio 2. I relayed the problem to station manager Pete Bellotti and he had me start the show even though the first minute or so (54 seconds) would go unaired. …

What a coincidence that David Benoit’s latest single of A Midnight Rendezvous is “Pioneer Town.” That allowed me to allude to the days before the One LIU merger when the Brooklyn and Post campuses had separate athletic programs.

For my official archive of the show, I included the unaired part, re-created from the liners I played (mostly as heard on my restart) and amplified/noise reduced camcorder audio. Here is the scope video:

I faded the last song out just in time for automation to kick back in for John Commins at 4PM. To keep listeners from tuning out, I did not acknowledge that he was prerecorded. Within 20 minutes, I had packed up my equipment and headed for home. My video equipment was a Panasonic HC-X1500 with VW-HU1 detachable hand unit, both bought in late March, and my tripod of nearly seven years: a Magnus VT-300. Mozer recommended a Magnus tripod in a discussion at the 2015 Homecoming, but not the one I chose. I don’t remember which one. The HC-X1500/VW-HU1 combo was in lieu of an HC-X2000 built with the hand unit. I didn’t want to pay more for 3G-SDI output. But enough about video gear.

WCWP was entirely live from studio 2 from 6PM to midnight. John Zoni had the 6PM show:

Alan’s final show was Seltzer with a Twist, starting at 8PM:

There was about 30 seconds of dead air after Alan’s last song finished, so Jay began The DFK (Disco and Funk King) Show seconds before 10PM:

The Young Prince K.J. Mills stayed up late to host The Storm 2.0 at 2AM (I’m counting this as part of Friday’s lineup):

Saturday, October 15

I returned to LIU Post at 1:30 Saturday afternoon. This time, I brought along my GoPro Hero 7 for shooting B-roll. Unlike last year, I did use it, thanks to a flexible tripod I bought in November, inspired by the video of Joe Honerkamp’s show.

In a bold move, I opted not to walk down to the football field to catch part of the LIU Sharks‘ Homecoming game. Considering they were creamed by the Saint Francis Red Flash, 57-7 (box score, recap), I made the right decision. As the game carried on, I sat at my laptop and spoke to any alumni that walked into studio 3, where my laptop was set up for web browsing on my downtime, but otherwise to aircheck the shows following the football game. My aircheck equipment, used Friday and Saturday, was a Behringer U-Phono UFO202 pre-amp connected to a Sangean HDR-16 radio. WCWP also uses the UFO202 for airchecking off FM tuners, doing so to clip key plays in Sharks games. Home airchecks were recorded in Audacity, either on my computer or the guest room computer, then edited in Adobe Audition.

One such alum to drop by during the football game was M.J. Lonardo, known as DJ M.J. during her time at WCWP. The photo I took of her and station manager Pete Bellotti is the first in a series of two-person photos taken throughout the day:

On to photos from Bernie Bernard’s Barbecue Bash (by golly), starting at 4:08 PM:

Here is the aforementioned video:

Anyway, here is the audio version with longer lead-outs and the start of the first talk break in the video:

Mike Riccio and Bobby G.’s countdown began at 7:03 PM. Mike couldn’t find a legal ID to run in WaveCart, so I approached the board and picked one. Then, the show began with “Wooden Heart” by Elvis Presley. Editing video of this show has left the end of “Wooden Heart” ingrained in my head. First, the photos:

The video:

And the audio version, including parts of the last two hours and with extended lead-outs:

The above photos are the last taken at an event with my Nikon D5500. As Homecoming Weekend was wrapping up, I consulted with a Facebook group for fans and users of the Canon EOS R7 mirrorless camera. I said in my PC build post that I had a Nikon Z7II in mind, but it’s too expensive and I’d have to buy a 24-200mm (not 300) Z lens (I like to use one superzoom lens) to take full advantage of the megapixel increase. My existing F mount 18-300 superzoom would be heavily cropped because it’s not made for full frame cameras like the Z7II. The EOS R7 and all the accessories I bought for it, including a Tamron 18-400 superzoom and control ring mount adapter, cost less combined than a Z7II body alone.

I hope to write about my early experience with the EOS R7 and equipment in a later post, but for now, back to Homecoming Weekend.

Sunday, October 16

I woke up a few minutes into my prerecorded Instrumental Invasion, another show with a dedicated blog post. Otherwise, the scoped aircheck:

When that was over at 8AM, Jay LaPrise (la-PREE) had the first live show of the day:

My attempt at airchecking Jamie Mazzo and Sara Dorchak’s Ladies of Prison Break Radio show at 10AM was a bust. With my weekly Zoom meeting at 11:30, I had to aircheck on my laptop. I should have recorded the audio loopback, like on my desktop, but I didn’t. The same unnatural audio boost problem that kept me up in the hours after my September 14 show afflicted the laptop aircheck.

The Rockin’ Sunday Show with Alana followed at noon, its usual time on a regular Sunday:

Just after 2PM, it was Joe Honerkamp’s turn:

The last show I airchecked on Sunday was Jett Lightning at 4PM:

Saturday, Jett persuaded me to add John Coltrane‘s Blue Train album to my collection. I’m certain he played the title track on his Sunday show for me.

Homecoming Weekend pulled up its stakes at 12:02 AM Monday morning, and on that note, we’ve reached the end of the 2022 recap. Thank you for reading, watching, and listening. Until next year.