Instrumental Invasion, 9/18/26, 12PM (Homecoming Weekend) (Live!) October 4, 2026

Other posts: 9/19 2AM (and 9/20 5AM) prerecorded show recap, comprehensive Homecoming Weekend recap

For the second year in a row, the live edition of Instrumental Invasion kicked off the 2026 edition of WCWP‘s alumni-run Homecoming Weekend programming block at 12PM Friday. The station still simulcasts on WXBA in Brentwood, as reflected in a new show liner I had Homecoming Weekend coordinator Ted David record. (I added Chris Maffei’s signature timpani roll bed in post-production.)

This was also the second year in a row where Strictly Jazz aired at 4PM, but Alana bridged the gap instead. Jeff and Pat Kroll did their show Sunday at 4PM following Ted David’s [mostly] cover songs show at 2PM.

Before I detail how this live Instrumental Invasion was made, and what transpired live, here is the scoped aircheck…

…along with video synced to the scope.

After years of burning two CDs with the show’s songs that I would alternate between on studio 2’s CD players, I opted to put all songs and liners on a flash drive for dragging and dropping into Zetta on the studio computer. Mercifully, the show began promptly at noon without a hitch. (I presumptuously wrote that sentence at 9:05 AM on September 18. I hope I was right.) (It is 3:46 AM on October 4. I was wrong.) As you saw and heard, the transfer from studio 3 to 2 took one minute. My “A” camcorder and show open sound file filled that silent gap. Station manager Dan Cox informed me that the liners were better off on an internal hard drive. So, I copied those to a folder on a network drive. Dan then put those into Zetta for me to re-add. Except for the Bernie Bernard liner, that eliminated the issue where songs had to complete before a liner could play. Otherwise, “Hi, I’m Bern-“

Continuing the 60-year musical journey theme, I made the first playlist draft all the way back on January 12! It was an incomplete draft, starting at 1966 and stopping at 2021. I figured I’d wait until summer before filling out the playlist with 2026 songs. Instead, I added three on March 7. The length of the songs required swapping in shorter songs from prior years. The final revision – not counting one where I added Alana’s name – came on June 9 when one 2026 song was swapped out for two shorter songs and a 2016 song was replaced.

The annotations were drafted on July 7, 11, and 13, with a final tweak on September 7. I went without a script for the sake of spontaneity. I made multiple references to the Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and Other Delights show at Tilles Center back on March 25.

Running the Travis Demers liner ahead of the 2001 set allowed me to reference Travis’s work as Portland Trail Blazers radio play-by-play announcer while backselling “Brazilia” by Wayman Tisdale. The reason is Wayman played for two of the Blazers’ Western Conference rivals. Thus, the callback to Travis and an excuse to run the LIU Sharks Homecoming football game promo. It had to be in one of the videos and airchecks from Friday since Jeff and Pat Kroll weren’t on till Sunday, although Jeff did preview the game on Strictly Jazz. I forgot that the stadium naming rights lapsed last year and it already went by “Shark Stadium.”

Here are photos I took in studio 2 during the show:

Thank you to Dan Cox for taking a photo of me at the board, and subsequently teaching me that -12dB is the optimal level for audio files in the digital age.

Read about this year’s prerecorded two-hour Instrumental Invasion here.