Instrumental Invasion, 1/4/23 January 4, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, DVD, History, Internet, Jazz, Laserdisc, Media, Music, New Age, New Year, Personal, Radio, TV, VHS, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
The January 4 edition of Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the first show of 2023 and the second show in the last three to be recorded and mixed in one day. Fittingly, that one day was the 23rd of November, 2022, and thankfully, recording talk breaks wasn’t as physically taxing as the Christmas show.
The playlist was created on November 20, with annotations starting on the 21st and continuing into the 22nd, followed by the talk break script draft. As you can see, I went way over with the first segment and spent the rest of the show compensating. Ironically, I had to make that first segment even longer due to a surplus after principal recording.
“Just Like That” by Dan Siegel was first played on October 14, 2020, but I included it again as a prelude to Ken Navarro‘s “Just Like That.”
The video version of True North was on LaserDisc and VHS, then reissued on DVD in 1998. I bought a DVD copy for posterity, but haven’t watched it yet. “Whispers of Light” by James Reynolds was the latest in a long line of Weather Channel local forecast staples, as demonstrated here.
Not only did I play Mario Kart 64 back in the day, but I received the official soundtrack on CD for free through my Nintendo Power magazine subscription. I led off the January 25, 2002, edition of The Mike Chimeri Show with the game’s title screen cue, proclaiming I was back for another semester.
Norman Caruso, The Gaming Historian, chronicled the story of Super Mario Kart, the N64 game’s predecessor, in a video last month:
I ended the show with “Kukuc (koo-kooch) 2020″ the first track on drummer John Favicchia‘s new compilation CD Tangible. It coincided with the debut of a liner I had Fav record for the show. I neglected to tell him how to pronounce my last name, so I took the “sh” sound from Tom Schuman‘s liner and slowed down the “im” part. Here’s the end result:
And here are recaps of the last nine Dharma gigs I attended:
September 7, 2008 (preceded by Alan Bates)
Next week’s show recap will have photos from the first gig I attended on July 13, 2005.
For now, click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Bonus: the “Kukuc 2020” video:
Instrumental Invasion, 12/28/22 December 29, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Christmas, Computer, Football, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, New Age, New Year, News, Personal, Radio, Sports, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
The December 28 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded one hour per day on November 17, my 41st birthday, and 18, followed by pickups and remixing. An additional pickup was recorded on the 19th.
The playlist was the third of three created between November 7 and 9. I created it solely on November 9, started annotating on the 9th and finished on the 12th, with the talk break script drafted on the 15th and 16th.
For the second year in a row, I played Christmas-adjacent songs the week after the Christmas show. “December Dream” by Fourplay was originally in mind for last week, but I replaced it to allow for a longer third song in its intended segment.
For the second show in a row, I played two versions of the same song, ending each hour with “Auld Lang Syne“; first by Kenny G, then by Jessy J. Yes, I know J is technically not her last initial, but for poetic license, it was in this show.
All of the last three shows have had segment gaps filled by songs less than three minutes long. And speaking of last initials, I searched my blazers for a suitable (no pun intended) nickname to go with “Armani B” by Brian Simpson. Jos. A. Bank made the most sense; ergo, “Joseph A. Bank M.” By the way, I bought a CD copy of Closer Still just before publishing this post.
“Busta Move” by Julian Vaughn was originally played on August 17.
I’m still not finished listening to my iTunes Christmas music playlist, which I’ve been listening to incrementally since early November. I got through big portions of it during a Christmas Eve party and then on Christmas Day at home, but there were over a hundred songs left. I’ll update this paragraph once I finish. 1/2/23 UPDATE: I finished this morning.
Mid-November Mike (another nickname) could not have foreseen a historic winter storm, an explosive cyclogenesis (“bomb cyclone” in media hype lingo), when he included “Black Frost” by Grover Washington, Jr. to fill out the first segment. Crazy as the storm and aftermath were here on Long Island – southwest winds ushering in cold air?! – it was much worse elsewhere, particularly in Buffalo! Here, temperatures plummeted from the mid 50s (Fahrenheit) to the single digits! That meant there was black frost ice on the roads, and patches of ice on the sidewalks, from floodwaters brought on by rain and coastal flooding. I haven’t talked to Ryan “A Ripping Good Time” Grabow since the storm, but I know from its Wikipedia entry (first link) that Central Florida – where he lives and works for the Orlando Fox affiliate – had a period of sleet and snow flurries in on Christmas morning! (Okay, enough exclamations.) Christmas also marked record cold highs for Fort Lauderdale and Miami: 49° and 50°F, respectively. Reading that took me back to similarly cold Christmastimes in 1989 and ’90 in Crystal Beach, Florida, in the Tampa Bay area; not to mention how cold it was outside LaGuardia Airport before flying to Tampa in ’90. Maybe weather conditions are cyclical.
I’m further reminded of a video I watched on YouTube five years ago that exemplified the cold Christmastime in ’89: the start of NBC Sports coverage of the Miami Dolphins’ Christmas Eve regular season finale against the Kansas City Chiefs at then-Joe Robbie Stadium in not-yet-incorporated Miami Gardens. As you’ll see in the video below, the game time temperature was 39° with gusty northwest winds. No wonder it was dubbed The Miami Ice Bowl.
Yes, that was “Carol of the Bells” by Mannheim Steamroller (from A Fresh Aire Christmas); yes, that was Charles McCord announcing (“NBC Sports presents…”); and yes, John Tesh‘s “Gridiron Dreams” was the NFL on NBC theme song.
