Instrumental Invasion, 7/8/20 July 9, 2020
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The July 8, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded over two days. The first two segments were recorded in the afternoon and evening on June 11, hours after creating and annotating the playlist. The other four segments were recorded on the morning of June 12 with part of the last talk break re-recorded on the 13th.
After playing Ken Navarro‘s cover of “Lakes” by Pat Metheny, I dipped into my archives for a clip from the April 15, 2010, Evening Jazz. After playing “Lakes” that night, I quoted a comment Ken left on my Facebook page that explained how hard it was to play. I edited out my stammering.
Unfortunately, the third segment did not play in automation. Following the second spot break, there was a second of dead air. Then, the third spot break, followed by all segments and spot breaks for the second hour. That meant the show ended about 15 minutes early. Listeners were denied “Silverbird” by Jeff Jarvis, “Cruisin’ Down Ocean Drive” by The Rippingtons, “Mr. Rodriguez’s Opus” by David Benoit, and “Something About You” by Jeff Kashiwa.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3, with my original recording of the third segment mixed in, or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 6/24/20 June 25, 2020
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, TV.add a comment
The June 24, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded on the afternoon of May 26 with rerecording on June 5.
Work on the playlist began on May 19 with annotations on the 24th and during the recording session on the 26th.
I was proud to incorporate Dave Pike and Randy Waldman into the show.
I bought Dave’s Jazz for the Jet Set after listening to “Sweet ‘Tater Pie” on Spotify. I was first exposed to the song after hearing WABC-AM DJ Dan Ingram play it on his WABC-FM (later, WPLJ) show in 1967. The jazz and blues show differed greatly from the top 40 he played the AM side. The aircheck I heard can be found on the Musicradio 77 website.
As for Randy Waldman, my musician friend Nelson Rangell recommended Superheroes to me during a phone conversation the night before I bought it and Dave Pike’s album. The first song I was drawn to was the “Mighty Mouse Theme.” It made me think of a routine in Andy Kaufman’s stand-up act. As Foreign Man, he would stand next to a record player while the theme played on an LP. He would stand perfectly still until the line “here I come to save the day!,” which he would lip-sync while heroically moving his arm.
Speaking of stand-up acts, I unknowingly channeled comedian Timmie Rogers both times I said the title of Brian Hughes‘ song “Oh Yeah!” That was Rogers’s catchphrase, exemplified in this 1960s performance:
I have a feeling I’m the only DJ in North America to play Anders Enger Jensen on the radio. His music is all over YouTube – on channels like The 8-Bit Guy, Techmoan, Technology Connections, and of course, his own channel – but it needs the terrestrial treatment, and I provided it.
The end of the first hour’s second segment and all of the third had to be rerecorded on the morning of June 5. After referencing Norman Brown‘s “Something Just for You,” on the same album as “It’s a Feelin’,” my segue to the tease should have been “A Song Just for Bilbao,” but I inverted “just” and “for” and didn’t notice the mistake until a day after recording. Since it wasn’t a factual error or repeated phrase (i.e. “but first”), I initially chose not to rerecord. A week after recording, I realized I neglected to acknowledge Dave Holland, the bassist on Michael Brecker‘s cover of “Song for Bilbao.” Since there was music playing under both omissions, I had to redo the entire segment. After that, I fixed my flub at the end of the previous segment.
Unfortunately, as I feared, the redone segments were not added to automation. So, listeners heard the original “for just” and Dave Holland-less segments. The lesson here is to thoroughly check your recordings before submitting them.
Click here to download this show’s aircheck MP3, which I modified to include the corrections, or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 6/17/20 June 18, 2020
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The June 17, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded exactly one month earlier on May 17.
Work on the playlist began on May 2 with annotations coming on the 11th and during the recording session on the 17th.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 6/10/20 June 11, 2020
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The June 10, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP marked the first time original musician liners were included. The first ten shows featured repurposed liners from The Mike Chimeri Show and Homecoming Weekend.
After linking to the April 29 show post on LinkedIn, saxophonist and vocalist Paula Atherton contacted me about recording a liner. I gladly accepted and also received her current single, “Can You Feel It?” Flushed with success, I reached out to my other musician friends to record liners of their own. Within six days, I had liners from each of them. I suggested Chieli Minucci acknowledge our in-joke about how my surname should be pronounced “key-mary” like “key-ellie,” but he took that further than I expected. I’m satisfied with how it came out, especially after I padded the reverb at the end. Another pleasant surprise came from Bill Heller who ended his liner with a piano flourish from his song “Blackbird on a Fence.”
Regarding my last name’s pronunciation, my father Bill said “key-mary” is correct, but our Italian ancestors endured mispronunciations so often that they gave up and went with “shimary.”
I began crafting the playlist on May 1 with annotations on the 11th and during the recording session on the 14th. To accommodate the new liners and music, I replaced the “1984 & earlier” segment in favor of a third “2017-present” segment.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 6/3/20 June 4, 2020
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The June 3, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the last of the initial ten shows I recorded in March and April.
The playlist was created and annotated on April 14 with additional annotations on the 25th and during the recording session on the 27th.
