Instrumental Invasion, 5/5/21 May 6, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Football, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Sports, Video, Video Games.add a comment
The May 5 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded two segments per day from March 31 to April 2.
The playlist was created on March 27 and annotated on the 28th. The script was drafted on the 29th.
I used the phrase “one compound word,” while back-selling “Magicsmiles” by Gregg Karukas, as an homage to a 2012 episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd (strong language):
The phrase was uttered by the Nerd (James Rolfe) toward the end of a monologue on football. The monologue starts at 1:27 with the phrase coming two minutes later.
And speaking of videos, here is the music video for “Motor City Sway” by Alexander Zonjic:
I didn’t have Cinco de Mayo in mind when I programmed “South of the Border” into the playlist, but I realized while drafting the script that the show would air that day.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 4/28/21 April 29, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Photography, Radio, Rock, Travel, Video.add a comment
The April 28, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over four days. One segment was recorded per day on March 23 (at home) and 24 (away on my laptop), and two per day on the 25th and 26th, both at home.
The playlist was created on March 21 and annotated on the 22nd, after which the script was drafted. While drafting, I forgot to include a tidbit about David Benoit‘s cover of “Your Song” by Elton John. The original came out in David’s last year of high school and he’s been a fan of Elton ever since. I added that tidbit in a March 27 pickup.
There were plenty more tidbits to go around, including one that required a pickup to make clear I was saying “funky” and not some other word. The personal tidbits are true and I have photographic evidence. Here I am in Florida at Christmastime in 1992, possibly the day that Cedar Walton‘s Manhattan Afternoon was recorded:
And this was taken during that trip on March 28, 2004, wherein I listened to “Expression” by Joyce Cooling and other songs on This Girl’s Got to Play:
One tidbit, however, was cut for time in the first segment:
Here is the cover of “Palladium” by Weather Report that I recommended in the outtake:
As for what aired, click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 4/21/21 April 22, 2021
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The April 21, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over three days. The first two segments were recorded on March 16, the next on the 17th (St. Patrick’s Day) on my laptop, and the second hour back at home on the 18th. A pickup was recorded on the 19th.
The playlist was created and annotated on March 14 with the script drafted on the 15th.
After three weeks of mistakes, I finally achieved a flawless show…almost. While I knew I’d be playing “Sienna Step” by David Benoit for the second time, I forgot I had previously played “Tropical” by Jeff Lorber. Besides that, flawless. I was never short on time or had too much to fill.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Pardon the signal interference throughout the aircheck. To make up for that, here is a clean scope from segment files with a hard limit filter applied:
Instrumental Invasion, 4/14/21 April 15, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
The April 14, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was painstakingly recorded over four days. The first hour was recorded in the early morning and mid-afternoon of March 9. The second hour took three days with the first segment recorded on March 10 on my laptop through an Apogee MiC 96k, and the last two segments back at home on the 11th and 12th. Pickups were required for a talk break in the third segment of hour 1 and one talk break in each segment of hour 2.
The playlist was created and annotated on March 7, and the script was drafted on the 8th. For the second week in a row, I made a timing error. Worse yet, two timing errors. In the last segment of hour 1, I put in a 4:32 song rather than 5:32. The replacement song faded out incredibly early, which still left me with too much time in the talk break that followed. I had to vamp. I made the opposite mistake in hour 2, inserting a 4:55 song in the second segment when I needed 3:55. The irony is the first segment was mainly comprised of songs that I had to cut from the last two shows, one due to timing and the other because of a wordy talk break. (9:35 AM UPDATE: I forgot to account for the replacement, which was from 2011. That meant listeners heard me refer in the vamp to a 2010 song that they wouldn’t hear until a week later.)
The inclusion of “Outside Solaris” by Clifford Marshall Van Buren is another of my loving tributes to the heyday of local forecast music on The Weather Channel. You can find an example of its usage on Matt Marron’s TWC Classics tribute site. I don’t always do this, but I prefaced the description of Solaris with “according to Wikipedia” to acknowledge my lack of knowledge. You learn something new every day.
The “fun fact” preface to the Dan Ingram tidbit was an homage to a catchphrase on the Technology Connections YouTube channel.
Picking up on what I said coming out of “Whispered Confessions” by Lisa Hilton, here is a side-by-side comparison of the song’s melody and what’s played between levels in the NES port of Pac-Man:
That remains a pleasant coincidence seven years after hearing the song for the first time at Carnegie Hall.
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Instrumental Invasion, 4/7/21 April 8, 2021
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The April 7, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over three days. The first segment was recorded on March 3, the next three on the 4th, and the last two on the 5th.
The playlist was created on March 1 and annotated on the 2nd.
This was the first normal show in three weeks with the usual five segment formats in effect, including two segments with the same format.
For the second week in a row, I had to replace a song in the first segment during my recording session. This time, it was due to a timing error I made creating the playlist. So, Spyro Gyra‘s “Islands in the Sky” was replaced with “Oasis.” Luckily, I didn’t have to change many annotations; the personnel was similar.
My story about meeting The Undertaker at Tower Records in Carle Place, while back-selling “Bones Jive” by Joe Sample, was true. Here’s photographic evidence:
That was a fun Saturday afternoon, but I don’t remember much about meeting him.
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Instrumental Invasion, 3/31/21 April 1, 2021
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The March 31, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP marked one year since my Wednesday night premiere. The show was recorded one hour per day on February 25 and 26 with multiple pickups recorded on the second day, and still more on the morning of the 27th.
The playlist was created on February 23 with annotations continuing into the 24th, after which the script was drafted.
This was an incredibly hard show to do. I had to improvise multiple talk breaks because there wasn’t enough time to read from the lengthy scripts. The second talk break of the show was so lengthy that I had to replace “Lakeshore Cowboy” by Ramsey Lewis with “Heartsounds” by David Lanz. In future playlists, I’m expanding the back-sell length to 50 seconds. That may not even be enough.
“Giant Steps” and “Fly with the Wind” were included days after acquiring John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner‘s albums of the same name. Giant Steps is the first Trane album I ever bought.
My “Giant Steps” curiosity had been piqued by several YouTube videos that either covered the song…:
…or adapted the changes into other songs:
So, it was only right that I acquaint myself with the original.
I played “El Camino Real” by David Benoit to make up for the factual error I made when I first played it last August 19.
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Instrumental Invasion, 3/24/21 March 25, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Technology, TV, Weather.add a comment
The March 24, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was yet another show recorded over three days. The first hour was taken care of on February 18 (while snow and sleet pelted my window), the first segment of hour 2 was recorded on the 19th (after an hour of fixing my computer’s audio), and the last two segments were recorded on the 20th.
The playlist was created and annotated on February 15 and the scripted was drafted on the 16th.
Next week’s show will mark one year since Instrumental Invasion went weekly. The first show was limited to music from the 1970s, so I’ll be paying homage in a similar vein: music from 1995 and earlier. Ahead of that, I opted this week for music between 1996 and 2021.
There were three animated series references in the show:
- Talking up “Funkology by Matt Marshak: “And pay attention; there’ll be a test at the end,” one of Garfield’s title sequence tags on Garfield and Friends
- Back-selling “She’s Got the Way-O” by Steve Oliver: “Did you (I) say 3-D?” was a fourth wall-breaking question in a movie at the start of “Timmy’s 2-D House of Horror,” an episode of The Fairly OddParents
- A second Garfield and Friends reference came while talking up “Mystic Vibration” by Ragan Whiteside: in “Mind Over Matter,” a crooked fortune teller begins his act by “sending out for brain waves” and “psychic vibrations”
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 3/17/21 March 18, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Classical, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio.add a comment
The March 17, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the 50th overall. Once again, it was recorded over three days: the first hour on February 11, two second hour segments on the 12th, and the last one on the 13th. Two pickups were recorded on the 15th and the third segment was remixed on the 16th after Patrick Bradley e-mailed me his liner.
The playlist was created on February 8 with annotations on the 9th and 10th, after which the script was drafted.
Last week, it was a Sousa march; this week, it was a classical piece, marking Gil Shaham‘s second appearance, and a second chance at reciting a long title.
I didn’t think to acknowledge how Acoustic Alchemy and Down to the Bone were British bands, but there wasn’t any time, anyway.
When I promoted the show on Facebook, I noted that I’d be playing a song from David Benoit‘s 1977 debut. David was pleasantly surprised, and even more so when I told him the song would be “Los Angeles.” He told me that song marked his first time writing for strings. I responded, “Wow. Well, it sounded great.” And it does. I hope you (the reader/listener) thought so, too.
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Instrumental Invasion, 3/10/21 March 11, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Travel, TV, Video, Weather.add a comment
The March 10, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over three days: one on February 3, three on the 4th, and two on the 5th, which is when I added the first segment pickup “ready, and appear!” Like last week, the first segment of hour 2 was remixed on the 16th after Patrick Bradley e-mailed his liner.
It was my mother Lisa’s 65th birthday, but I superstitiously didn’t acknowledge that. To celebrate, she, my father Bill, sister Lauren, and I went out to dinner at Vittorio’s in Amityville. It was my first time at a restaurant since Mom’s 64th birthday. (The next day, the country began to shut down.) I was only required to wear my mask when not seated at the table, so I adapted quickly.
The playlist for this show was created and annotated on February 1 as a snowstorm raged outside. I added annotations for “Snapshot” by Richard Elliot on the 2nd after my copy of Authentic Life arrived in the mail. The script was drafted on the 3rd.
I was inspired to play “Nautilus” by Bob James after watching this video the night before creating the playlist:
I had wanted to play a John Philip Sousa march for a while, and chose this show to incorporate my appreciation for his marches and for Monty Python by playing “The Liberty Bell,” which was the theme to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In the talk-up, referencing the show’s intro, I quoted John Cleese‘s BBC continuity announcer character and imitated Michael Palin‘s “It’s” Man.
I paid homage to another favorite series of mine, Rocky & Bullwinkle, while talking up “Why Not” by Fowler and Branca. One episode of the Banana Formula story arc found Boris and Natasha stealing the tape recorder they used to capture Bullwinkle hiccuping said formula back from Fearless Leader after he was knocked out by a spring in the machine:
NATASHA: Now what, Boris?
BORIS: What else? We run like rabbits.
NATASHA: Good idea!
BORIS: On second thought, we take secret formula (on the recorder) with us.
NATASHA: You mean steal it?
BORIS: Why not?
(pause)
NATASHA: Funny, I can’t think of a reason.
The aforementioned snowstorm inspired me to play Nelson Rangell‘s cover of “Sweetest Somebody I Know” by Stevie Wonder. One of the first times I listened to it was on the back end of a 2015 winter storm, also in early February. That storm began as snow, changed to sleet and freezing rain, then changed to rain, after which I shoveled, and changed back to snow, which led to more shoveling because it was accumulating.
I said “album” a lot!, but I don’t care.
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Audiobooking 6 April 4, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Animation, Audio, Audiobooks, Baseball, Comedy, Commentary, Film, History, Media, Personal, Politics, Radio, Sports, TV, Video.add a comment
It’s been just over a year since the previous post. Instrumental Invasion has taken up most of my time, providing a necessary escape from the tumultuous reality.
I continue to listen to audiobooks on days where I workout and run, or even while editing photos. My source remains Audible, now as a paid member. When I’m billed at the end of each month, I use my credit on the next audiobook to listen to. As I type, I have three-book backlog.
Here’s what I’ve been listened to since Andrea Barber’s memoir:
There, all caught up.
Until next year’s “Audiobooking” post, happy listening.