Anyway, click here to download the last scoped Instrumental Invasion aircheck of 2022, or listen below:
See you in 2023!
Instrumental Invasion, 2/23/22 February 24, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, History, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, New Year, Personal, Radio.add a comment
The February 23 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the first to be produced and recorded in 2022. One segment was recorded on January 3, two on the 4th, and three on the 5th.
The playlist was created on January 2 with annotations and the script draft on the 3rd.
The passing of Nick Colionne on New Year’s Day led me to add a tag to his liner noting the date it was recorded. It doesn’t feel right to run liners posthumously without a tag.
Someday, I’d like to visit the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal via the National Historical Park, immortalized in Ken Navarro‘s “Skating on the C&O Canal.”
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
Shortly after hour 2 began, my internet stopped the stream from playing, which means everything after “in 1999, the year” was taken from my segment files with a multiband compressor filter applied.
Instrumental Invasion, 1/5/22 January 6, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Baseball, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, New Year, Personal, Radio, Rock, Sports.add a comment
The January 5 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP, the first show of 2022, was recorded over three days in November 2021. The first hour was recorded on my 40th birthday, November 17, the first second hour segment on the 18th, and the other two segments on the 19th. A pickup was recorded on the 20th with more pickups on December 14 as I shortened the length of four segments.
The playlist was created and annotated, and the talk break script was drafted, on November 16.
Jeff Kroll was generous enough to record liners for the show, but he went the extra mile by contributing show open voice overs. Hearkening back to the latter days of The Mike Chimeri Show, I added a laser gun sound and the end of “Brave New World” by The Rippingtons. The end result:
I’ll be using that every week going forward.
I originally intended on talking about that emotional time in my life when I was first exposed to “Dancing with Ivy” by Nelson Rangell (written by Jay Rowe). Coincidentally, it was the latter days of The Mike Chimeri Show. I was depressed, obsessed with the New York Mets, obese, felt threatened by WebRadio WCWP’s new death metal format, Capital Punishment Radio, and I treated anyone and everyone like a therapist. My stubborn arrogance led me to foolishly record a promo where I mocked the tropes of other DJ’s promos, such as a flange effect and bleeping curses. Capital Punishment replied with a mocking promo of their own. It began with a big band excerpt, cut off by DJ derision, and then mimicking a portion of another insulting promo of mine. Picking up on namesakes, I said in the promo that my show didn’t have Coldplay, but did have Fourplay; no Yellowcard, but Yellowjackets; no Jessica or Ashlee, but Brian Simpson. “We don’t have Yellowjacket,” one of them said in my voice, before concluding with words to the effect of smooth metal “and a whole lot more.” That played off my show’s tagline, “smooth jazz and more.” That humbling, humiliating experience eventually led me to stay in my lane and be a team player, but not until after Evening Jazz. I wasn’t a team player then, either. Evening Jazz on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then just Thursdays, was wildly different from the nights Fred Camin hosted. I once ranted to Bernie Bernard, “Ayn Inserto? Insert this.” What a jerk I was.
With that confession out of my system, on a lighter note, I consulted Jay Rowe while working on the playlist, remembering that he admitted who Ivy was when he played it on his piano during a 2020 Facebook livestream (my request). I had forgotten, but Jay reminded me it was for his guitarist friend Tod Baharian‘s daughter, who was just a toddler at the time.
“Chrome Explosion” by Anders Enger Jensen was first played on Instrumental Invasion on June 24, 2020, the same week I first played “Song for Bilbao” by Michael Brecker, which I replayed last week. Here is the “Chrome Explosion” music video I referenced in the subsequent talk break:
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
7:35 AM UPDATE: It took until listening to the aircheck to notice that Tony Watson Jr. played soprano sax on “Ear Candy” by Pieces of a Dream, not tenor. Sometimes, foolish oversights escape my ear until it’s too late.
Instrumental Invasion, 12/29/21 December 30, 2021
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Golf, History, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, New Year, Personal, Radio, Travel, TV.add a comment
The December 29 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded in two days: the first segment at home on November 9 and the other five at my remote location on the 10th. The denoise filter was applied to all talk breaks but the first. Pickups were recorded on December 14, without the filter, for three shortened segments.
The playlist was created on November 7 and annotated on the 8th with the script draft carrying into the 9th. I forgot to include the New Year’s Eve host succession included in the annotation for “Auld Lang Syne,” but it’s fine. It was better to focus on Guy Lombardo and my Freeport beginnings. The use of Fourplay‘s “Auld Lang Syne” makes this the second week in a row where the show begins with a song from their Snowbound album. It’s also the second regular show in a row with an extra 2017 to present segment in place of 1984 and earlier.
Michael Brecker‘s rendition of “Song for Bilbao,” which followed “Auld Lang Syne,” was first played last June 24. This time, listeners got to hear the correct information as my segment redo the last time didn’t air. I played “Groove Reflections” by Jay Rowe to make up for the end getting cut off on November 3.
The last time I visited my grandparents’ condo, in March 2011, I photographed grandpa Carmen’s hole in one trophy from two angles:
As I said coming out of “Hole in One” by the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Carmen shot a hole in one on the eighth hole of Tarpon Springs Golf Course on August 11, 1995.
The show had its share of running gags, including “plural” and a flat “yes” response to musical questions.
Click here to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:
See you in 2022!
MikeChimeri.com 