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, 12/21/22: Christmas December 22, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Christmas, Film, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, New Age, Personal, Radio.add a comment
The December 21 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the third annual Christmas special. All segments were recorded on November 16, the eve of my 41st birthday, making this the first show recorded in one day since November 2 (September 19). Pickups were recorded on Thanksgiving, November 24.
This show’s playlist was the second of three between I made November 7 and 9. It was created November 7th and 8th, annotated on the 9th and 11th, and the talk break script was drafted on the 14th and 15th.
Principal recording was a pain in the sleigh bells. I struggled with every segment’s second and third talk break. It was a Christmas miracle when I reached the end. I used up the entire 58-second surplus accrued in the first hour. That meant I had to tightly edit the second hour talk breaks, run short liners, and start some songs as beds, including the last song.
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Not included in the scope was a new community calendar I voiced and produced on Saturday (as I was getting over the flu):
And here is hip harpist Deborah Henson-Conant’s website, referenced after playing “We Three Kings of Orient Are.”
Merry Christmas.
Instrumental Invasion, 12/14/22 December 15, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, TV, Video.add a comment
The December 14 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded sequentially between November 13 and 15: three segments on the 13th, one on the 14th, and the last two (plus pickups and remixing) on the 15th.
I created the playlists for this week and the following two weeks between November 7 and 9. This one was created solely on November 7, and annotated on the 9th and 10th. The first hour of the talk break script was drafted before recording on the 13th and the second half on the 14th.
“Let’s Get Down Tonight” by Adam Hawley was originally played last December 8.
“River Waltz” by Yellowjackets wasn’t the only song crossed off my airplay wish list. I kept hearing “Pass It On” by Jeff Golub on SiriusXM’s Watercolors channel, but neglected to remind myself to put it in a show until this week. Here is the Instagram account for River Mae the Lab that inspired me to play “River Waltz.”
As noted during the show, “My Latin Lady” was one of a few songs by After Five excerpted during local forecasts on The Weather Channel (example). Discogs confirms they were After Five, their album was Jazz Expressions, and it was a printing error that led me and the internet (and me on the internet) to think the album was Expressions and the group was After Five Jazz.
Since I referenced Dancing with the Stars, what with all the dance-themed songs, I’ll note that season 31‘s semifinals aired during production of this week’s show. The finale, airing a week later, concluded with Charli D’Amelio and her pro partner Mark Ballas winning the Mirrorball Trophy.
Click here to download the scoped aircheck of this week’s show or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 12/7/22 December 8, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Christmas, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Travel, TV, Video.add a comment
The December 7 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded out of sequence on November 5 and 6. I did segments 1, 3, 5, and 4 on the 5th, and 6 and 1 on the 6th. Pickups were recorded on the 6th and 7th.
The playlist was created on October 28 alongside the one for last week. Annotations began on October 29 and didn’t resume until November 3. I went back to a script this week, which I drafted on the 4th and 5th. I’d have done it all on the 4th, but I had errands to run, including shipping the last of my eBay items referenced in my new camera post.
Like last week, I chose to record out of sequence so I could get the presumably short segments out of the way and bank time for the ones I expected to run long. Also like last week, I was still short after principal production, having to make up 15 seconds by reinstating my “fun fact” about Lynne Scott being friends with Laraine Newman.
The Futurama reference after “Robo Bop” by Fourplay dates back to an episode of Mike Chimeri’s Music Collection, my short-lived YouTube series. The excerpt I played was from this video (the title sequence for episode 4ACV17, “Spanish Fry”):
The November 7 pickups were for the second segment after missing an opportunity to link Amy Poehler and Laraine Newman as Saturday Night Live alumnae (that show has come up a lot lately) and memoir authors (Yes, Please and May You Live in Interesting Times). I met Laraine at New York Comic Con in 2019:
There were more callbacks to Homecoming Weekend this week. I returned the favor to Jett Lightning after he played the original “Blue Train” on his Sunday show, and I played two songs that were on my live Friday show. The songs are the respective artists’ current singles and previously heard on the regular Wednesday show (original air dates are in parentheses):
I was told not to play music from Lisa Hilton‘s new Paradise Cove album until after its release date last Friday. Since the title track shares its name with a favorite Russ Freeman composition, I bookended the show with each “Paradise Cove,” marking Lisa’s album’s debut on the show.
I referenced the Dutchess County trip yet again, doing so after “El Swing” by Hudson.
My “beat Army” line after acknowledging Dan LaMaestra‘s tenure with the U.S. Navy Band was coincidental. I forgot the annual Army-Navy [football] Game is this Saturday.
The Dan Ingram joke about Jack Jones stemmed from Dan’s backsell of “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” on June 25, 1966 (heard in Rewound Radio’s The Life and Times of Dan Ingram: In His Own Words):
I excluded the 1984 and earlier segment to allow for an extra segment of music from 2022 releases. The Hudson song filled a gap.
Excluded for only the fourth time in 140 shows was David Benoit. He will be back next week.
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 11/30/22 December 1, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Comedy, Dogs, Football, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Pets, Radio, Travel.add a comment
The November 30 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded out of sequence between October 31 (Halloween) and November 2. Three segments were recorded on October 31 (first, fifth, third), one on November 1 (second), and two on November 2 (fourth, sixth) followed by pickups.
The playlist was created alongside next week’s show on October 28. Annotations began on the 29th and were completed before recording on the 31st. To keep up my four-week buffer, I did not write a talk break script, going by annotations instead. Ironically, that made raw recordings longer as I searched for the right words to say.
“Tickle Time” by Herb Alpert makes me think of a video posted to Briar the Lab’s Instagram page: “Chomp the [imaginary] pickle. … Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle!”
This week and next, I include(d) songs that were played on my live Homecoming Weekend show (also unscripted). This week, it was “Pioneer Town” by David Benoit and “Eddie’s Groove” by Gerald Albright. Those songs were previously played on Wednesday nights – April 20 and July 27, respectively. I was unaware “November’s Child” by Special EFX was their latest single when I made the live show playlist on the afternoon of October 7. I found out via Watercolors during the car ride to Dutchess County that evening. I almost forgot to include it this week, but as you heard, it was the last song of November.
As you also heard, Bernie Bernard played “Time Out of Mind” by Steely Dan during her show after the Homecoming football game, hence its inclusion this week. I did not expect to find my description of the song’s antagonist so funny while backselling Grover Washington, Jr.’s cover, but the reaction speaks for itself. It’s funnier to call him a “pretentious, pseudo-religious” meshuggener (crazy person) than to end on the word “crank,” as Stewart Mason did in his review (per the “music and lyrics” section of the Gaucho Wikipedia entry). Next week, a nod to Jett Lightning’s inclusion of “Blue Train” in his show. (Read about the entire weekend here.)
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Bonus: the post-“Pioneer Town” (get it, Post Pioneers?) excerpt of a Jeff Kroll touchdown call from the 2017 Homecoming football game:
Instrumental Invasion, 11/23/22 November 24, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Blu-ray, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Travel, TV.add a comment
The November 23, Thanksgiving Eve Instrumental Invasion on WCWP took a while to develop, as Kenny Mayne would say. The playlist was created on September 27, annotations began on October 4 and weren’t completed until the 10th while in Staatsburg, the talk break script was drafted on the 12th followed by recording of the first hour, and the second hour and pickups were recorded a week later on October 19. I was going to record on the 13th, but my time mismanagement skills reared their ugly head, and I had a breakdown while rushing to complete errands. Thank goodness WCWP station manager Pete Bellotti talked me down. Per his advice, I suspended production on this show until after Homecoming Weekend, and production was completed on videos of two Saturday shows (Bernie Bernard; Mike Riccio and Bobby G.).
I usually have a wealth of inside information about this reference or that reference, but I’ve wasted enough time. So, click here to download the scoped aircheck or listen below:
Since writing the above text on October 19, I’ve published posts about Homecoming Weekend and what I now call the Dutchess County trip. Listening to “Far Away” by Robben Ford took me back to how far away I felt at times in the AirBNB on Connelly Drive. Watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on 4K Blu-ray on Tuesday (November 22), I realized I forgot to acknowledge Chuck Bennett’s trombone was also the “voice” of the adult whom Charlie Brown spoke to on the phone.
Happy Thanksgiving. Here’s hoping you get the long end of the wishbone like Woodstock (the bird, not the town half an hour northwest of Rhinebeck/Staatsburg).
Instrumental Invasion, 11/16/22 November 17, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Baseball, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Travel.add a comment
The November 16 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded from October 4 to 6: one segment on the 4th, two on the 5th, and the last three on the 6th. Pickups were recorded on the 6th, 7th, and 10th.
The playlist was created on September 27, and annotated from the 28th to the 30th. Work on next week’s show and the backup Homecoming Weekend prerecord kept me from drafting the talk break script. By October 4, I was desperate to start recording. An opportunity to record opened up at my secondary location – the home of that heavily noise reduced audio due to the central air conditioning indoor unit running next to my desk (that probably won’t be an issue again until May). So, I attempted to record the first segment unscripted based on the annotations, but before I could record the second talk break, the opportunity disappeared. I scripted the first segment on the way home and recorded once I was home. The rest of the script was drafted on October 5 before recording the next two segments. Of course, the live HCW show (also with “Billy’s Bop” and “Forecast“) was unscripted, and I ultimately went that route for the show two weeks from now.
I needed a song to fill the gap in the fourth segment and I chose “Silver Street” by Chris “Big Dog” Davis. I didn’t know I had already played it last February 10 until cataloging on October 7 before the weekend excursion to Dutchess County. I drafted much of this blog post on my laptop at the AirBNB.
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Postscript: Today, November 17, is my 41st birthday. My age is the same as the uniform number worn by my idol, New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver (1944-2020), who was also born on the 17th. The photos below were in a Tumblr post.
Instrumental Invasion, 11/9/22 November 10, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio.add a comment
The November 9 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded on September 26 (two segments) and 27 (four segments). Pickups were recorded on the 27th, 28th, and October 10.
The playlist was created on September 20, annotations were written between the 20th and 23rd, and the talk break script was drafted on the 23rd and 24th.
The 18:05 segment benchmark experiment is over. Next week’s playlist will have 18:10 segments in mind. It makes more sense to achieve a total of 1:49:00 than 1:48:30. I opted against remixing this show and the last two. I worked hard enough getting all the segment puzzle pieces to fit, and wasn’t about to work extra.
To make this week’s pieces fit, some ancillary information was edited out of talk breaks. The key omissions were disclaimers coming in and out of “La Fiesta” by Maynard Ferguson (cover). I suggested the listener lower their volume because of Maynard’s intense trumpeting – “you might want to lower the volume; it gets intense” – then told them afterward it was safe to raise the volume – “okay, you can turn the volume back up.” So, I apologize for any unanticipated discomfort.
For the second week in a row, the last song of hour 1 was by Beegie Adair and the last of the show was by Yellowjackets.
“Kiss and Make Up” by George Benson was the latest CD 101.9 staple to air on Instrumental Invasion. (I know the station was resurrected on HD Radio and the internet, but it’s not the same.)
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 11/2/22 November 3, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Film, History, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Politics, Radio, Sci-Fi, TV, Video.add a comment
The November 2 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded and mixed entirely on September 19, the first one-day record/mix since June 27 when I worked on all of the August 17 show and the first segment of August 24. I made a timing error when remixing the third segment, which I didn’t notice until September 20. An extra liner and a pickup were required to add five seconds so that “+:13” on the playlist below was true. Additional pickups were recorded on October 10 (after returning from Dutchess County) to correct a factual error about bassist Harvie S‘s “Pyramid” composition, and then to react to a shorter replacement liner.
The playlist was created on September 10 (a day after last week’s show) and annotated on the 14th (after completing last week’s annotations). The talk break script draft began on the 16th, but didn’t resume until the 18th once production was completed on the prior show.
“Incumbent Waltz” is the seventh Vince Guaraldi-composed music cue for a Peanuts special that I’ve played, and a timely one with the midterm elections next Tuesday. Here’s where you can buy those Glenn Cronkhite Custom Cases I referenced in the backsell.
Two songs that aired previously are listed below with the first air date (in parentheses) and the reason for playing again:
- “Creole” by The Crusaders (November 18, 2020) – tie-in with “Fish Grease” by Jazz Funk Soul
- “In Too Deep” by Pieces of a Dream (December 29, 2021) – current single
I originally had the 2011 version of “Altair and Vega” by Bob James and Keiko Matsui in mind last July 14, but a different timing error – miscalculating the song’s duration – required a replacement. I made up for that this week, complete with the story of Tanabata/Hoshimatsuri, a festival centered around the two titular stars. You can read the Wikipedia entry in the previous sentence, but I also recommend this short video by GTV Japan:
Coincidentally, the show last July had a Star Trek reference leading into the first song. This week’s first song, complete with my paraphrase of the opening spiel, was Maynard Ferguson’s cover of the “Theme from Star Trek.” I had no idea Larry King adopted it as his radio show theme.
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
MikeChimeri.com 