Instrumental Invasion, 5/3/23 May 4, 2023

The May 3 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded entirely on March 8, the first one-day recording since February 1 for the third anniversary show (airing March 29). Pickups were recorded on the 8th (after principal recording) and 9th, with an additional pickup on April 17 after learning Ahmad Jamal had died.

The playlist was created on March 1, except for the last segment on the 4th. Annotations followed on the 6th and the talk break script was drafted on the 7th.

My “May the Third be with you” at the top of the show was a nod to Star Wars Day the next day (today). Playing off the franchise catchphrase “may the force be with you,” the greeting on May 4 is “May the Fourth be with you.” One May 5, I joked “Cinco de Mayo be with you” on social media.

I played two Casiopea songs, one from their second album and one from their latest. To that end, language and travel came up a lot.

The language part allowed me to recite words and names in their native dialect. Whole sentences were another matter, which is why I leaned on Google Translate for my Spanish description of “Del Corazón.” (I wrote this paragraph on March 9, a month before I started learning Japanese, as noted in last week’s post.)

The travel part was highlighted by “I Love New York” (from Casiopea’s Super Flight [transliterated Sūpāfuraito, per my talk break]), “Tappan Zee” (from Bob James‘s BJ4), and “Chattahoochee Field Day” (from Patrick O’Hearn‘s Eldorado).

Speaking of John Patitucci and his Brooklyn project evoked memories of visiting my great-grandparents in Midwood. Here is a photo from one such trip:

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8:35 AM UPDATE: Oh, I forgot I made a Don Sebesky reference. He died on Saturday.