I was laughing as I said bassist Michael Palazzolo’s name during the back-sell of “Topside” by Bob James Trio because of a part I edited out where I tried to imitate the song’s synth voices.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 5/27/20 May 28, 2020
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The May 27, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was #9 overall.
The playlist was created on April 12 with annotations on the 14th, 15th, and during the recording session on the 25th.
The “woo! yeah!” excerpt I used while back-selling “Hustlin'” by Eric Marienthal is from the Wikipedia entry.
I had Pat Summerall on my mind when I said “Touchdown.”
The way I talked up Steve Cole‘s “Good News Day” was an homage to Professor Farnsworth’s “good news, everyone!” exclamation on Futurama.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 5/20/20 May 21, 2020
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The May 20, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the eighth show to air. It was the first to include liners provided by fellow WCWP alumni Bruce Leonard, Father John Commins, Jay Mirabile, and Pete “The Body” Bellotti.
The playlist was created on April 11 with annotations on the 14th and 15th. The show was recorded on the morning of April 23 with a talk break rerecord in the afternoon. I said “but first” twice while talking up the last two songs of hour 1 and initially missed the mistake.
David Benoit‘s cover of “Eye of the Tiger” marks the first time I’ve played a song off a cassette as his Waves of Raves album only came out on cassette and LP. I was unaware this compilation album even had an original track until last summer. Once I found out, I checked YouTube and found this:
Then, I bought a cassette on eBay. After it arrived, I connected a USB phono preamp to my cassette deck and recorded the track to Adobe Audition, saving as WAV and MP3 files. The WAV file is what you heard on the show, a decision unrelated to originating on Waves of Raves.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 5/13/20 May 14, 2020
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The May 13, 2020, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the seventh show recorded. By this time, I had eschewed theme weeks in favor of five segment formats:
- 1984 & earlier
- 1985-1995
- 1996-2006
- 2007-2016
- 2017-present
The formats can be implemented in any order and one can be used twice. In this show, and most shows going forward, that honor goes to 2017-present.
The playlist was created and annotated on April 5 and the show was recorded on the 6th. The current photo for the blog header and about page was taken after recording the first segment.
After hearing arrangements of Super Mario World music in the Splash Wave retrospective on that game and its sequel, Yoshi’s Island, I just had to seek out the game’s two-CD soundtrack album. The arranged music is on the first disc and Koji Kondo’s in-game music is on the second. My favorite arranged track is “Welcome to Mario World,” based on the title screen song, thanks to Sadao Watanabe on saxophone. Once I got my theme weeks out of the way, I found a spot for the song on Instrumental Invasion.
If you’re interested, here is the Splash Wave video:
“Welcome to Mario World” is heard during the end credits.
I like my regal talk-up for “Proclamation” by Metro at the top of the show and the risque talk-up for Spyro Gyra‘s cover of “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream. It’s also fascinating when I crack myself up as I did back-selling “Katy’s Groove” by Jay Rowe.
Click here to download the aircheck or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 5/6/20 May 7, 2020
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The May 6, 2020, Instrumental Invasion show on WCWP was the last of the six shows I recorded between March 25 and 30. During my phone conversation with Jeff Kroll two hours before recording, Jeff told me I should work the legal ID into my hour 2 intro in case it doesn’t run in automation. So, I did. When he spoke to me again via text as the April 1 show began, he clarified that I should do it at the top of both hours, which I started in the May 13 show. As it turns out, the legal ID has run for all but the first segment of that first show.
The playlist was made March 23 with annotations the next day and during the recording session on the 30th. I had to redo talk breaks for the second hour’s first segment on the morning of April 30 due to a factual error in the original record. In a callback to Nelson Rangell‘s “By Light,” which Jay Rowe co-wrote but did not appear on, I noted that he was the keyboardist on Ken Navarro‘s “Walking Each Other Home.” A check of the liner notes last Thursday morning revealed it was really Dan LaMaestra. The redo instead acknowledged Rob Holmes playing three saxophones and Ken and Greg Grainger playing virtual drums. To get the segment to 18 minutes, I also had to shorten the top of the hour intro and back-sell of “Rise” by Ben Tankard. With that complete, I edited the playlist scan to remove my incorrect annotation.
I only cited album release dates in this show and the one on April 22. During the outro, I neglected to mention that Keiko Matsui‘s Echo came out on February 22, 2019.
Click here to download the aircheck file or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 4/29/20 April 30, 2020
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The April 29, 2020, Instrumental Invasion show on WCWP was the fifth to be mixed and recorded between March 25 and 30. It was the last show with hours dedicated to one year.
The playlist was made on March 23 with annotations the next day and while recording on the 29th, exactly one month before it aired.
The way I said “Spoons” while talking up Eric Marienthal‘s song was a reference to The Tick‘s catchphrase, established in this scene from the episode “The Tick vs. Arthur’s Bank Account“:
I missed an opportunity to call back to Gerald Albright‘s bass work on “Sassy” by Bobby Lyle while backselling “Highway 70” in the 2010 hour.
Click here to download the aircheck file or listen below:
