jump to navigation

My city pop discovery (and reacquaintance with Garfield and Friends) March 5, 2023

Posted by Mike C. in Animation, City Pop, Comedy, Comics, Film, Game Shows, Health, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Phone, Pop, Radio, Technology, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.
2 comments

NOTE 1: This is also a Garfield and Friends story with several montages among the city pop material. Those montages led me to city pop.

NOTE 2: I consulted my computer audio recordings of the Garfield and Friends DVDs to ensure the video embed caption quotes are verbatim.

NOTE 3: I even spend a paragraph on The Weather Channel tribute site TWC Classics, a simulator that re-creates the old local forecasts, and recently departed announcer Dan Chandler who lent his narration to the sim.

Nearly 50 years ago, Japan’s economy was booming and a new leisure class developed. That leisure class begat a new Japanese pop music genre, borrowing elements of various Western music genres. They called it city pop. What began in the 1970s, peaked in popularity in the ’80s, then fell out of the Japanese mainstream.

City pop found a new Western audience in the 2010s thanks to blog posts like mine (but earlier), Japanese reissues of the genre’s albums, and YouTube uploads of the albums’ tracks. From a 2023 perspective, I give YouTube most of the credit. Today, it is the best city pop recruitment tool.

The rest of this post is about how I discovered city pop and recounts my first nine days as a fan. If you want to read more about the genre and its resurgence, I recommend Cat Zhang’s 2021 Pitchfork article and Wikipedia’s city pop entry.

On February 19, YouTube recommended a video with random clips from my favorite cartoon series, Garfield and Friends:

Jim Davis created the Garfield comic strip and CBS TV specials, but Mark Evanier (with Sharman DiVono for three seasons) spun comedy gold on CBS Saturday mornings from 1988 to 1994 (the last rerun aired in ’95). I can quote parts of episodes or even whole episodes. So, when watching the above clips, I knew what happened next.

The next Garfield and Friends clip in my recommendations came on February 20:

The evening of February 21 was my city pop entry point, but we’re not there yet. The prelude to the entry was this:

“Today [Monday], Garfield, we’re going to eat nothing but raisins!”

Full disclosure: I met Jim Davis at a signing in March 1995, but I was too shy and just had him sign a sketch. And I interviewed Jon Arbuckle voice actor Thom Huge (HUE-ghee) three times for The Mike Chimeri Show. (In retrospect, I would have held off on the first interview until his voice was back to normal.)

The Jon Arbuckle montage led YouTube to recommend this:

According to Know Your Meme, the video originated in the 1991 CBS TV special, Garfield Gets a Life, where it was set to “Shake Your Paw,” performed by The Temptations. The score and three songs (including “Shake Your Paw”) were written by David Benoit (music) and Desirée Goyette (lyrics).

Whoa! What is that song that sounds vaguely like “Burnin’ Up the Carnival” by Joe Sample (from Voices in the Rain)? I scrolled down and saw the song was “4:00 A.M.” by Taeko Onuki (or Ohnuki). I searched Google on my iPhone and the Taeko’s Wikipedia entry (linked in the previous sentence) and found the song. That prompted the YouTube app where I heard the whole thing:

Whoa again, it appeared on an album with the last name of a few of my friends, but with an extra N. Lyrics are here.

1:30 PM UPDATE: A member of the My Life in Gaming Discord server told me the album title was part of Taeko’s fascination with French media, which I confirmed after a Google Search yielded this 2017 interview. Still, Mignonne is one letter off from my friends of Italian descent.

3:10 PM UPDATE: I just finished reading the interview linked in the prior update. It was an interesting read, but I was disappointed to learn Taeko did not like Mignonne because of what transpired during production. The resulting disenchantment, and poor sales, made her take a two-year hiatus from the music industry. Anyway, back to the good stuff.

Taeko’s Wikipedia entry led me to the one on city pop. That’s what I heard and I wanted more.

I could not stop listening to “4:00 A.M.” Ironically, it kept me up past midnight, but not as late as 4AM. I was up at 4AM on March 4 when I drafted this blog post thanks to a period of strong easterly winds that buffeted my bedroom window. The song’s refrain may sound vaguely like the later “Burnin’ Up the Carnival,” but the song otherwise had more in common with the works of Bob James and Grover Washington Jr. The line “ima o” was phrased like “that’s the time” in “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Roberta Flack, which Bob played on and then covered. The guitar solo on the ending breakdown sounded like it came from Eric Gale‘s hands. (It was from Tsunehide Matsuki‘s hands.) I have repeatedly imagined Grover Washington himself covering “4:00 A.M.” on alto saxophone, soloing (improvising) from the last refrain, through the breakdown, all the way to the end.

I should probably acknowledge that I am on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, formerly known as Asperger Syndrome. That probably explains my intense focus on one thing or another, and attention to detail.

I was busy with radio show production on February 22, but “4:00 A.M.” was in the back of my mind and I was intent on extracting the audio and assigning the WAV file to a vintage Weather Channel local forecast flavor in my WeatherStar 4000 simulator. Now, I could hear all but the last 36 seconds with the current conditions and forecast, peppered with Dan Chandler’s re-created narrations. (I was in touch with Dan for a few weeks midway through my tenure at WGBB, and he even called in while I was playing a song. I didn’t put him on, but relayed what we talked about, including “reading the sports pages” as he listened to the live stream. After writing that sentence, I’m sorry to learn that he passed away on February 7 [obituary].) The simulator was already populated by music cues from The Price is Right and adjacent Goodson–Todman game shows. See the February 15 Instrumental Invasion recap for more on that obsession.

While my “4:00 A.M.” obsession continued, YouTube had more city pop recommendations, including a modern music video for Mariya Takeuchi‘s “Plastic Love“:

Mariya only appears audibly through the original 1984 song. In ’82, she married the king of city pop, Tatsuro Yamashita. I was impressed that her English vocals were English, not transliterations.

Oh, and another Jon Arbuckle montage:

As the “Plastic Love” video wound down, I pretended to be Dan Ingram back-selling the song, quipping that it was better than polyurethane love.

My vocal city pop discoveries halted for the next few days when I found a city pop creation befitting my love of instrumental music: jazz fusion supergroup Casiopea!

First, I found “Midnight Rendezvous“:

Then, “Eyes of the Mind” before the “the” was added:

Groups like Casiopea and T-Square (formerly The Square) have influenced generations of video game music composers.

I woke up on February 23 after a full night’s sleep and was greeted with two more Jon Arbuckle videos:

“He can’t cook! He can’t get a date! He’s Jon Arbuckle, and we’re giving him away absolutely free! In fact, we’ll pay you to take him!”
“Let’s not ask questions. Let’s just get out of here.”

As I listened to my radio show aircheck from the night before, I began extracting audio from whatever Casiopea albums were on YouTube (mostly via their “topics” channel), provided the cover art available online was clear and at least 1500×1500 pixels. If AI upscaling in Adobe Photoshop yielded poor results, I’d buy the CD myself and scan the artwork. That’s what I did for Flowers (1996), but I bought Euphony (1988) because it wasn’t on YouTube. I will eventually buy the actual CDs, but given the inflated import prices, collection take a while. Here’s what I do have:

I’m still working my way through the albums chronologically in my spare time. Flowers is gradually on its way from a Japan Discogs markeplace seller, so I jumped from Freshness to Light and Shadows. That’s where I am as of publication on March 5. (I got in eight hours of sleep the night before.)

The last item in this post’s Casiopea segment is T2norway‘s video profile of them, preceded by his city pop story:

Thanks to my college friend Phil Federico for bringing this to my attention. I can overlook T2’s mispronunciations of Harvey Mason and Lee Ritenour, who also appeared on Casiopea albums. In fact, they, Bob James, and Nathan East – future members of Fourplay – all appeared on Casiopea studio recordings.

The night of February 23, YouTube recommended two more Garfield and Friends videos. One was yet another montage:

And the other was a series review by Nostalgia Critic, played by Doug Walker (who was born the same day as me!):

I was let down by his critiques of certain characters and the animation style, not to mention his disdain for U.S. Acres. Nonetheless, I respect his dissent.

My city pop discoveries resumed on the night of February 25, related to “Plastic Love.” Leading off, a Super Famicom/Nintendo rendition:

That was followed by the infamous long version of the Mariya Takeuchi original (lyrics):

(As of March 13, the video was taken down. In the long version, one verse repeated and the ending chorus was extended, exemplified below.)

Since I was watching in a web browser, I saw recommendations on the right side of the tab. The one that caught me eye was an English version of “Plastic Love”:

The singer-songwriter was Caitlin Myers, also a voice actress with a focus in anime and video games. She has two YouTube channels: one in her name and one called Interlunium. I was unaware of the scope of her work as I watched this first video. (3/31 UPDATE 1: Interlunium is a virtual idol group where Caitlin portrays Junko.) (3/31 UPDATE 2: Caitlin’s version of “Plastic Love” was reworked with original instrumentation and new vocals for her 2021 compilation, City Poppin’.)

More city pop discoveries came way on February 26. Figuratively waiting at the door to this new day was “Mayonaka no Door* (Stay with Me)” by the late Miki Matsubara, recorded when she was just 19 (lyrics):

*”Door” is lyrically transliterated “doa.” The full term means “midnight’s door (literally, door of midnight).” In another ironic twist, there were nights after discovering this song when I’d be awake around midnight as the refrain bounced around in my head. Sometimes, I imagined a fast tempo, “Spain“-esque Chick Corea version with a Minimoog solo. Others, I thought of McCoy Tyner.

Sure enough, Caitlin Myers wrote an English version of this, too:

The anime artwork is based on a 1980 photo of Miki.

Incidentally, I added both versions of “Plastic Love” and “Mayonaka no Door (Stay with Me)” to the WS4000 simulator, again using the five-minute local forecast flavor.

Knocking on afternoon’s door was the biggest discovery yet: Caitlin covered “4:00 A.M.”!

Caitlin and her two backing vocalists came closer to the gospel choir sound for the line “Lord, give me one more chance!”

My city pop journey had seemingly come full circle. Now, I had English versions of the first three vocal city pop songs I discovered to complement the originals.

The Garfield and Friends video journey definitely came to end on the morning of February 28 with this video showing one second of each episode from show (or rather from each cartoon in each episode):

However, there was more city pop to be had that afternoon. Other Caitlin Myers English adaptations were in my YouTube feed, and I felt I had to hear the originals before listening to hers.

“Do You Remember Love?” was adapted from its directly-translated Japanese title, “Ai Oboete Imasu ka.” Sung by Mari Iijima, it underscored the intense climax to the 1984 film, Macross: Do You Remember Love? I foolishly watched that sequence on YouTube instead of a straight recording of the song, unable to unsee or unhear any of it. (And I thought Disney villain deaths were rough.)

Lucky for you, the reader, I found a straight recording (lyrics):

And the Caitlin Myers version:

3/13/23 UPDATE: “Do You Remember Love?” was J-pop rather than city pop, illustrating how songs from the subgenre led me to ones from the main genre.

“Dance in the Memories” was next, written and performed by Meiko Nakahara (lyrics):

It was the third closing theme (tema) to Kimagura Orange Road, which I assume was a lighter anime series.

Caitlin’s turn:

She even matched the quirky “mem-morries” pronunciation.

Closing out my first week in city pop, “Telephone Number” by Junko Ohashi (lyrics):

Magical was a 1984 compilation. “Telephone Number” originated on Tea for Tears in ’81, co-written by her husband Ken Sato.

I had to make a 3-minute, 30-second local forecast flavor to accommodate the song’s 3:58 run time (3:59 for Caitlin).

As a suburban New Yorker, I like Magical‘s cover art of Lower Manhattan featuring the original World Trade Center. I passed by One World Trade Center in 2014 while running the Tunnel to Towers 5K.

The hook – “ah-uu, 5-6-7-oh-9” – brought two things to mind:

Musically, Caitlin did a masterful job replicating the sound of each song she adapted into English. On behalf of city pop fans everywhere, thank you, Caitlin, for your efforts.

Thank you to the many city pop artists whose works inspired by our (the West’s) music have boomeranged back to us.

And thank you, the reader, for making it to the end of this post. Wish me luck on the rest of my city pop journey. Be sure to catch Instrumental Invasion April 26 at 9PM Eastern (April 27 at 11AM in Japan) on WCWP. It’ll be the first show with music by Casiopea, and about ten minutes into the last segment, I allude to some of what I laid out in this post because I play Scott Wilkie‘s cover of “Burnin’ Up the Carnival.” (5/2 UPDATE: Here is that show’s recap, along with my journey since writing this post.)

I’ll leave you with Caitlin Myers’ Japanese versions (lyrics by Datenkou) of “Never Gonna Give You Up“…

…and “September“:

Advertisement

Instrumental Invasion, 2/22/23 February 23, 2023

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Christmas, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Pop, Radio, Rap, Video.
add a comment

The February 22 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded the first show recorded in 2023: four segments on January 3 and two on the 4th, along with pickups. I applied a 10-band equalizer effect to my hour 1 talk breaks in an attempt to match the audio quality when recording at my secondary location. It isn’t the first time I’ve done this, but is the first on such a large scale; not just for pickups.

The playlist was created on December 28, 2022, with annotations on the last three days of the year, and the talk break script drafted on New Year’s Eve and Day.

It’s become a habit to program three-song sets in most segments, so I stopped acknowledging the feat in talk breaks.

After two theme weeks, this week had an unofficial theme with eight cover songs.

The Chick Corea Trio’s Trilogy duology were two Christmas presents from my sister Lauren. Playing their cover of “Pastime Paradise” by Stevie Wonder (from Trilogy 2) allowed me to reference “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and “Weird Al” Yankovic‘s parody, “Amish Paradise.” And since I also played “Who Should I Pay,” Jay Rowe‘s homage to “Blurred Lines,” I got to reference “Word Crimes.” (Read my Mandatory Fun synopsis here.)

The show led off with the adjective-less “Paradise” by Grover Washington, Jr., exactly 365 days after I last played a cut from Paradise the album. It’s also been 51 weeks since playing something from The Test of Time by Ken Navarro, and exactly eight months have passed between songs from Chuck Loeb‘s Between 2 Worlds.

To change things up, I had an extra 2007-16 segment after going to the 1985-95 and 1996-2006 wells in previous weeks.

Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:

As a bonus, here are the music videos for “Amish Paradise”…:

…and “Word Crimes”:

Plus, Al’s breakdown for GQ of his most iconic tracks:

Plus plus, the “pivot!” scene on Friends (from “The One with the Cop“), since I referenced it after Randal Clark‘s “Pivot“:

Instrumental Invasion, 2/1/23 February 2, 2023

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Film, Health, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Pop, Radio, Rock, TV, Video Games.
add a comment

The February 1 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the second consecutive show recorded in one day. This time, I did so out of necessity. More on that below.

The playlist was created on December 9, 2022, allowing me to focus on Festival of Games, then on the aftermath of cataloging pickups, editing photos, and drafting the recap. Playlist annotations came on December 12 with the talk break script drafted on the 15th.

Scroll to the bottom for the scoped aircheck (and a partial one for The Rock Show) if you don’t want to read the next five paragraphs.

I began to feel run down on the afternoon of December 11. I chalked it up to lack of sleep the night before from a mere two Snickers bars and excitement over the 42 video games I bought from Festival of Games vendors (including Pete Dorr!). I still felt run down on the 12th and by that evening, I couldn’t unclog my left ear. It seemed like deja vu from June (see August 17, 2022, recap) where I felt run down and stuffy with clogged ears, but twice tested negative for COVID. I went to my primary care physician on the 13th expecting a quick diagnosis of fluid in the ears, a prescription for Z-Pack antibiotics, and to use more of the nasal spray that I was prescribed in June. I was incredibly naive. Understaffing left me waiting around 40 minutes to be called in, then another half hour after my COVID/flu test (negative for one, pending for the other). And before I left for primary care, I developed nausea and lost my appetite. So, I only had one bite of my protein bar. My appetite returned after the examination, but following dinner at home in the evening, fever, aches, and chills set in. What had been a tickle in my throat in the morning became a strong cough. Come morning on the 14th, I was lethargic. I lacked the will to get out of bed, and had no appetite for breakfast at my usual time. I forced myself out of bed for breakfast at 8:30, and spent the rest of the day lying in bed or sitting up at my computer. Whatever I had, only knowing it wasn’t COVID, I figured symptoms would start to diminish 24 hours after starting the antibiotics.

It was at my computer the day before (December 13) where my radio show production plans shifted. With annotations complete, I created the playlist for next week’s show. This day (the 14th) would be for creating show 150’s playlist, starting annotations on both shows, and stopping work by mid-afternoon. While drafting the Festival of Games recap on the 15th, a nurse at my primary care called to let me know I tested positive for the flu! That’s what I had! As far as I know, this was my first bout with the flu in nearly 29 years – a memorably stronger bout in mid-January 1994. Maybe I had it in June 2022, as well. It’s a good thing I started getting an annual flu shot in October 2020. Otherwise, my symptoms would have been as bad as ’94. I finished show 149 and 150 annotations on December 16.

My voice was close to normal by the 17th, allowing me to finally record and produce a spot for WCWP’s CBB (community bulletin board/calendar), included in the December 21 show post. I drafted the script for this week’s show earlier that day and for next week on the 18th. Repeating what I said in the lead paragraph, I recorded the entire show on the 19th. No pickups were required on the 20th. (By the way, I’d resumed exercising on the 18th when only an occasional cough remained. I resumed treadmill running on the 22nd. And I took my last dose of cough medicine on Christmas Eve morning, the end of the 10-day dosage period.)

This week’s extra segment was 1985-95, allowing me a chance to play Dan Siegel‘s “Northern Nights” – first played on July 8, 2020 – after “Northern Lights” by The Rippingtons. I chose a cut from Peter White‘s Promenade so I could acknowledge learning the pronunciation of John Mahon‘s last name. As noted on the air, I learned from my mistake while watching the Disney+ livestream of Elton John‘s final U.S. concert, during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour.

My use of the phrase “exactly what it says on the tin” was an homage to the TV Tropes entry.

Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:

Hour 2 was recorded from the guest room computer. I noticed that Mike Riccio was hosting a countdown edition of The Rock Show and wanted to aircheck that before my show on my computer. Unfortunately, I botched the timer recording in Audacity, which was set to stop just as hour 2’s legal ID ran. The January 11 aircheck was entirely from the guest room computer because I forgot to click OK on the last prompt when setting up the timer recording on mine. I changed the settings so that last prompt no longer comes up.

Here is Mike Riccio’s Grammy winners-themed Rock Show joined in progress:

I had to leave in “Theme from A Summer Place” (at the 19:32 mark), especially since I watched Max Steiner: Maestro of Movie Music on HBO Max earlier this week.

2022 LIU Post & Homecoming Weekend, WCWP Hall of Fame Announcement October 22, 2022

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Football, Internet, Interviews, Media, Music, Personal, Photography, Pop, Radio, Rock, Travel, Video.
add a comment

Other recaps: 2008, 2009, WCWP 50th Anniversary (2011), 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021

Four months after going into the WCWP Hall of Fame, I returned to the campus of LIU Post for part of WCWP‘s Homecoming Weekend programming block, the first under new station manager Pete Bellotti. (The list of 2022 HOF inductees comes later in this recap.)

Friday, October 14

This year, Homecoming Weekend started an hour earlier, at 11AM, making for 61 hours of alumni-run shows. In August, Bernie Bernard earned a Master of Arts degree from Florida Atlantic University. Her aural thesis on pirate radio led off the weekend:

The second show, at noon, was also prerecorded: a compilation of select episodes of Bill Mozer’s WCWP Alumni Career Path Podcast:

Bill filled out the time remaining by twice playing “Kei’s Song” by David Benoit. I went to Hillwood Commons to get a bottle of water and on the walk back to the Abrams Communication Center (home of WCWP), I was stunned to hear the song playing (the first time) on the outdoor speakers adjacent to studio 1.

I have a dedicated blog post for my live edition of Instrumental Invasion at 2PM, but here is a snippet:

… I did not draft a talk break script; a live show calls for spontaneity, albeit with annotations to work from. I ended up referencing [my family trip to Dutchess County, subject of a blog post next week] during the show.

I feel like I wasn’t my best without a script, but all that matters is what listeners thought, and they liked it. Naturally, [the show] started with a technical glitch. Automation didn’t switch off [after Bill’s show ended], allowing me to go live from studio 2. I relayed the problem to station manager Pete Bellotti and he had me start the show even though the first minute or so (54 seconds) would go unaired. …

What a coincidence that David Benoit’s latest single of A Midnight Rendezvous is “Pioneer Town.” That allowed me to allude to the days before the One LIU merger when the Brooklyn and Post campuses had separate athletic programs.

For my official archive of the show, I included the unaired part, re-created from the liners I played (mostly as heard on my restart) and amplified/noise reduced camcorder audio. Here is the scope video:

The thumbnail is a photo Pete took of me at the controls, cropped to the 16:9 aspect ratio.

I faded the last song out just in time for automation to kick back in for John Commins at 4PM. To keep listeners from tuning out, I did not acknowledge that he was prerecorded. Within 20 minutes, I had packed up my equipment and headed for home. My video equipment was a Panasonic HC-X1500 with VW-HU1 detachable hand unit, both bought in late March, and my tripod of nearly seven years: a Magnus VT-300. Mozer recommended a Magnus tripod in a discussion at the 2015 Homecoming, but not the one I chose. I don’t remember which one. The HC-X1500/VW-HU1 combo was in lieu of an HC-X2000 built with the hand unit. I didn’t want to pay more for 3G-SDI output. But enough about video gear.

WCWP was entirely live from studio 2 from 6PM to midnight. John Zoni had the 6PM show:

Most photos were taken by Bernie Bernard, on hand for Alan Seltzer’s final WCWP show before moving to Columbus, Ohio.

Alan’s final show was Seltzer with a Twist, starting at 8PM:

  • Scott Perschke and his wife Janet were also present for the last show, as heard in the scoped aircheck below.
  • Alan and Bernie
  • Alan and Jay Mirabile, host of a special DFK Show at 10PM
  • Bernie’s perspective before the photo below on Jay’s phone

There was about 30 seconds of dead air after Alan’s last song finished, so Jay began The DFK (Disco and Funk King) Show seconds before 10PM:

The Young Prince K.J. Mills stayed up late to host The Storm 2.0 at 2AM (I’m counting this as part of Friday’s lineup):

Saturday, October 15

I returned to LIU Post at 1:30 Saturday afternoon. This time, I brought along my GoPro Hero 7 for shooting B-roll. Unlike last year, I did use it, thanks to a flexible tripod I bought in November, inspired by the video of Joe Honerkamp’s show.

In a bold move, I opted not to walk down to the football field to catch part of the LIU Sharks‘ Homecoming game. Considering they were creamed by the Saint Francis Red Flash, 57-7 (box score, recap), I made the right decision. As the game carried on, I sat at my laptop and spoke to any alumni that walked into studio 3, where my laptop was set up for web browsing on my downtime, but otherwise to aircheck the shows following the football game. My aircheck equipment, used Friday and Saturday, was a Behringer U-Phono UFO202 pre-amp connected to a Sangean HDR-16 radio. WCWP also uses the UFO202 for airchecking off FM tuners, doing so to clip key plays in Sharks games. Home airchecks were recorded in Audacity, either on my computer or the guest room computer, then edited in Adobe Audition.

One such alum to drop by during the football game was M.J. Lonardo, known as DJ M.J. during her time at WCWP. The photo I took of her and station manager Pete Bellotti is the first in a series of two-person photos taken throughout the day:

  • M.J. and me
  • Me and Pete
  • Me and John Zoni
  • Me and K.J. Mills
  • Alan and me; I’ll miss you, Alan.

On to photos from Bernie Bernard’s Barbecue Bash (by golly), starting at 4:08 PM:

  • Grandfather Rock Chris MacIntosh, longtime host of Rock ‘N Soul Gospel, and Hugh Hammill, Bernie’s friend from her WBAB days
  • Jett Lightning joined Chris in studio 2 with Bernie
  • At 5:11, Bernie announced the 2022 WCWP Hall of Fame inductees, who will be inducted in ’23. In the order listed on Bernie’s sheet below, they are: Travis Demers, Dan Reagan (reegan), Cosmo Leone, Roger Luce, Kim Dillon, Jon Cole, Suzanne Langwell, and John Mullen.
  • Cosmo, Jon, and John all called in during the show. You’ll see and hear them in the video and audio below this stacked gallery.
  • Technical assistance was required to fix the telephone hybrid audio. The quirky sound that afflicted Cosmo Leone’s interview was mitigated while speaking to Jon Cole. I had to cut away to some of these photos during that part of the video because my view of Bernie was blocked.
  • The tradition of Mike Riccio (sitting) and Bobby Guthenberg (standing) following Bernie with their countdown show continued this year. Bernie spoke with them beforehand.

Here is the aforementioned video:

This was the last video I made in Adobe Premiere Elements 2020, which became too slow and cumbersome to use. I barely finished exporting (not rendering) my aircheck video and copying it to a portable hard drive before hurrying to my mom’s car at 1PM. (I made her late to Freeport High School‘s Homecoming game.) This video took even longer to edit and export on Monday. I didn’t render either video because it would have taken just as long as exporting.

Anyway, here is the audio version with longer lead-outs and the start of the first talk break in the video:

Mike Riccio and Bobby G.’s countdown began at 7:03 PM. Mike couldn’t find a legal ID to run in WaveCart, so I approached the board and picked one. Then, the show began with “Wooden Heart” by Elvis Presley. Editing video of this show has left the end of “Wooden Heart” ingrained in my head. First, the photos:

  • A group photo with Alan Seltzer and Jett Lightning before air
  • Jett and Alan guessed which songs were next based on Mike’s clues.
  • A close-up of Mike Riccio
  • Bobby G.
  • Alan Seltzer
  • Jett Lightning (I wanted a candid shot, but he spotted me)
  • I took this parting photo before packing up for home. My parents picked me up after dinner in Syosset.

The video:

This was the first video I worked on in Adobe Premiere Pro, doing so on Tuesday after an hour of figuring out how to apply effects and transitions.

And the audio version, including parts of the last two hours and with extended lead-outs:

As you hear, Bernie was even more involved in the last two hours, which I listened to at home while editing the above photos.

The above photos are the last taken at an event with my Nikon D5500. As Homecoming Weekend was wrapping up, I consulted with a Facebook group for fans and users of the Canon EOS R7 mirrorless camera. I said in my PC build post that I had a Nikon Z7II in mind, but it’s too expensive and I’d have to buy a 24-200mm (not 300) Z lens (I like to use one superzoom lens) to take full advantage of the megapixel increase. My existing F mount 18-300 superzoom would be heavily cropped because it’s not made for full frame cameras like the Z7II. The EOS R7 and all the accessories I bought for it, including a Tamron 18-400 superzoom and control ring mount adapter, cost less combined than a Z7II body alone.

I hope to write about my early experience with the EOS R7 and equipment in a later post, but for now, back to Homecoming Weekend.

Sunday, October 16

I woke up a few minutes into my prerecorded Instrumental Invasion, another show with a dedicated blog post. Otherwise, the scoped aircheck:

When that was over at 8AM, Jay LaPrise (la-PREE) had the first live show of the day:

It wasn’t the first time I was Jay’s lead-in, and in 2007, I was his lead-in. Coincidentally, that live show of mine had an inauspicious beginning that required a redo, but it was only my first live show in exactly nine months.

My attempt at airchecking Jamie Mazzo and Sara Dorchak’s Ladies of Prison Break Radio show at 10AM was a bust. With my weekly Zoom meeting at 11:30, I had to aircheck on my laptop. I should have recorded the audio loopback, like on my desktop, but I didn’t. The same unnatural audio boost problem that kept me up in the hours after my September 14 show afflicted the laptop aircheck.

The Rockin’ Sunday Show with Alana followed at noon, its usual time on a regular Sunday:

  • Alana’s photos are the only ones taken Sunday (that I’m aware of).

Just after 2PM, it was Joe Honerkamp’s turn:

Joe was his usual entertaining self. No one is better at talking up a record (song) than him. He always manages to hit the post.

The last show I airchecked on Sunday was Jett Lightning at 4PM:

Wow, Jay Elzweig sat in on the show! I was so glad to hear his voice and sense of humor.

Saturday, Jett persuaded me to add John Coltrane‘s Blue Train album to my collection. I’m certain he played the title track on his Sunday show for me.

Homecoming Weekend pulled up its stakes at 12:02 AM Monday morning, and on that note, we’ve reached the end of the 2022 recap. Thank you for reading, watching, and listening. Until next year.

Instrumental Invasion, 9/7/22: Dan Ingram Tribute September 8, 2022

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Game Shows, History, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Pop, Radio, Rock, TV.
add a comment

The September 7 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was a tribute to the late New York radio personality Dan Ingram on what would have been his 88th birthday. The tribute came 18 years after I played my re-creation of his closing theme edit of “Tri-Fi Drums” by Billy May and His Orchestra (from Wild Stereo Drums) to close The Instrumental Invasion that aired on Dan’s 70th. This tribute covered most of the show. The theme was songs that start with a letter in any of the call letters of stations Dan worked for. Talk breaks were supplemented by edits of jingles, led by my mashup of a WCWP jingle with the bell at the end of the WABC Chime Time jingle:

As I said on the air, thanks to Allan Sniffen and Jon Wolfert for their inspiration. I absorbed Big Dan’s lore from repeatedly listening to archives of The Life and Times of Dan Ingram: In His Own Words that Allan produced for Rewound Radio, and Jon’s The History of Musicradio WABC Jingles, also for Rewound Radio.

The show playlist was created on July 5 and annotated on the 6th, followed by the talk break script draft that carried into the 7th.

Unlike previous weeks, the show was mostly recorded sequentially, two segments per day from July 8 to 10. I recorded the last segment before recording the fifth because I anticipated going over or cutting it close. Instead, I was 14 seconds short, increasing my surplus to 22 seconds. The fifth segment dropped the surplus to 12 seconds. In the process of recording pickups on the 10th, with 12 seconds left to make up, I remixed the second and fourth segments that I painstakingly tweaked to run exactly 18 minutes during initial recording. The third talk break of the second segment was originally speed compressed and I cut my quip about most Love Connection contestants going home solo (a false memory, as the linked entry reminds me) – playing off the name of Julian Vaughn‘s album with “Love Connection” on it. I redid the entire talk break at regular speed with the quip included. Thus, that segment went 8 seconds over and the fourth went 4 over, completing the 18-minute average I strive for.

Speaking of “love,” “jeg elsker deg” (pronounced “yale skaday”) means “I love you” in Norwegian and the “I love you” vocal in Nick Colionne‘s cover of “Hurry Up This Way Again” (on Arrival) allowed me to reference Dan Ingram’s on-air affirmation while married to Norway native Anita Strand.

Enough talk. Click here to download the (tele)scoped aircheck MP3 or listen below:

This was my first aircheck (mostly) recorded from a new computer. More about that in an upcoming post.

Bonus material: