While the work of radio stations using terrestrial transmitters is a typical discussion topic on Radio Survivor, for this episode we find ourselves examining music and talk beamed down from satellites orbiting the earth. Satellite radio as we know it began in the 1990s, with its major players launching satellite radio services in the early 2000s. Brian Fauteux, Associate Professor of Popular Music and Media Studies at University of Alberta joins us on the show to discuss the fascinating history and relevance of satellite radio to both radio culture and the music industry. Brian is the author of the new book, “Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age,” released in 2025.

Show Notes:

• Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age (UC Press)
• Brian Fauteux
• SiriusXM
• HBCU channel on SiriusXM
• Aquarium Drunkard
• Sirius XMU
• Behind the Scenes of XMU’s “Student Exchange Program” (SpinningIndie)
• Matthew Lasar on “Radio 2.0” (Radio Survivor)
• Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium by Matthew Lasar
• Flashback Radio Survivor articles by Brian Fauteux circa 2014-2016! (Radio Survivor)

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Eric Klein
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #344 – Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Thanksgiving 2024 is a bit sadder this year, with the news that Alice Brock has passed away. What a cruel irony that the woman who inspired the Thanksgiving-themed Arlo Guthrie folk song “Alice’s Restaurant,” departed just a week before radio stations across the land would be broadcasting the story-song inspired by and named after her.

I feel so lucky to have been able to chat with Alice Brock back in 2020 on the Radio Survivor podcast, which we have presented again this year in her honor. This Alice Brock episode is recommended listening, especially in 2024, as it provides perspective on how Guthrie’s song came to be and why it has resonated with so many people.

Although I’ve been compiling lists of where to listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio pretty much every year since 2010, the lists are never complete and chances are that most folks will need to do their own sleuthing in order to ascertain where to tune in to hear the classic.

In lieu of a listening guide this year, I offer up tips on how to find out if your hometown station is playing “Alice’s Restaurant.”

How to find “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio in 2024

• Consult the 2023 Radio Survivor “Alice’s Restaurant” listening guide to get a sense of stations likely to play the song in your area
• Check the social media accounts and websites of stations that tend to play “Alice’s Restaurant” for posts about air times (In past years, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been helpful resources)
• If you are at a loss for station ideas, focus on commercial classic rock stations, public radio stations, and folk/country-oriented specialty shows on college and community radio stations
• To dig even deeper, look through previous Radio Survivor listening guides (which date back to 2010!) to get clues about the array of stations broadcasting the song annually

Have a wonderful 2024 Thanksgiving celebration!

The post Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio Thanksgiving 2024 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Several years ago, Radio Survivor had the pleasure of speaking with artist and restaurateur Alice Brock, the woman who provided much inspiration for Arlo Guthrie’s inadvertent Thanksgiving Day radio staple, “Alice’s Restaurant.” Sadly, Alice Brock passed away on November 21, 2024 at the age of 83, just a week before the classic rock radio airwaves will be blanketed with the song that made her famous.

This year, in honor of Alice, we are presenting the Radio Survivor episode that we recorded with her in advance of Thanksgiving 2020, which was the most unusual of holidays, as the COVID-19 pandemic kept many of us separated from friends and family. During our discussion, Alice Brock shares with us not only some insight into the 18-minute anti-war epic “Alice’s Restaurant”; but also stories about her life and holiday traditions. For 2020, Brock was inspired to create a special introductory message for radio stations to play in advance of “Alice’s Restaurant,” and she explains why she was moved to offer up these words of thanks during that pandemic year in particular.

As we approach another holiday, our thoughts go out to Alice Brock’s friends and family. We are so grateful to have had the chance to chat with Alice and share Thanksgiving 2020 with her through the magic of podcasting.

Show Notes:

• Thanksgiving Radio Tradition withstands the Pandemic as “Alice’s Restaurant” Hits the 2020 Airwaves
• Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio Thanksgiving 2024
• Radio Survivor posts documenting where to hear “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio
• Alice Brock’s Message for Radio Stations (NFCB)
• Alice Brock’s website

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein, and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast: Remembering Alice Brock of Alice’s Restaurant appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Journalist Marc Masters joins us to discuss his book, High Bias: the Distorted History of the Cassette Tape. We dive into how the oft-maligned cassette influenced the music industry and our culture by inspiring musicians, taking music to the streets and returning power back to listeners.

Show Notes

• High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape at UNC Press
• High Bias: Music from the Book
• The Music Book Podcast
• The Spindle: A Podcast About 7-inch Records
• Minoy
• Shrimper Records and Tapes
• Aaron Dilloway
• Howard Steltzer
• The Daily Ping: The Personics System

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Paul Riismandel
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #341 – The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Arlo Guthrie’s seasonally appropriate “Alice’s Restaurant” is getting dusted off once again for radio airplay this Thanksgiving 2023.

I’ve been documenting this radio ritual for many years (even while suffering with COVID last year) and was pleased to be able to speak to THE Alice in 2020. Our Radio Survivor conversation with Alice Brock is recommended listening, as it provides perspective on how Guthrie’s song came to be and why it has resonated with so many people.

This year, I was amused to see that there’s a podcast, 108.9 The Hawk, about a fictional classic rock radio station. Apparently in prior years they have done episodes about the rock station staple, “Alice’s Restaurant,” and for 2023 they have produced a mega episode. They write, “Well, now for the very first time, experience BOTH specials – ‘Alice’s Restaurant Attacks!’ and ‘Alice’s Revenge’ combined into one blood curdling, spine chilling, family dinner ruining episode!” Sounds intriguing.

Have a wonderful 2023 Thanksgiving celebration! If catching “Alice’s Restaurant” is part of your holiday tradition, read on for my guide to listening options on your radio dial for 2023.

As always, this is an incomplete list. DO double check with your local stations to be sure that times have not shifted. Additionally, I am only including stations for which I have verified that they will be airing “Alice’s Restaurant” for 2023. However, you may want to consult my prior radio guides to identify other radio stations that tend to play the song annually.

Pre-Thanksgiving Servings of “Alice’s Restaurant” on the Radio in 2023

“Alice’s Restaurant” is also airing before Thanksgiving on some stations. On Monday, November 20, WDIY 88.1 FM (Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania) airs “Alice’s Restaurant” between 7 and 9pm on Steve Aaronson’s “Folk Classics” show, which features a Thanksgiving theme. Additionally, on Tuesday, November 21, “Alice’s Restaurant” airs on WESU 88.1 FM (Middletown, CT) at around 7pm during the Acoustic Blender show.

On Wednesday, November 22, Angelica Community Radio WRAQ 92.7 FM (Angelica, NY) broadcasts it at 9am and WTMT-FM 105.9 The Mountain (Asheville, North Carolina) will air it at 6pm.

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2023 – November 23, 2023

Last updated on November 21, 2023 at 5:21pm PT. Note that all times are local to the area in which the station is located.

Terrestrial and Online Radio:

WAMC Northeast Public Radio 90.3 FM and 1400 AM (Albany, NY) writes of its Thanksgiving Day plans: “At 12 p.m. we’ll listen to our traditional airing of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’” followed by an interview with Arlo Guthrie at 1 p.m.”

Wyoming Public Media will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am on Thanksgiving Day, as part of the Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving special (9am to noon) “with host Grady Kirkpatrick featuring roots music, Native American, and Wyoming artists along with the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic Alice’s Restaurant beginning at 11am.”

WRUR 88.FM at University of Rochester (Rochester, New York) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11:30am during Open Tunings with Scott Regan. Kane O, who has been airing this song for many years, writes on Facebook, “BIG ‘Ups’ to my Pal, Professor Scott Regan for letting me crash his show to carry on our wonderful tradition! Thankful indeed! #42.”

WDRC 102.9 FM “The Whale” (Hartford, Connecticut) writes, “Tune into 1029 The Whale on Thanksgiving at 6a, Noon and 6pm we will be playing Alice’s Restaurant in it’s entirety!”

WCSX 94.7 FM (Detroit, Michigan) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 10am and 4pm on Thanksgiving.

WMGK 102.9 FM (Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania) continues its annual tradition. According to the station’s website, “Everyone can enjoy the tradition of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on MGK three times on Thanksgiving day in 2023. Paul Kelly will start it off by playing the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic at 8 a.m., and Danny Ocean will play it at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.”

WZOO 99.9 FM (Central North Carolina) and 700 AM (Asheboro) and 106.1 FM (Greensboro) writes on Facebook of its plans: “Are you wondering if WZOO is going to continue the tradition of playing Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie on Thanksgiving? You bet we are! Listen at 12:05 pm, right after the news! Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at The ZOO!”

WAFX 106.9 FM The Fox (Chesapeake, Virginia) writes on Facebook, “The Thanksgiving tradition continues on Thursday at 12 noon with the airing of Arlo Guthrie’s performance of “Alice’s Restaurant” hosted by Mike Arlo!”

Rock Radio 559 (Porterville, California) posted on Facebook, “A radio tradition every Thanksgiving. Arlo Guthrie ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ 12 noon and 7pm Thanksgiving Day on rockradio559.com.”

WTMT-FM 105.9 The Mountain (Asheville, North Carolina) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving Day and Thanksgiving Eve. On Facebook the station posted, “The Thanksgiving tradition continues! Alice’s Restaurant on 105.9 The Mountain. You’ll hear it on Wednesday night at 6pm and twice on Thanksgiving Day at Noon and 6pm.”

WTTS 92.3 FM (Indianapolis, Indiana) writes on Facebook, “Welcome to a short holiday week! We are all set to provide Thursday’s soundtrack. OverEasy Thanksgiving is back on 92-3 WTTS, with laid-back World Class Rock all day long. We’ll also play Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving classic ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ four times: 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 9pm.”

WEZX Rock 107 (Scranton, Pennsylvania) plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” according to its Facebook post, “Alice’s Restaurant has become a timeless tradition. Tune in Thanksgiving Day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm You can get anything you want at Rock 107.”

WEHM 92.9 FM and 96.9 FM (Water Mill, NY) tweeted, “Thanksgiving Day, don’t miss out on Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ hosted by Lauren Stone! Special airings at 12pm, 3pm and 6pm!”

107.5 The Breeze (Portsmouth, Ohio) tweeted, “We’re celebrating a Holiday Classic: ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo Guthrie. Follow along as the story unfolds on Thanksgiving Day. It’s always brought to you by Preston Family Funeral Home on Rt. 5 in Ashland. Hear it this Thursday at 9am, Noon and 5pm.”

KPIG 107.5FM and KPYG 94.9 FM Cayucos/SLO (Freedom, California) reports, “On Thanksgiving day, tune into the pig and hear the full version of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ four times…at 9:00am, noon, 4:00pm, and again at 9:00pm. We hope you and yours have a safe – and healthy – Thanksgiving holiday.”

101 The Fox (Kansas City, Kansas) writes, “A Thanksgiving gift from our family to yours…This Thanksgiving day at 12:00 noon and again at 6pm. 101 The Fox presents all 18 minutes, eleven seconds of Arlo Guthrie’s epic Thanksgiving masterpiece!”

Backland Radio (online) reports that it is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 8am, noon, 5pm and 9pm Central Time on Thanksgiving on The Whip at Backland Radio.

92 KQRS (Minneapolis, Minnesota) reports of this year’s “Alice’s Restaurant” tradition: “Our long-standing tradition of spinning Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Thanksgiving continues! You have three opportunities to hear it this year: Tune in at 9am, 12pm and 5pm on Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at KQRS!”

KINK 101.9 FM (Portland, OR): Per its website, “It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving if we didn’t play the Arlo Guthrie classic, now would it. Listen at noon for ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and a full second helping at 5pm!”

WTHS 89.9 FM Hope College Radio (Holland, Michigan) is playing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving Day.

WRHQ 105.3 FM (Savannah, Georgia) writes on its website, “Tradition! That’s what Alice’s Restaurant is on the Q and you’ll hear it three times Thanksgiving Day…. 9:30 in the morning, 12:30 in the afternoon and 6:30 in the evening presented by O.C. Welch Ford in Hardeeville.  Alice and Turkey on the Q!”

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

WDVX 89.9 FM in Knoxville, Tennessee is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving. Its website says, “WDVX serves up ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ a song by Arlo Guthrie and a long time Thanksgiving day tradition on WDVX.”

WUMB 91.9 FM (Boston, MA and environs) writes, “The Thanksgiving tradition continues with Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ airing in the 9am, 12pm, and 3pm hours.”

KSER 90.7 FM (Everett, Washington) writes, “Listen at 2pm Thursday for our annual broadcast of the Arlo Guthrie classic.”

WBJB Brookdale Public Radio 90.5 The Night (Lincroft, New Jersey): Will be playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm.

KTOJ 105.7 FM (Thousand Oaks, California) airs “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 5pm.

KTYD 99.9 FM (Santa Barbara, CA) writes on Facebook: “KTYD’s Annual Thanksgiving Tradition! Listen Thursday at 6:30 and 9:30am, 12:30, 3:30 and 6:30pm.”

WXOX-LP 97.1 FM (Louisville, Kentucky) reached out to alert us that they will be playing “Alice’s” at 9:40am on Thanksgiving Day.

WWSF Seacoast Oldies 104.3 FM (Exeter, Maine) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WMVY 88.7 FM (Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod and environs) aka MVY Radio writes on Facebook: “Be sure to tune in to MVYRADIO this Thanksgiving at noon as we play Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving tradition, ‘Alice’s Restaurant.’ This will be the 40th year of this turkey day tradition.”

WQUT 101.5 FM Tri-Cities Classic Rock (Tri-Cities, Tennessee) reports on Facebook, “An enduring Thanksgiving tradition continues! Arlo Guthrie’s classic, ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ will play at noon and 6:00PM on Thanksgiving on WQUT!”

WEBN 102.7 FM (Cincinnati, Ohio) carries on the tradition. DJ Nudge writes on Facebook, “I have 0 clue why we do it or why it matters to you, I just know you go LOONEY for ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ getting a spin at high noon on 102.7 WEBN every Turkey Day” and asks, “Tradition for Tradition sake, I don’t think anyone high-a-top Frog’s Mountain knows why anymore. Why do YOU love us playing the song annually and what does it mean to you?”

WABF 1480 AM (Fairhope, Alabama) writes on Facebook, “Join us for Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ Thanksgiving day at noon and 6pm.”

KWSC 91.9 FM “The Cat” (Wayne, Nebraska) at Wayne State College tweets that, “@ProfAhern brought a Thanksgiving tradition to KWSC-FM. Tune in at 12 on Thanksgiving to hear about littering, the draft and a swell Thanksgiving dinner at Alice’s Restaurant.”

WXPN 88.5 FM (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) reports that it will be continuing its tradition amongst its Thanksgiving Day special programming. According to its website, at “12 Noon: Mike V presents our annual airing of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant‘!”

The post Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio Thanksgiving 2023 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide.

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us and for radio fanatics like myself, that means another year tracking the radio stations that play Arlo Guthrie’s seasonally appropriate “Alice’s Restaurant.” Especially with the strangeness of the last few years in light of COVID, nostalgia is likely a big reason that listeners seek out the radio to hear a familiar tune in times of stress. It might be something that reminds one of the past, whether remembering “Alice’s Restaurant” from back in the 60s or 70s or tapping into memories from Thanksgiving preparations or celebrations at relatives’ homes more recently.

I’ve been documenting this radio ritual for many many years and was pleased to be able to speak to THE Alice in 2020 as part of our lead up to the muted 2020 holiday season. Be sure to listen to our Radio Survivor podcast conversation with Alice Brock, as it provides perspective on how Guthrie’s song came to be and why it has resonated with so many people.

“Alice’s Restaurant” has been an on-air tradition for decades, with fans calling up stations to confirm that it will be airing again each year. Doing my research for this year’s list, I was struck by a post from one DJ who was saddened to not be presenting the song on the radio after more than 40 consecutive years, largely due to scheduling challenges with the broadcast of a football game. Earlier this week, longtime WCMF host Dave Kane-O wrote on Facebook,

..I have received MANY an inquiry about bringing you to Alice’s Restaurant this year. I am humbled & flattered to no end, & I sincerely thank you. Alas, it does not look good for a broadcast this year, and I am sorry about that…Sooooooo, at the very least, I will post my personal greeting to you here on my Kane O FB page on Thursday about 12 Noon, and provide a link to listen to ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ for your enjoyment. I KNOW it’s not the same (what is anymore?!), and I was really hoping to be able to host it for the 42nd year in a row, but…nothing is forever. Except my sincere, ever-lovin’ appreciation for ALLA Y’all! So, you’ll have the ‘basic ingredients’ for our Thanksgiving tradition, just not in the same way you’re used to…

The P.S. to this story, is that DJ Dave Kane-O will be playing “Alice’s Restaurant” over Facebook Live instead. So, his WCMF and WRUR fans can tune in at 9am to continue their Thanksgiving listening tradition with their favorite DJ.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful 2022 Thanksgiving celebration! If you are eager to tune in to a radio station to hear “Alice’s Restaurant” this year, take a look at the following options. As always, this is an incomplete list.

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2022 – November 24, 2022

Last updated on November 24, 2022. Note that all times are local to the area in which the station is located.

Terrestrial and Online Radio:

101 The Fox (Kansas City, Kansas) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm on Thanksgiving.

KPIG 107.5FM and KPYG 94.9 FM Cayucos/SLO (Freedom, California) will play the full version of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9:00am, noon, 4:00pm, and again at 9:00pm on Thanksgiving.

94HJY (Providence, Rhode Island) writes, “…we’ll be playing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” as we have for the last million or so years.” Airs at noon on Thanksgiving.

Backland Radio (online) writes “Hear Arlo’s Alice’s Restaurant at 8am, noon, 5pm and 9pm CST Thanksgiving on The Whip at backlandradio.com!”

WDRC 102.9 The Whale (Hartford, Connecticut) will play Alice’s Restaurant in its entirety at 6am, Noon and 6p on Thanksgiving.

107.1 The Peak (Port Chester, New York) will be airing its “18th Annual Unplucked Thanksgiving. Complete with TWO helpings of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ at noon and 6pm. Listen online at 1071ThePeak.com , on your smart phone via The Peak app or TuneIn Radio, and at home on your smart devices.”

94.7 FM KSHE-95 (St. Louis, Missouri) writes, “After you fill up with family and friends today, tune in at Noon for another Thanksgiving tradition, Alice’s Restaurant & Adam Sandler’s Thanksgiving Song.”

WBLM 102.9 FM (Portland, Maine) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

102.9 WMGK (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) writes, “Paul Kelly will spin ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ at 8am on Thursday, and Danny Ocean will play it again at 1pm and 4pm.” The station adds, ‘MGK program director Bill Weston says the song has played on the airwaves “as long as anyone can remember’ on Thanksgiving day. He recalls something that started as somewhat of a stretch because of the lack of music easily associated with Thanksgiving but ultimately became a widespread radio tradition.”

WFIT 89.5 FM (Melbourne, Florida) will air a special edition of FM Odyssey from 10am to 1pm, which will include “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon, with an introduction by the real Alice. FM Odyssey writes, “We have plenty of side dishes as well, like the Thanksgiving concert classic, ‘The Last Waltz”‘ from the Band, and John Lennon’s surprise appearance at Elton’s Madison Square Garden concert on Thanksgiving night, November 21st, 1974 (the night he and Yoko got back together!). Visual songs about November, tunes about traveling as many have done for this holiday.”

Cruisin’ 92.9 FM (Lansing, Michigan) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

MVY Radio (88.7 FM West Tisbury, Massachusetts) reports on Facebook, “The tradition continues! We will be playing Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Thanksgiving Day at noon.”

WGBG Big 107.7 FM (Delmarva, Maryland) writes, “A Thanksgiving Tradition! Thursday at noon gather the family around the radio for Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” on Big 107.7 and worldwide at Bigclassicrock.com.”

WYMG 100.5 FM (Springfield, Illinois) writes, “WYMG’s Thanksgiving Day Tradition continues. Hear Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”, in it’s entirety, 12 noon on Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving from Lynch, Amy Nelson, Sonja, Big Steve, and ALL of us at 100.5 WYMG!!”

92 KQRS (Minneapolis, Minnesota) reports of this year’s “Alice’s Restaurant” tradition: “You have three opportunities to hear it this year: Tune in at 9am, 12pm and 7pm on Thanksgiving Day!”

KRYZ 98.5 LPFM Mariposa Community Radio (Mariposa, California) reports: “As is our Thanksgiving Day tradition, we will be playing Arlo Guthries Alice’s Restaurant at 2 pm PST on 11-24-22. Tune in for a hilarious Thanksgiving journey with Arlo Guthrie and the Man right here on KRYZ-LPFM 98.5 and www.KRYZRadio.org.“

WCSX 94.7 FM (Detroit, Michigan) writes on Facebook: “”You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” Listen to WCSX Thanksgiving Day: 10am and 4pm to hear this classic rock tradition.”

WMMR 93.3 FM (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) airs Pierre Robert’s “Welcome Home” Thanksgiving Day show from 10am to 3pm on Thanksgiving Day. He writes, “I’ll be taking requests, dedications and holiday wishes for the MMR family coming together on Thanksgiving Day. And yes, I’ll serve up the traditional Alice’s Restaurant at 10am, noon and a Pierre’s vinyl cut version at 2pm.”

WXPN 88.5 FM (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) will be airing a special schedule on Thanksgiving, including Mike V presenting the station’s annual airing of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon.

KINK 101.9 FM (Portland, OR): Per its website, “Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant has been a KINK Thanksgiving tradition for more than 40 years. Tune in at noon Thanksgiving Day (November 24th) for a full helping.”

WEZX Rock 107 (Scranton, Pennsylvania) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” four times on Thanksgiving Day. They write, “As you gather with your family to carve the bird, we bring you the Thanksgiving tradition of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. Based on a true story in Arlo’s life with a run-in with the law on Thanksgiving Day back in 1965, Alice’s Restaurant has become a timeless tradition.  Tune in Thanksgiving Day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm You can get anything you want at Rock 107.”

WTHS 89.9 FM Hope College Radio (Holland, Michigan) shares on Twitter, “Twitter may be going up in flames, but WTHS remains steady in tradition of playing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving Day. Tune in!”

107.5 The Breeze (Portsmouth, Ohio) tweeted on Wednesday, 11/23 about its Thanksgiving Day airing: “Join us tomorrow at 9:00am, Noon & 5pm for a Holiday Classic: ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo Guthrie. Follow along as the story unfolds on Thanksgiving Day-Based on true, but slightly exaggerated events. Brought to you by Preston Family Funeral Home on Rt. 5 in Ashland.”

WRHQ 105.3 FM (Savannah, Georgia) writes on its website, “Tradition! That’s what Alice’s Restaurant is on the Q and you’ll hear it three times Thanksgiving Day…. 9:30 in the morning, 12:30 in the afternoon
and 6:30 in the evening presented by O.C. Welch Ford Lincoln in Hardeeville.”

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

WDVX 89.9 FM in Knoxville, Tennessee is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

Wyoming Public Radio is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am during the Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving Special (9am-noon) with host Grady Kirkpatrick. Program will include roots music, Native American, and Wyoming artists along with the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic Alice’s Restaurant beginning at 11am.

WDRV 97.1 FM The Drive (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am and 3pm, along with other special Thanksgiving programming. I love that they are featuring “drum sticks” in honor of Thanksgiving. From noon to 1pm the station airs “The Drive Drumstick Feast,” which they describe as “an hour of the greatest classic rock drummers of all time.”

WNCW 88.7 FM (Spindale, NC) writes, “Your WNCW family has a seat at the table for you, with songs of food & gratitude all day long this Thursday. In one of our favorite annual traditions, Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” from 1967 will be served up just past Noon.”

WUMB 91.9 FM (Boston, MA and environs) writes, “Join us for a Thanksgiving tradition as we’ll play Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant multiple times on Thanksgiving Day. You can tune in to hear it in 9am, 12pm, 3pm, and 7pm hours as our Artist of the Day feature. Happy Thanksgiving!”

KSER 90.7 FM (Everett, Washington) will play it annual broadcast of “Alice’s Restaurant” at 2pm on Thanksgiving Day.

99.1 PLR (New Haven, CT) writes: “A PLR Thanksgiving Day Tradition! As you enjoy all that turkey and pie, tune in for Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ in its entirety at 6am, 12 noon and 6pm! Enjoy!”

Space 101.1 FM (Seattle, Washington): is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WBJB Brookdale Public Radio 90.5 The Night (Lincroft, New Jersey): Got a report that “Every year the original version airs at 12 noon. And this year there’s a ‘Second Helping’ at 6pm with the ’50th Anniversary’ version.”

The post Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio for Thanksgiving 2022 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s program, we turn our attention to the history of industrial music – not the noisy music genre – but music played in industrial settings for workers. A variety of services offered (and still offer) background music for workplaces. Muzak and the RCA Plant Broadcasting System are just a few of the products that were sold to companies in the hopes of increasing morale and/or efficiency. Our guest, Alix Hui is associate professor of History at Mississippi State University and has been studying the history of industrial music systems, as well as background music generally.

Show Notes:

• Alexandra Hui profile at Mississippi State University website
• Alix’s paper at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference: “Laboring Sound: Industrial Music Systems, Worker Morale, and Pan-Aural Listening”
• Walter Van Dyke Bingham, industrial psychologist (Wikipedia)
• Muzak history (Wikipedia)
• Mood Media website
• Attention K-Mart Shoppers: K-Mart radio/audio collection on Archive.org
• Muzak to Get Mutated To: E-Z Listening with DEVO (article on Dangerous Minds)
• Scholar Emily Thompson

The post Podcast #327: Industrial Music Systems and Workplace Broadcasts appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide.

As Thanksgiving approaches, my thoughts turn once again to “Alice’s Restaurant,” the epic Arlo Guthrie song that is a beloved turkey day tradition for radio stations all over the United States. I’ve been chronicling this ritual for many many years and was pleased to be able to speak to THE Alice last year as part of our lead up to a very strange 2020 holiday season. DO check out our Radio Survivor podcast conversation with Alice Brock, as it will give your some perspective on how Guthrie’s song came to be and why it has resonated with so many people.

Here’s hoping that your 2021 Thanksgiving celebrations are a bit more festive than last year and that everyone near and dear to you is healthy and happy! If you are eager to tune in to a radio station to hear “Alice’s Restaurant” this year, take a look at the following options. Check back for updates as Thanksgiving draws near.

Pre-Thanksgiving Listening Options:

Perhaps you’ve already heard “Alice’s Restaurant” over the airwaves, as many stations get into the Thanksgiving spirit early. WDIY in Lehigh Valley played it Monday night. KSRW 92.5 FM in Bishop, California played it on Monday at 11am and will also air it on Wednesday at 3pm and Friday at 8pm. KZUM 89.3 FM in Lincoln, Nebraska aired it on Tuesday at 5pm.

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2021 – November 25, 2021

Last updated on November 24, 2021. Note that all times are local to the area in which the station is located.

Terrestrial and Online Radio:

WCSX 94.7 FM (Detroit, Michigan) writes on Facebook: “Our Thanksgiving tradition continues with Arlo Guthrie’s classic holiday story ‘Alice’s Restaurant”’ It airs first at 10am Thanksgiving Day and if you’re up for a second helping, again at 4pm!”

92 KQRS (Minneapolis, Minnesota) reports on its website, “Our long-standing tradition of spinning Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Thanksgiving continues! You have three opportunities to hear it this year: Tune in at 8am, 12pm and 7pm on Thanksgiving Day!”

KSRW 92.5 FM Sierra Wave (Bishop, California) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” before and after (but not on) Thanksgiving: Monday, November 22 at 11am, Wednesday, November 24 at 3pm, and Friday, November 26 at 8pm.

WKZE 98.1 FM (Red Hook, New York) writes on Facebook: “Enjoy the ENTIRE 15 ½ minutes at 12-noon, 3pm and 6pm. If you’re traveling or want to have a listening party with absent friends, tune into our live webstream at https://981kze.com/listen-live/.”

WROI 92.1 (Rochester, Indiana) Giant FM writes on Facebook: “Our Thanksgiving Day treat for you is coming up on Thursday at noon! We will play the entire/long version of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Giant fm 92.1 WROI.”

WEZX Rock 107 (Scranton, Pennsylvania) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving Day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm.

WTMD 89.7 FM (Baltimore, Maryland) presents the annual airing of “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WTHS 89.9 FM Hope College Radio (Holland, Michigan) shares on Twitter, “WTHS will again serve up the perfect side dish to your turkey day feast with Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, Thanksgiving day at noon…on WTHS, 89.9FM and streaming.”

WMMR 93.3 FM (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) tweeted, “@PierreRobert933 will play Alice’s Restaurant 3 times on Thanksgiving: 10am – original recording Noon – ‘The Massacree Revisited’ 2pm – vinyl cut.”

WXPN 88.5 FM (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12noon as it does every year.

101 The Fox (Kansas City, Kansas) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

MVY Radio (88.7 FM Martha’s Vineyard, MA and 96.5 FM Newport, Rhode Island) reports on Twitter, “Plan to be listening to MVY at noon on Thanksgiving day! We will play @folkslinger‘s Alice’s Restaurant!”

TNN Country Radio writes on Twitter, “We’ll be playing Arlo Guthrie’s classic Alice’s Restaurant on Thursday at 12pm ET! Tune in for our new Thanksgiving tradition!”

107.5 The Breeze (Portsmouth, Ohio) tweets: “Join us this Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, as we play a Holiday Classic: ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo Guthrie. Hear it at 9am, Noon and 5pm. Follow along as the story unfolds on Thanksgiving Day. It’s brought to you by Preston Family Funeral Home, Rt. 5 in Ashland”

WXPK 107.1 FM The Peak (White Plains, New York). Poughkeepsie Journal reports that the station will air “Alice’s Restaurant” five times: “It will play on the eve of the holiday, as part of the station’s 10@10 block of songs at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, at noon and 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving, and on the Weekend Replay of the 10@10 on Sunday after Thanksgiving at about 6 p.m.”

WDVX 89.9 FM in Knoxville, Tennessee is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

Wyoming Public Radio is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am during the Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving Special (10am-noon) with host Grady Kirkpatrick. Program will include roots music, Native American and Wyoming artists along with the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic Alice’s Restaurant beginning at 11:00 a.m. with a special introduction from the original restauranteur Alice Brock.

WDRV 97.1 FM The Drive (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, Noon, and 4pm.

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

WRHQ 105.3 FM (Savannah, Georgia) writes on its website, “Tradition! That’s what Alice’s Restaurant is on the Q and you’ll hear it three times Thanksgiving Day…. 9:30 in the morning, 12:30 in the afternoon
and 6:30 in the evening presented by your Vinyl Headquarters Rody’s Records“

WNCW 88.7 FM (Spindale, NC) writes that on Thanksgiving Day it will play “songs of food & gratitude all day long, with Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ just past Noon.”

WUMB 91.9 FM (Boston, MA and environs) writes, “Tune in on Thursday, November 25th for special programming highlights including airings of Arlo Guthrie’s classic ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ at 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, and 7 PM, as well as selections from The Band’s The Last Waltz concert that took place on Thanksgiving Day at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in 1976.”

KINK 101.9 FM (Portland, OR): Per its website, “Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant has been a KINK Thanksgiving tradition for more than 30 years. Catch it twice on Thanksgiving Day (November 25th) this year, 12pm and 5pm.”

Backland Radio (online) writes that it will air Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie four times at 8am, 12 noon, 5pm and 9pm Central time on The Whip.

KSER 90.7 FM 89.9 FM (Everett, Washington) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 2pm.

KXT 91.7 FM will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm.

99.1 PLR (New Haven, CT) is playing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” in its entirety at 6am, 12 noon and 6pm.

WCMF (Rochester, NY) is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WXOX-LP 97.1 FM (Louisville, Kentucky) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 10am on Thanksgiving.

The post “Alice’s Restaurant” Remains a 2021 Thanksgiving Radio Staple appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s show, we return to the topic of hip-hop on the radio. While on Radio Survivor, we typically focus on non-commercial radio, like college and community stations; in this episode we look at why certain types of commercial radio stations were important to the growth in popularity of hip-hop music. Our guest, Amy Coddington, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Amherst College and is writing a book about the history of hip-hop on commercial radio.

Show Notes:

• Amy Coddington’s website
• Podcast #145: Hip-Hop Radio Archive with guest Ryan MacMichael
• Podcast #152: The Longest Running Hip-Hop Radio Show in the World? with guest DJ A-L
• Community radio station KGNU is home to The Eclipse Show
• Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant
• Backstory on “Walk this Way” from the Atlantic: “How Aerosmith and Run-DMC Begrudgingly Made a Masterpiece”
• Power 106 Los Angeles radio station
• Jason Tanz wrote the book: Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America
• Public Enemy’s “Rebel without a Pause” in the HipHop Archive and Research Institute
• Chuck D
• Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract
• Amber Ruffin on rap lyrics being cut from radio edits of songs
• Snoop Dog
• Hot 97 radio station in New York
• Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight (1979)
• Blondie’s Rapture (1980)
• Wham’s Wham! Rap (1982)
• Influential DJ Frankie Crocker of radio station WBLS
• The Pharcyde

The post Podcast # 320 – How Hip-Hop Made it to Top 40 Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I have been collecting digital music files since the MP3 became a practical storage and transmission format in the late 90s. Whether traded, ripped from my own CDs, downloaded in the heydays of Emusic.com – which for a time served up all-you-can-download music from mostly independent labels for a reasonable monthly fee – or purchased direct from artists or on Bandcamp, I’ve amassed a pretty substantial, and idiosyncratic digital music library.

Because I worked in IT and can be a little obsessive, I’ve also done a pretty good job of holding onto this collection, backed up in many ways across CD-Rs, then spare hard drives and, now, the cloud. But in 2021 such a collection is most valuable only if you can listen to it everywhere and every way you might listen to Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music or Tidal.

That brings me to Plex.

Plex is a free audio and video streaming platform that was created to let you host and stream your own media collection to just about anywhere on the internet. At its most basic, you install the Plex server software on a computer – available for Windows, MacOS and most flavors of Linux – where you store your media library. Plex indexes it and makes it available online. Though Plex is most well known for helping people organize and stream their video collections – the platform now even offers free on-demand and live movies and TV – my primary use case is for music.

The simplest way to access your Plex library is with a web browser. But its utility is multiplied by the Plex app, which is available for most major connected TVs and streaming devices, like Apple TV and Roku, iOS and Android, as well as audio-only platforms like Sonos.

That all means you can use Plex pretty much like any music streaming service. The difference is that the music is all yours. Moreover, you can let friends and family listen to your music collection, too, if they have a Plex account.

The Journey to Plex

I finally landed on Plex after going through several different methods for just making my digital music library available inside my house. There are standards like DLNA that let you make a hard drive full of music available to apps and platforms like iTunes/Apple Music, VLC and Sonos on your home network. You can even run the server on many standalone network hard drives, which don’t need to be connected to a computer. While great in theory, I found the actual experience to be glitchy and unreliable. However, most importantly, that only made the music available on computers and certain devices on my home network – not all devices, and certainly not on my smartphone or tablet when away from home.

No doubt there are smarter geeks than I who have made these solutions work better, and know how to set up their routers to make collections available more widely. It’s just not something I was successful at in the amount of time that I could invest.

More than just being able to stream my music collection just about anywhere with internet, what I enjoy about Plex is that the interface and features are also similar to commercial streaming services. You can create your own playlists, or start a radio station based upon an artist or song you’re listening too. The mobile Plex apps also let you sync music to your device for listening when you don’t have internet access or need to conserve bandwidth.

Plex also brings in artist and album metadata, like bios, album reviews and genre, and provides recommendations for similar tunes based upon this info. You can use these recommendations to go on a guided tour of your own music collection, not unlike browsing records or CDs, sometimes rediscovering old favorites or stuff you forgot you even had.

Recommendations for Set Up

For the most part setting up a Plex server is pretty easy, but there are a few things to keep in mind. First, whatever computer you use should be one that can be left on all the time, connected to the internet. Plex doesn’t require the latest most powerful machine, so my recommendation would be to use an older machine that you don’t need everyday. I wouldn’t use my everyday work or family computer.

You could use an old laptop, but need to make sure that it doesn’t go to sleep, even if the lid is closed. It doesn’t need to have a display on all the time – it could even be tucked away. It just needs to be on whenever you expect to stream something.

All your media files will need to be stored on a hard drive inside or attached to the computer. For music this isn’t very demanding, so speed isn’t terribly important – a USB hard drive is fine, but a USB thumb drive or SD card is probably not the best choice.

As I would recommend for any music library, make sure you’re backing it up. Plex doesn’t do this for you, so make sure to use some kind of backup system that’s appropriate for the computer running your Plex server, such as Time Machine or iCloud for a Mac. I actually keep my music library in a Dropbox folder that is continually sync’d to the cloud, and then I periodically (about monthly) make a full backup to an external hard drive.

I’ve also found that Plex seems happier when the server is connected to your home network via an Ethernet cable. I found it to be unreliable over wireless using Windows, MacOS and Linux. It seemed like the host computer would disconnect from the network, or experience bandwidth issues, at the most inconvenient times. Your mileage may vary, but that’s my experience.

My last point is to note that if you want to access your Plex media outside your home network, you may need to set up your home router to do that. That said, most recent-vintage home wireless routers support protocols like UPnP or NAT-PMP which the Plex server will use to automatically negotiate and allow external connections. For most people this should just work.

For my own Plex set up I’m using a refurbished Dell Optiplex slim desktop with an Intel i5 and 8 GB of RAM that I purchased from Portland Free Geek. It’s running Mint Linux, which has a pretty intuitive graphic interface, and is a variant of the very popular Ubuntu distribution. Conveniently, Plex can be downloaded and installed using Mint’s app store. However, I’ve learned that updates have to be done manually from the command line. So keep this in mind if you’re considering Linux.

Previously I was running Plex on a mini PC with an Intel Atom processor on Windows 10. This setup was just barely powerful enough for serving music, but it worked fine (when it was working). It was Windows 10 that I found to be a real pain, downloading and auto installing updates that would reboot the machine or cause things to stop working. I’m not really a Windows guy, and this became just too unreliable.

The main problem with my current set up turned out to be my 6 year-old Apple AirPort Extreme wireless router (though I’m connected via Ethernet cable). This now-discontinued model doesn’t support UPnP or NAT-PMP, which means I had a heck of time trying to make the server available outside my home network, even after trying to configure port forwarding. Ultimately I found that the AirPort supports assigning a single LAN IP address that is basically outside its firewall, specifically for gaming and similar applications. Assigning this IP to the Plex server solved my problem.

I like using Linux for my Plex server because I have total control over OS and other updates, and the system is otherwise rock solid and stable. While I am not a server admin, I have been using Linux and Unix for decades and am comfortable with command line basics when necessary.

Overall I’d say setting up a home Plex server requires an intermediate level of skill and comfort with computers and home networking. There are plenty of how-to guides and documentation out there that I think one ought to be able to get it set up in a weekend.

I use Plex alongside paid streaming services (full disclosure, at the time of writing I work for SiriusXM / Pandora) and all sorts of internet radio. That means I can stream all sorts of live stations, new music, artists and albums I’ve just heard about, as well as rare obscurities in my collection that maybe never had a wide release, like a long broken-up local band or a friend’s DJ set. When I buy new vinyl that includes a download card, those MP3s go up on my Plex server, making it trivial for me to sync it to my smartphone to stream on trips out to the Oregon Coast where portions are outside good cell or radio reception.

Mind Your Metadata

One last hint for getting the most out of Plex is to be mindful of your metadata. Every major music file format (MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, etc.) has metadata information that minimally encodes artist, song and album names. Plex will rely on this to catalog your music.

One way to check the metadata of your file is to play it in an app like VLC, Quicktime or Windows Media Player and see if the artist, song and album info is there, and correct. I’ve found that often with older MP3s or ones of unknown provenance there might not be any metadata (ID3 tags) at all – everything is in the filename (“artist-song-album.mp3”) if it’s there at all (possibly only “track01.mp3”).

If the metadata is only a little incomplete Plex it can be pretty smart about this and fill in gaps of missing information, but not always. I’ve found that the more obscure the music, the less good Plex is at cataloging it.

Plex can also be pretty terrible at cataloging compilation albums. It really wants to file each track under the artist of that song, rather than as a single compilation album. The solution I’ve found is to be sure that all the tracks on a comp have the same “albumartist” tag.

The simplest way I’ve found to fix metadata is using a free app called MusicBrainz Picard, which is available for most major operating systems. For most major releases you can do a database scan and Picard will pretty accurately identify all the major info. That doesn’t always work for more obscure stuff. However, it’s also a very powerful metadata editor. There is a bit of a learning curve – Google (or DuckDuckGo) is your friend.

I know a lot of people who have a hard drive full of music that doesn’t get listened to very much even though it’s not available for streaming. I totally get how the convenience of streaming services trumps being leashed to a single computer just to listen to music. Plex really helps to bridge that gap and make your music collection just as accessible. I hope maybe this inspires you to metaphorically dust off your old MP3s and bring them into the 2020s.

The post Build Your Own Personal Streaming Service with Plex appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I bought my first CD player in 1987, using money I saved from my 16th birthday and working as a stock boy at the local Party Fair store. I could only afford to buy two discs to try out on my new purchase, owing to the fact that new CDs cost about $15.99, roughly $37 in 2021 dollars, or about 3.5 hours of my teenaged labor. 

Arguably I was ahead of the curve, especially for a 16 year-old. CD players wouldn’t be in even half of all US households for another six years. I fashioned myself a bit of a burgeoning audiophile, though I don’t think I knew the word. I voraciously consumed Stereo Review magazine every month and pored over the multi-page J&R Music World adverts in the New York Times. I was more than ready to take the leap into “perfect sound forever” by the time players’ price came into reach – for me, that was under $300 ($700 in 2021, or maybe 12 weeks of my part-time labor). 

Because of CDs’ relatively high cost, I took advantage of the public library’s small, but growing selection, taping selected discs. I only added new titles maybe once a month, at most.

Then one day I was browsing the music section at my local Bradlees discount department store when I saw the display for a CD compilation enticingly titled, “Steal This Disc.” Most of the artists were a mystery to me – Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, The Residents, Schooly D – but I’d heard of a few, like Frank Zappa, Devo, George Thorogood and Jimi Hendrix. Priced at just $5.99, it sure did seem like a steal, so I picked it up. 

At home, I was in for a sonic adventure. The blues of Josh White Jr. and Johnny Adams then takes a sharp left turn into Zappa’s Synclavier orgy of “G-Spot Tornado,” only to veer into Sugar Minott’s reggae, followed by McLaughlin’s cover of Glenn Miller’s “Something Spiritual.” This was a kind of eclecticism wholly unaccustomed to this exurban New Jersey kid raised on classic hard rock, new wave and the pop edge of punk. 

Digging into the extensive 18-page booklet I learned that “Steal This Disc” was a label sampler for Rykodisc, the first CD-only record label. Most of the tracks were taken from first-time CD releases for these albums and artists. Clocking in at 70 minutes – just four shy of the format’s limit at the time – it sure felt like a bargain, compared to the more typical 40-minute run time of 1980s albums. As one of the few compact discs in my collection, that comp saw a lot of spin time for a few years. 

Of course, compilation albums, as well as label comps, were nothing new. Back in the 1970s Warner / Reprise records advertised double album “Loss Leaders” on the inner sleeves of their releases, originally costing as little as $2 by mail order. And we can’t leave out the “as seen on TV” K-Tel records stuffed with a selection of the recent Top 40, with names like “Full Tilt” and “Music Machine.” (Not coincidentally, I own both of those.)

But with new LPs or cassettes still priced around eight or nine bucks in the late 80s, laying down only six buckeroos for more than an hour of pure digital music was a revelation. As the 80s turned into the 90s, the compilation CD earned a growing space in my musical life. You see, the dirty little secret of compact discs is that even by 1990s they became cheaper to produce than vinyl LPs, but labels kept their prices artificially higher in order to support and justify their reputation as a premium product. However, that also meant that when labels wanted to put out cheap surveys of their roster or genres, CDs were actually preferable to vinyl. I started finding more discount priced compilation CDs in the record store aisles, and was more than happy to snap them up when it seemed like more than a few tracks would suit my taste. Plus, I enjoyed the surprise of hearing something new and reliving that “Steal this Disc” experience over and over again.

College Radio Disc-overy Mechanism

Arriving in college radio in 1989, by 1991 the majority of new releases were arriving on CD. Our “new rack” housed a growing stack of comps made just for college radio. From CMJ’s “Certain Damage” series to major label entries, like Warner Brother’s “Follow Our Trax,” sometimes they allowed a lazy DJ (or one busy studying for mid-terms) to program an entire shift with just a few discs. More importantly, they were designed to place new artists next to more established ones, enticing a listen by proximity. Because they often arrived at the station in multitudes, extras were given away to DJs – most certainly by design.

After getting turned on to an artist from a compilation, I often learned that was their only good track. The one I most vividly remember is the minor college radio hit, “Three Strange Days,” by School of Fish. I thought the track was unique, fuzzy, catchy and still rocking, seeking out their self-titled debut. I gave the disc a number of tries, but found the songs mostly all sounded like the single, only not as good. I kept the comp, ditched the album. I have many, many sampler CDs I’ve kept because they perform the vital function of serving up the wheat, not the chaff.

As the 90s wore on, it seemed like label comps featured more exclusive tracks, live versions or remixes you wouldn’t or couldn’t find elsewhere. And then there were the tribute albums. Inspired by underground indie and punk rock tributes that were more than a little tongue-in-cheek, discs like 1994’s “If I Were a Carpenter” let alternative bands on the cusp of the mainstream sneak into your ears on the back of familiar middle-of-the-road tunes.

Reality Bites Pulp Fiction on Judgment Night

I’d be remiss not to include the rising prominence of soundtrack albums bring together nostalgic classics, alongside contemporary artists. The best had high concepts matching, or exceeding the ambitions of the film. I’m thinking about the indie rock / new wave hybrid of “Reality Bites,” the emerging Seattle grunge scene survey of “Singles,” or “Pulp Fiction,” which is arguably the ultimate expression of this pastiche, an auditory mirror of Tarantino’s then-fresh genre-bending style. The trailblazing hip-hop and rock crossover of “Judgment Night” is one where the soundtrack was a greater artistic success than the lackluster exploitation movie it ostensibly supported. All of these discs see semi-regular play when I dig into my CD collection.

Of course, aside from the shiny plastic disc, there’s little to differentiate a compilation CD from a playlist. Many an ungracefully aging music commentator has lodged complaints about the decline of the album with the rise of the streaming playlist. But rarely acknowledged are the tens of minutes of “bonus track” filler, or the one outstanding hit surrounded by meandering soundalikes crowding albums since the compact disc let albums grow past vinyl’s hard 40-minute limit. The compilation was a brilliant, and artistic solve to that problem, which playlists bring into the present.

Vinyl Carries Forward the Flag

While this piece may seem like a eulogy, I acknowledge the compilation has gone nowhere. In fact, I’d argue that the vinyl LP stepped back into the take on the mantle, as every Record Store Day list is piled high with rarities and dusties comps sources from tapes and acetates buried in garages, basements and attics from around the world. For many of these artists probably one track suffices, and we should be grateful we can have it. 

But gone are the bargain prices. The 21st century economics of vinyl make these $30 or $40 outlays. Even though that’s less real-world scratch than it was in the 1990s, it’s still more of a gamble than that five-buck CD comp. 

Hard Limits and Editing

Playlists, for all their compilation-like appearances, can also suffer from their near infinity. I’ve enjoyed many a three-, four- or even ten-hour playlist employed as enjoyable background music. But I’d be hard pressed to say I’ve paid focused attention to them. 

A CD’s hard limit of 80 minutes forces an edit. Not everything can be included, so choices must be made. No doubt, many playlists are just as carefully curated, but sometimes function follows form. 

I was inspired to write this ode because I dug out my two editions of “Steal This Disc” the other day on the occasion of buying a new CD player (yes, you can still do that), to replace an aging and finicky, and once-expensive, Blu-Ray player that never quite lived up to the promise of being a “universal” player, only becoming universally glitchy and annoying. Today the “Steal This Disc” sequence still feels familiar and right – it’s the only way I expect to hear “G-Spot Tornado.”

The Comp of 2055

Will a playlist last 34 years? This is not rhetorical question. I won’t predict that Spotify won’t be here in 2055, holding intact our digital crates of tracks, albums and playlists accumulated over decades of listening and gathering. I can say with certainty that when 16 year-old me bought “Steal This Disc” I gave no thought to whether or not I’d be listening to it in middle-age. I also didn’t necessarily think that I wouldn’t. CDs were the format of the future, I’d never seen the internet, and had no reason to think my future wouldn’t have CDs. It was nary a concern as I plunked down my six bucks.

I have no problem finding on Spotify many of the compilations I cited, including the Carpenters tribute. But “Steal This Disc?” It’s not there. Possibly a victim of multiple ownership changes for parent label Rykodisc, combined with its very essence as a demonstration of the new physical format. Its materiality is entirely irrelevant with streaming. Can you “steal this stream?”

For the intrepid music hunter tiring of the cost and competition involved in uncovering obscure sounds on vinyl, I suggest plunging into the “Various Artists” section of your local compact disc vendor (or Goodwill). There’s gold to be found in those silver stacks.

The post In Praise of the Compilation CD appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Back in October 2019 I published a response to the breathless news reported across the tech, music and popular press that “vinyl outsold CDs” for the very first time. While true in terms of raw dollars, as I demonstrated, it wasn’t true in terms of volume. More than twice the number of CD albums were sold than vinyl – the revenue difference likely accountable to the fact that records now typically cost twice as much, or more, than the equivalent CD.

Now the sales numbers for all of 2020 are out, and the headlines look much the same as they did. It’s true that vinyl did hit a new sales peak not seen since the late 20th century, increasing its revenue lead over vinyl. In fact, the format’s take increased 28.7% over 2019, while CD’s share dropped 23%.

Nevertheless, 38% more CDs were sold – 31.6 million to vinyl’s 22.9 million. Clearly, the gap is closing. Yet, as audio writer John Darko points out, overall digital album sales outclassed both, at 33.1 million.

Of course, this all seems like peanuts compared to streaming revenue, which racks up $10bn, compared to a combined $1.1bn for physical formats.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-vinyl. I’m also not arguing that CDs are better. Rather, I’m an advocate for looking at the whole picture. In 2021 CDs are simply cheaper and easier to get made than vinyl records. So, while they’re declining in popularity, compact discs are still a very viable medium for distributing music in a physical format.

I stream music pretty much every day, and I buy downloads. But an internet outage or label pulling its catalog cuts off my stream in an instant, while one bad hard drive easily separates a person from their downloads. My CDs, and records, are still the most persistent way to own my most favorite music.

Moreover, the RIAA report does not account for the used market. There, too, vinyl is popular. But so are CDs (and cassettes). In its mid-year 2020 report, online marketplace Discogs said overall physical media sales were up 30% compared to the first half of 2019. Vinyl was up 34% and CDs were up 31%. In terms of raw volume, Discogs saw 5.8 million records change hands, compared to 1.7 million CDs.

Of course, we have to keep in mind that vinyl had a 40 year head start on CDs, and these are global numbers – compact disc was much more delayed in some countries compared to the US or Western Europe. Though I’m not betting that it will surpass used vinyl sales, I expect to see that used CD volume will continue to grow. It will be fueled by renewed interest in physical media, inflation in vinyl prices and concomitantly lower CD prices, combined with the fact that there are thousands of albums on compact disc that never saw a vinyl release that are still hard to find in legitimate digital streaming or download.

As I’ve proclaimed before, now is a great time for music lovers to either get back into CD or give the format a try, especially if the compromises of streaming aren’t quite cutting it for you. Used racks are bursting at the seems with bargains, as are eBay, Discogs and thrift stores. It used to be that way for a fair amount of used vinyl, too, about a decade ago. But just like with records, the compact disc bargains may not last as more listeners realize what is out there, and what they’re missing.

The post More New CDs than Vinyl Records Were Sold in 2020, Yet Again appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this most unusual of Thanksgiving weeks, we are honored to speak with Alice Brock, the woman who provided much inspiration for Arlo Guthrie’s inadvertent Thanksgiving Day radio staple, “Alice’s Restaurant.” Brock shares with us not only some insight into the 18-minute anti-war epic; but also stories about her life and holiday traditions. For 2020, Brock was inspired to create a special introductory message for radio stations to play in advance of “Alice’s Restaurant,” and she explains why she was moved to offer up these words of thanks this year in particular.

Show Notes:

• Thanksgiving Radio Tradition withstands the Pandemic as “Alice’s Restaurant” Hits the 2020 Airwaves
• Alice Brock’s Message for Radio Stations (NFCB)
• Alice Brock Fundraiser (GoFundMe)
• Alice Brock’s website

The post Podcast #273: Thanksgiving and Radio Traditions with Alice Brock of “Alice’s Restaurant” appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide.

Happy Thanksgiving week 2020! Time once again for the cross-country “Alice’s Restaurant” radio listening party. As we approach our annual harvest celebration in the United States, the coronavirus is still swirling, with cases spiking across the country. Holidays have been upended due to the public health crisis and it’s strongly recommended that we not gather in groups with friends and family around the Thanksgiving table. Because of that, many of us are breaking with tradition and dispensing with some of our long-standing rituals, from cooking massive turkeys to inviting extended family into our homes.

As we adapt to a different sort of Thanksgiving this year, you can still enjoy the socially distanced custom of tuning in to “Alice’s Restaurant” on your radio dial. With so much in flux, this will be a welcome bit of nostalgia for listeners who look forward to hearing the song on Thanksgiving Day. Similarly, for those who dread forced family listening sessions, this year’s distanced holiday may be an auditory respite.

This year there’s even more reason to celebrate, as 2020 marks the 55th anniversary of the 1965 Thanksgiving day events that inspired Arlo Guthrie to pen his 18+ minute anti-Vietnam War story-song. Pressed to vinyl in 1967, it’s a seasonal staple on many rock, college, public, and community radio stations. Some stations even play it multiple times on turkey day, allowing for fans to catch it while on the road, during dinner preparations, amid the meal or while socializing. Perhaps this year, there will even be scheduled listening parties over Zoom, text strings, live chats, or twitter conversations while people listen at the same time.

If you’re lucky, you might also be able to hear a special message on your local station from the woman, Alice Brock, who plays a central role in both the title and story of “Alice’s Restaurant.” She’s our guest on this week’s Radio Survivor show and podcast, which has just been released on the evening on November 24, 2020. After penning these radio station listening guides for over a decade, it was certainly a thrill to speak with THE Alice! She’s fallen on hard times, so I’d also encourage anyone able to visit her GoFundMe campaign.

If you’re eager for more insight into “Alice’s Restaurant,” don’t miss the new video interview with Arlo Guthrie over at the Bruce Springsteen Archives. Guthrie speaks not only about the song, but also about his recent announcement that he’s retiring from touring. Also, Jon Kalish tweets that on Thanksgiving, the radio shows/podcast 1A is airing a “segment on Arlo Guthrie’s anti-war classic Alice’s Restaurant. The segment chronicles the song’s debut on Bob Fass’ late-night show on WBAI, Radio Unnameable.” He adds, “The segment leads off an hour-long special on the National Recording Registry. You’ll hear an excerpt of Guthrie’s debut of Alice’s Restaurant on Radio Unnameable, as well as Bob Fass recalling that night. Other voices: Alice Brock, folkie Cathy Fink & of course Arlo Guthrie.”

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I will continue to update this list as I learn of additional stations leading up to Thanksgiving.

Pre-Thanksgiving Listening Options:

Some stations play “Alice’s Restaurant before Thanksgiving. Catch an irreverent version on KFJC 89.7 FM (Los Altos Hills, CA) around 7:30pm on Tuesday, November 24 and then a regular version around 9:30am on Wednesday, November 25. KKUP 91.5 FM (Cupertino, CA) played “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am on Tuesday 11/24. WYEP 91.3 in Pittsburgh, PA played it on Sunday, November 22nd at 1pm. WFVR-LP 96.5 FM Royalton Radio (South Royalton, VT) aired it at 5pm on Monday, November 24.

Risky Business Hayseed Hoot radio show from November 21, 2020 includes a 1997 live version of “Alice’s Restaurant,” airing on various affiliate stations, including KJIV 96.5 FM (Bend, OR), KJYV (The Dalles, OR), KORC 105.9 FM (Corvallis, OR), KYAC 94.9 FM (Mill City, OR), KUNR 88. 7 FM (Reno, NV), KPHT-LP 99.9 FM (Laytonville, CA), KTRT The Root 97. 5FM (Methow Valley, Washington), KGFN 89. 1FM (Goldfield, NV), KDUP 88.1 FM (Surprise Valley, CA). Check with these stations for specific air dates and times.

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2020 – November 26, 2020

Last updated on November 26, 2020 at 9:54am PT. Note that all times are local to the area in which the station is located.

Terrestrial Radio:

WXPN 88.5 FM in Philadelphia, PA will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12noon as it does every year. It’s amid a day’s line-up starting at 6am that they dub “XPN Classics Thanksgiving.” Following “Alice’s Restaurant,” WXPN will play the Band’s Last Waltz at 4pm.

KPCW 91. 7 FM in Park City, Utah will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12noon as it has been doing since the station began in 1980! Other holiday programming on Thanksgiving Day includes “Giving Thanks” at 9am and pre-recorded cooking tips on “Turkey Confidential” at 10am.

Frosty 105.7 FM (Part 15 station in Ventura, CA) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am, 2pm, 3pm and 5pm on Thanksgiving Day, 11/26/20.

WXRT 93.1 FM in Chicago, Illinois will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 8pm on Thanksgiving.

Arkansas Rocks stations throughout Arkansas will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon CST on Thanksgiving.

WDVX 89.9 FM in Knoxville, Tennesee is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WPLR 99.1 FM in New Haven, CT will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, noon, and 6pm.

KZHP 93.3 FM K-ZAP (Sacramento, CA) writes on Twitter, “…we continue a tradition as American as friends, turkey and gravy by playing ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Thursday at 10a & 6p PST. Tune in for an amazing story by a legendary storyteller.”

WGXC 90.7 FM aka Wave Farm (Acra, New York) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” on the “WGXC Morning Show” between 9am to 11am. The station writes on Twitter, “Thursday tune in holiday traditions such as Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,” Rush Limbaugh’s “The True Story of Thanksgiving,” WKRP’s “Turkey Drop,” William S. Burroughs’ “Thanksgiving Prayer,” Andy Griffith’s “What it Was, Was Football,” and more @WGXC 90.7-FM.” Later in the evening at 7pm, WGXC airs an interview with Alice Brock from a few years ago. Their full lineup of holiday programming includes shows about Thanksgiving radio traditions (2am) and rituals (11am).

WXOX 97.1 FM ARTxFM (Louisville, Kentucky) will play “Alice’s Restaurant at 10am on Thanksgiving.

WFUV 90.7 FM (Bronx, NY) is playing “Alice’s Restaurant at 12 noon as part of its Thanksgiving Feastival.

Wyoming Public Radio is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am during the Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving Special (9am-noon). The program will include “roots music, Native American and Wyoming artists along with the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic Alice’s Restaurant beginning at 11:00 a.m. with a special introduction from the original restauranteur Alice Brock.”

KBCO 97.3 FM (Denver, Colorado) airs “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WTTS 92.3 FM (Indianapolis/Bloomington, Indiana) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 8am, noon and 8pm.

WDRV 97.1 FM The Drive (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, noon, and 4pm.

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

WAFX 106.9 The Fox (Hampton Roads, VA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving day.

WRHQ 105.3 FM (Savannah, Georgia) plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving Day at 9:30am, 12:30pm and 6:30pm.

WNCW 88.7 FM (Spindale, NC) will air Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” just past Noon, and again at 9pm.

WERS 88.9 FM in Boston writes that the station “continues our long tradition of playing Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, with Jersey Hal, at 11am on Thanksgiving!”

KNHS 102.3 FM/91.9 FM (Haines, Alaska) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 3:30pm on Thanksgiving. The station has a line-up of special programming on Thursday and Friday, including “Turkey Confidential” and music appropriate to the season.

KXT 91.7FM (North Texas Public Broadcasting) reported via tweet: “It’s a KXT tradition! Tune in at noon and 6pm to KXT 91.7 FM for all 18+ minutes of Arlo Guthrie’s classic, ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Thanksgiving Day.”

WUMB 91.9 FM (Boston, MA and environs) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” three times on Thanksgiving this year “at the top of the 9am, 12pm and 3pm hours on Thursday!” according to its website.

KINK 101.9 FM (Portland, OR): Per its website, “Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant has been a KINK Thanksgiving tradition for over 30 years. Catch it twice on Thanksgiving Day (November 26th) this year, 12pm and 5pm.”

WLVQ 96.3 FM (Columbus, OH): Per its website, “Tune in this Thanksgiving Day around 6am, Noon, and 6pm to hear Alice’s Restaurant, a Qfm96 tradition.”

KTYD 99.9 FM (Santa Barbara, CA): The station reports on Facebook that they will play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm AND 6pm.

MVY Radio (88.7 FM Martha’s Vineyard, MA and 96.5 FM Newport, Rhode Island) reports on Twitter on Thanksgiving Day: “Nothing beats a holiday tradition! We will play ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by @folkslinger at noon today! And tonight at 9PM, we will play the full ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ album! Happy Thanksgiving!”

KQRS-FM 92.5FM (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is playing the epic song at noon and 7pm on Thanksgiving.

WVNW 91.7 FM (Scranton, PA) at Marywood University is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6pm.

KKSM AM 1320, Cox Digital Cable 957 (San Marcos, CA) at Palomar College is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12pm and 5pm.

Online Radio Stations:

Backland Radio (online) writes on Twitter, “It’s a Whip tradition – Tune in on Thanksgiving to hear Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie four times at 8am, 12 noon, 5pm and 9pm Central time on The Whip at http://backlandradio.com.”

The post Thanksgiving Radio Tradition withstands the Pandemic as “Alice’s Restaurant” Hits the 2020 Airwaves appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s show, we take a trip back to the early 20th century to learn about the recording industry’s intertwined relationship with radio and music culture. Our guest is Kyle Barnett, Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication at Bellarmine University.

Barnett’s forthcoming book, Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry, looks at the early history of the recording industry in the United States. On the episode, Barnett shares tidbits from his research and reminds us of the complexity of the media landscape, calling for scholars to not neglect exploring how industries are interconnected. Along the way, we learn about phonograph parlors, the differences between public and private listening, and why some record labels asked their artists to stay off the radio.

Show Notes:

• Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry
• Kyle Barnett on Twitter
• Radio Survivor Podcast #186: African-American Preachers on Wax
• Radio Preservation Task Force

The post Podcast #221 – The Intertwined History of the Radio and Recording Industries appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide.

In fall, 1967, Arlo Guthrie released “Alice’s Restaurant,” unintentionally launching a Thanksgiving radio tradition that persists more than 50 years later. The Thanksgiving-themed 18+ minute story-song is beloved by folkies and classic rock fans who continue to search the radio dial for it on Thanksgiving Day in order to take part in ritual listening sessions. In 2019 you can listen any time you like thanks to streaming music, but there’s nothing like tuning in to hear the same song at the same time as legions of fellow fans on one of the most American of holidays.

Guthrie has been on the tour circuit in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the film version of “Alice’s Restaurant,” with plenty more concerts scheduled through spring, 2020. For followers of his annual Thanksgiving weekend Carnegie Hall gig, this year’s event on November 30th is expected to be the last.

For a decade, I’ve been compiling a list of radio stations that air “Alice’s Restaurant” as part of their Thanksgiving schedule. I will continue to update this list as I learn of additional stations leading up to Thanksgiving.

Update as of 11/25/19:

The weekend before Thanksgiving, “Alice’s Restaurant” aired on the “Dr. Demento Show” online, on WPRB‘s (Princeton, NJ) “Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio,” and on WMUH’s (Allentown, PA) “Radio Free Hippie” show. Additionally, some stations will continue the “Alice’s Restaurant” festivities after Thanksgiving. John Furphy of Radio Free Hippie shared on Facebook that the Sunday overnight show “…will play both the original and the revisited massacree during this week and next week’s program, as has been done since 1983. There is also a very good chance one or both versions will be played between 10 AM and noon on turkey day.”

Charles Reinsch also reports, “The Rainbow Roach version of Alice’s as performed on Bob Fass’s Night Into Day can be heard anytime in the KRAB Archive: http://www.krabarchive.com/krab-programs-music-1960s.html…”

Ted Coe writes on Monday, November 25, 2019, “I’m doing an hourlong variation on this on my music-and-cultural arts show The Freak Power Ticket on KCSB-FM 91.9 in Santa Barbara, in just about an hour!” That show airs on Mondays 11am to noon Pacific time.

Update as of 11/27/19:

I also got a note from Bill Revill, who writes, “WESU (Middletown CT) airs ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ the Tuesday before Thanksgiving between 6-8pm on ‘Acoustic Blender.’  I’ve been doing that for ten years now.”

Also on Tuesday nights for the past two years, Cynthia Lombard at KFJC 89.7 FM (Los Altos Hills, CA) has been playing an atypical version of “Alice’s Restaurant” during her 7-10pm Pacific time show. This year it aired at around 8:45pm (playlist here) and program is archived for two weeks.

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2019 – November 28, 2019

Last updated on November 27, 2019 at 3:30pm Pacific Time

Terrestrial Radio:

Wyoming Public Radio will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am during the Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving Special (9am to noon).

KBCO 97.3 FM (Denver, Colorado) airs “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WAMC 1400 AM and 90.3 FM (Albany, NY) Northeast Public Radio, per tradition, will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WTTS 92.3 FM (Indianapolis/Bloomington, Indiana) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 8am, noon and 8pm.

WCLY 95.7 FM (Raleigh, NC) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 10am and 5pm.

KPIG 107.5 FM (Freedom, CA) and KPYG 94.9 FM (Cayucos/San Luis Obispo, CA) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am, noon, 4pm, and 8pm.

WERS 88.9 FM (Boston, MA) plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am.

WXYG The Goat 540 AM/107.3FM (Sauk Rapids, MN) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WCMF 96.5 FM (Rochester, NY) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am prior to the Buffalo Bill’s game!

WMMM 105.5 FM (Madison, WI) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm.

92 KQRS (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving at 10am and 2pm

WDRV 97.1 FM The Drive (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, noon, and 4pm.

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

KRCC 91. 5 FM (Colorado Springs, CO) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 7pm on Thanksgiving.

WRUV 90.1 FM (Burlington, VT) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am EST.

98.5 WNUW-LP (Aston, PA) at Neumann University airs “Alice’s Restaurant” every Thanksgiving at 9am, 12noon, 5pm, 8pm and 10pm.

WXOX 97.1 FM Louisville will be playing it on Thanksgiving between 10-11am on Artebella with DJ Keith Waits.

WAFX 106.9 The Fox (Hampton Roads, VA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving day.

The Creek 100.9 FM (Macon, Georgia) will air it at noon and 5pm on Thanksgiving.

KTYD 99.9 FM (Santa Barbara, CA) posted on Facebook, “KTYD’S Thanksgiving Tradition continues! Listen for Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” Thursday at 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm.”

Frosty 105.7 FM (Part 15 station in Ventura, CA) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 4pm (Massacree Revisited), 5pm on Thanksgiving Day, 11/28/19.

101 the Fox (Kansas City, KS) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm on Thanksgiving.

WRHQ 105.3 FM (Savannah, Georgia) plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving Day at 6:30am, 12:30pm and 6:30pm.

WZZZ 107.5 The Breeze (Portsmouth, Ohio) posted on Twitter, “Join us this Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, as we play a Holiday Classic: ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo Guthrie. You’ll hear it at 9am, Noon and 5pm. Follow along as the story unfolds on Thanksgiving Day–It’s brought to you by Preston Family Funeral Home, on Rt.5 in Ashland.”

WXPN 88.5 FM (Philadelphia, PA) will air its annual broadcast of “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12noon.

WXRT 93.1 FM (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving Day.

WNCW 88.7 FM (Spindale, NC) writes, “Join us from Jasmin’s ‘Mountain Mornings’ at 6am, through Joe Kendrick’s Thanksgiving music and history spotlight between 7 and 9am (in lieu of ‘Morning Edition’), and our eclectic feast of songs throughout the rest of the day. We’ll air Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ just past Noon, and again at 9pm.”

MVY Radio 88.7 FM (Vineyard Haven, MA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

WERU 89.9 FM (East Orland, Maine) reports that, “This year Brother Al, host of Thursday’s Morning Maine show on WERU-FM will be playing it just after 8 a.m. We live stream at weru.org and via the WERU app.”

Online Radio Stations:

The Whip Radio will play “Alice’s Restaurant” four times on Thanksgiving: 8am, 12 noon, 5pm and 9pm Central time.

REC-FM will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am Eastern time on Thanksgiving.

KMCJ Radio (Moorpark College in Moorpark, CA) posted on Facebook, “…tune into KMCJ on Mixlr Thursday at 10am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm and as a bonus tune into KMCJ tomorrow Night [Tuesday, November 26, 2019) at 7:45 after our all day remote at Club M then after we air Alice’s Restaurant at 7:45 our annual Sounds of the Season begins.”

The post Alice’s Restaurant on the 2019 Thanksgiving Radio Menu appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Last month news spread that, “Vinyl Is Poised to Outsell CDs For the First Time Since 1986,” as Rolling Stone reported. The source of that prediction is the recording industry’s own mid-year report, which showed vinyl sales racking up $224.1 million on 8.6 million units in the first half of 2019, creeping up on CD’s $247.9 million on 18.6 million units.

You don’t have to stare at those numbers long to notice one disparity is significantly bigger than the other. It’s true that vinyl records accounted for only $23.8 million fewer than CDs. But the units moved tell another story. In fact, more than twice as many CDs were sold than vinyl records – 116% to be more precise.

I don’t know about you, but that looks to me like vinyl records are still a long way towards outselling CDs. Rather, each of those records sold generated more revenue than each CD, $26.06 per record vs. $13.32 per CD.

Those numbers should look pretty accurate for anyone who’s bought new music lately. Whereas in 1989, when the CD was ascendant and a new record generally cost at least a few bucks less, the situation has reversed in the intervening three decades. And that makes sense if you account for the industrial history at work here.

As vinyl sales dropped in the 90s in favor of digital discs, companies pressed fewer records, and pressing plants gradually shut down. While CD sales have slowed in the last decade, they haven’t yet experienced the kind of drop-off that vinyl did. Although the last ten years have seen a vinyl resurgence, aging plants struggled to keep up with demand, and new plants came on line, all increasing costs. CDs, on the other hand, became a mature technology, with production costs having pretty much bottomed out in the early 2000s, and not having increased much since then.

At core, this disparity is due to the fact that vinyl now costs more to manufacture than CDs. On top of that, I suspect that demand and the popular perception of records as a more premium product conspire to help push and keep prices higher.

So, it isn’t really the case that vinyl is outselling CDs. “Outselling” means that something is exceeding something else in volume of sales. Instead it’s the case that vinyl is outearning and generating more revenue than CDs.

Based upon those per-unit revenue numbers, if vinyl were actually proportionally on pace to outsell CDs in volume sold, they’d be generating more like $438 million on about 16.8 units.

Picking Apart False Narratives

Why do all this nit-picky math? Because I think a false narrative is being spun here. It’s the narrative that CDs are dying at such fast pace that even a once-thought-obsolete technology like the vinyl record is going to surpass it.

I care because it’s the same kind of narrative that’s been used to smear radio for the last generation or so. This, despite the fact that some 90% of the population still listens to terrestrial radio.

Now, I’m not a luddite (which seems like a strange thing to call someone who’s defending the digital compact disc). I don’t dispute the fact that radio listenership and CD sales are declining. Given the ubiquity these technologies enjoyed in the year 2000, pretty much the only way to go was down, especially with the proliferation of new, often more convenient and diverse technologies. But that slide does not mean the technologies are dead or obsolete.

I have a particularly sore spot for FAIL culture and tech triumphalism, which go looking for receding tech or trends to pronounce ready for the trash heap of history. The pernicious aspect of this is that it causes some folks to think maybe they’re backwards or out of it for continuing to enjoy their CDs or radios.

For CDs specifically, what I see happening is people dumping their perfectly good collections, ones that were often painstakingly acquired and curated, and at great expense. I get that streaming is more convenient; I listen to more streaming music than CDs. But even if I’ve pared down the collection, I’m not going to just chuck away favorite albums like that. You never know when Spotify is going to lose the rights to your beloved music out of nowhere.

History Repeating Itself

I’m having flashbacks to the early 90s, when I knew so many people dumping their vinyl collections – often for free or very little money – in favor of rebuying many of the exact same albums on new, supposedly superior, shiny digital discs. Being both a poor student then, and also vinyl enthusiast, I scooped up dozens of great albums for a fraction of what they originally cost or even what they go for now, new or used.

I’ve definitely talked to other Gen Xers who admit to now rebuying yet again favorite old albums on vinyl reissue, that they once had on CDs that replaced their original vinyl copies. Oy, the revolving door!

Look, if you’re into downsizing and Marie Kondo-ing your music collection, I have no beef with that. Streaming Spotify takes up significantly less space than any CD or vinyl collection. As long as you understand that some albums may mysteriously disappear from your streaming playlist and are fine with that, then forewarned is forearmed.

But dumping CDs because there’s a popular misconception that they’re inferior or obsolete, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me. Especially since decent CD players are easier to get and less expensive than all but the flimsiest record players (never mind smartphones), not having a player shouldn’t be your excuse. In fact you probably have a CD player and just haven’t realized it – it’s your DVD or Blu-Ray player.

18.6 Million Is a Hell of a Niche

I have no doubt that physical media will become increasingly less prominent and more niche. But still, 18.6 million CDs sold in 6 months (some 37 million in a year) is a hell of a niche!

Even if most people stop buying new CDs altogether, there are still billions of discs on the used market, in flea markets, thrift shops, garage sales and free bins. In fact, the online music database and marketplace Discogs says CDs saw the biggest increase in sales amongst all formats on its platform in the first half of the year. Unlike the RIAA’s numbers, which only count new product sales, Discogs counts both new and used.

While vinyl records were the most popular physical music format on Discogs, keep in mind that the medium is twice as old as the compact disc. We should expect there are at least twice as many of them out there to be traded and resold.

Even so, nearly forty years of compact discs adds up to a nearly unfathomable amount of music out there to be heard. Moreover, a decent percentage of it was never released in another format, and still isn’t available for streaming. That means there’s a treasure trove of undiscovered or to-be-rediscovered nuggets out there for the finding.

Some of those treasures might be in your attic, basement, storage unit, or – even better – your CD shelf.

And, maybe I’m not the only digital luddite. Only a couple of weeks after the “vinyl is surpassing CD” news, Billboard reported that new compact discs from Taylor Swift, Tool and even Post Malone are flying off the shelves. This apparently is causing labels to reconsider their physical media strategy, as stores beg for more product to sell, especially of new hit albums.

Is a “CD Store Day” far behind?

Need more convincing? Earlier this year I outlined “10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)” and expanded on the topic on our podcast.

The post No, Vinyl Records Aren’t Outselling CDs – Do the Math appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Walter Benjamin broadcast his third “Youth Hour” radio talk with a lament on the state of puppet show entertainment in that famous city.

“Children who want to go to puppet theater don’t have an easy time of it in Berlin,” Benjamin explained. They’ve got better deals in Munich, Paris, and Rome. But one production company still remained, he noted: Kasper Theater, which had its roots in the 18th century puppet character of that name. Kasper was a priggish smartass and the star of a puppet entertainment genre called Kaspertheater, which audiences regarded as synonymous with puppetry in general.

Before newspapers began publishing comic strips, puppet shows may have been the first entertainment to try to reach both children and adults at the same time. Benjamin reminisced on the Kasper character of the early nineteenth century, who appeared

“not only in plays that were written for him; he also sticks his saucy little nose into all sorts of big, proper theater pieces for adults. He knows he can risk it. In the most terrible tragedies nothing ever happens to him. And when the devil catches up with Faust, he has to let Kasper live, even though he’s no better behaved than his master. He’s just a peculiar chap. Or in his own words: ‘I’ve always been a peculiar fellow. Even as a youngster I always saved my pocket money. And when I had enough, you know what I did with it? I had a tooth pulled’.”

Before going any further with Benjamin’s observations on this subject, I note that KBOO-FM in Portland, Oregon broadcast a fun little puppet theater show for a spell. A 2014 episode featured an interview with a Kasper-like character named “Turner D Century,” candidate for mayor in that city.

“You have some interesting positions that I would like to talk about, ” the host began.

“What are they letting a woman into the radio studio for”? Mr. Century demanded. “This modernization has gone too far.”

Unintimidated, the host pressed on. “Well, Mr. Century, let’s just get into it then. You have a very strong position on the bridges of Portland.”

“We’re going to tear down the bridges once and for all. It was a terrible idea to build them. We’ve wound up connecting the beautiful city with the riff raff, who are free to wander the bridges any time they want and pollute the general environment . . . It’s disgusting, quite frankly.”

“Are you going to ask taxpayer- “

“No, we’re just going to blow them up with dynamite!”

Interestingly, Benjamin managed to sneak some observations about the subject of democracy into his puppet show talk. “A proper puppeteer is a despot,” he explained, “one that makes the Tsar seem like a petty gendarme.” The puppet master writes the shows, does all the art work, dresses up the puppets, and plays all the roles via their own voice. But at the same time, the puppeteer must remain wary of the powers beyond puppet land. “First from the church and [second] the authorities,” Benjamin’s radio essay warned, “because puppets can so easily mock everything without being malicious.”

Benjamin wrapped up his broadcast with summaries of various puppet routines that he found amusing. The last of these was titled “The Discovery of America,” and featured a conversation between Columbus and a “New Worlder.”

“Who goes there?” asks the New Worlder puppet. “What do you want?”

To which the Columbus puppet replies, “I call myself Columbus” and “Simply to discover.”

“And that is how America was discovered,” Benjamin’s description of the exchange summarily ended, “which is now a republic that for a number of reasons I cannot recommend. As soon as this republic gets a king, it will become a monarchy; that’s just the way it is.”

That is how Benjamin concluded his third talk, broadcast on December 7, 1929 in Berlin, less than a year before Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party won a stunning electoral victory in Germany’s Reichstag (Parliament). And this is how I am ending my latest Walter Benjamin diary entry, just days after United States President Donald Trump went on Twitter to declare that all US companies were “hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China . . . ”

This is the third entry in my Walter Benjamin Radio Diary series.

Feature image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The post Walter Benjamin Radio Diary #3: on puppets and dictators appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I have composed just two entries for my Walter Benjamin radio diary, and already I am getting lots of mail.

First came a friendly missive from Nick During, publicist at the New York Review of Books classics department. “We actually have a Walter Benjamin book coming up,” Nick wrote, “that is a collection of his writings that show how he got to the ideas found in his famous essay ‘The Storyteller’ and includes one radio piece, ‘The Lisbon Earthquake’. Would you like to see our book?”

Well, yes, I replied. So the publisher sent it to me.

The little tome in question is called The Storyteller Essays, edited and introduced by Samuel Titan and translated from German by Tess Lewis. It assembles various Benjamin texts that provide context for his famous thought piece “The Storyteller.” I do not want to say much about this essay right now, but “The Storyteller” provocatively contends that a story is best told without an explanation for its events.

Benjamin wrote:

“Every morning, news reaches us from around the globe. And yet we lack remarkable stories. This is due to the fact that no incidents any longer reach us not already permeated with explanations. In other words: almost nothing occurs to the story’s benefit anymore; instead, it all serves information. In fact, at least half of the art of storytelling consists in keeping one’s tale free of explanations.”

Titan, The Storyteller, p. 54.

What purpose does this omission of explanations serve? It allows story tellers and listeners to own the tale, to see it as organic to their very specific and individual lives. “The storyteller,” Benjamin concluded, “is the figure in which the righteous man encounters himself.” When I discuss his Lisbon earthquake radio talk in an upcoming post, I will try to show how these arguments come to life.

Then I received some correspondence from radio producer Toby Kaufmann-Buhler.

“I just found your blog posts on the Radio Survivor site about Walter Benjamin and his radio work,” Kaufmann-Buhler wrote.

“Over the past 8 months or so I’ve produced one of Benjamin’s radio plays, ‘Lichtenberg: A Cross-Section’. This is from the translation in the Radio Benjamin book; this play was never originally broadcast as he finished writing the commission just as broadcasting was taken over by the Nazi regime.

We produced this originally for an exhibition this past May at a sound art gallery in Indianapolis, Listen Hear, which also houses the LPFM station WQRT 99.1. The play aired on WQRT several times; as far as I know this was the first radio broadcast of the play in English, and possibly in any language (could be wrong, but this is based on my research). The play has also been broadcast more recently in New York’s Hudson Valley on Wave Farm’s experimental station.”

Here is my favorite moment from the play, which focuses on a committee of Moon beings’ efforts to engage in “Earth research”:

“The samples taken over the last millennia have not yielded a single case in which a human has amounted to anything. Taking this established scientific fact as a basis for our investigations, our meetings from now on will deal solely with proving that this is a result of the unhappy human condition.”

To help with this task, the committee gloms onto to the research of the German writer/humorist/scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, with whom Benjamin was apparently quite taken. But that is as far as I will go with this script. You will have to listen to the radio play to learn more.

Finally, Patricia Flanagan brought this BBC Wireless Nights sound essay to my attention. Pulp stalwart Jarvis Cocker takes us on a sultry tour of contemporary Berlin, laced with tales of the Cold War era. Not exactly a Walter Benjamin piece, but quite beautiful. I recommend a listen.

That’s my Walter Benjamin mail so far. Drop me a line at hybridhighbrow<AT>radiosurvivor.com and your Benjamin related work may wind up in my next mailbag dispatch. Thanks in advance!

The post Walter Benjamin radio diary: mailbag #1 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

“Today I’d like to speak with you about the Berlin Schnauze,” declared Walter Benjamin on Radio Berlin in 1929. “This so-called big snout is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Berliners.”

With this essay, I begin my Walter Benjamin radio diary, a commentary on the radio shows for children that he broadcast from 1929 to 1932 on Radio Berlin and Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt. I have written a brief backgrounder on Benjamin, just to get my little project started. A much better introduction can be heard at the BBC Archive on 4, produced by Michael Rosen. It includes conversations with scholars about Benjamin’s radio scripts and the very first English reading of them by Henry Goodman. I am quoting here from Lecia Rosenthal’s edition of the talks. And, full disclosure, I am really just going riff on these programs, think about them out loud, meditate on what they remind me of, while avoiding any grand conclusions.

Having said all that, Benjamin’s first radio essay is really interested in a certain portion of the Berlin snout: the Berlin mouth, with all its smarty pants jokes, comments, snarky observations, and cracks. It is a mouth designed to defend oneself from being pushed around in a pushy world. Here are some examples Benjamin offered, such as the tongue of this beleaguered horse-drawn cab operator.

“My God, driver,” complains his latest passenger. “Can’t you move a little faster?
“Sure thing,” responds the Berlin cabbie. “But I can’t just leave the horse all alone.”

Or this bartender, perhaps a bit exasperated with some of his drunken clientele.

“What ales you got?” demands one inebriant.
“I got gout and a bad back,” replies the barkeep.

“Berlinish,” Benjamin explained, “is a language that comes from work.” It is a way of speaking for “people who have no time, who must communicate by using only the slightest hint, glance, or half-word.”

I am very familiar with this language, because I grew up in the Berlin of the United States, otherwise known as New York City. I was raised on apocryphal tales of the smart assed waiters who presided over Manhattan’s Jewish restaurants and delicatessens. I offer these vignettes from memory. For example:

A waiter walks up to a table of four men in a Lowest East Side kosher restaurant. “What will you have, gentlemen?” he asks.
“We will start with water,” one says.
Then another adds with a slightly irritated tone: “And, waiter, in a clean glass, please.”
The attendant bows, then returns in five minutes with the water.
“Ok,” he says, “which one of you guys wanted the clean glass?”

Another example: a waiter humbly approaches four elderly women eating at a deli.
“Ladies,” he gingerly asks, “is anything all right?”

But what I find most interesting about Benjamin’s first commentary is that it offers a very selective and limited definition of the Schnauze. Wikipedia defines the snout as “the protruding portion of an animal’s face, consisting of its nose, mouth, and jaw.” Yet our radio storyteller seems decidedly uninterested in two out of three of those attributes.

Why? I can only guess, but hovering over this discussion was one of the great noses of German history, that of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. Remembered by one historian as a “bad tempered distractible doofus” in charge of the German empire, Wilhelm appears to have been primarily concerned with two things: first, his wardrobe, which consisted of 120 colorful military uniforms, and second, the endlessly waxed and fussed over mustache which adorned his nose. It even had its own name: “Er ist Erreicht.” or “It is accomplished,” which, as you may know, also happens to be the last thing that Jesus supposedly said on the cross at Golgotha. When not preoccupied with the decoration of his own beak, Wilhelm obsessed over those of his colleagues. “Fernando naso,” he dubbed King Fernando, the ruler of Bulgaria, whose proboscis he found unacceptably pronounced.

Therefore, I am not surprised that the young Walter Benjamin, already so focused on language, class, and democracy, stuck to the mouth and left the nose, with all its autocratic overtones, to others.

The post Walter Benjamin radio diary entry #1: selective snouting appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Musician Barry Brake writes to us from San Antonio, Texas:

“Just this year, Texas Public Radio’s KPAC San Antonio has started a new classical show, 1–3pm weekdays, called Classical Connections, that features music and musicians from San Antonio, the Hill Country, and Texas, as well as standard fare from our massive classical library. Visiting musicians, local stars, up-and-comers, directors, and composers drop by to talk. Often there are live on-air performances. We’d love to be listed on your page! Thanks for doing what you do . . . “

So I popped into the Classical Connections site and instantly I was enjoying this fantastic piece by Ethan Wickman to celebrate San Antonio’s Tricentennial. It is performed by the SOLI Chamber Ensemble.

Have a listen:

Other shows focus on the interplay between San Antonio musicians and the city’s museums and a piece composed in memory of the San Antonio Symphony’s principal flutist, who died at the young age of 51.

Texas, it should be noted, is an astoundingly wonderful place for classical music. Truckloads of people play it brilliantly at very affordable ticket prices, up and down the state. Everybody (or at least lots of people) knows that it is where Van Cliburn helped thaw the Cold War by winning the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.

Many less people know that San Antonio is where the brilliant pianist and pedagogue Lucy Hickenlooper (who changed her name to Olga Samaroff) was born and raised. Samaroff famously married the conductor Leopold Stokowski and basically managed his career through the 19-tens and teens. Eventually she got sick of Stokowski’s adultery and dumped the guy in 1923. Samaroff was the first American pianist to perform all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, but after an arm injury she turned to teaching. Ensconced at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, she cranked out the next generation of wunderkinds, including William Kapel, Eugene List, Rosalyn Tureck, and Alexis Weissenberg (whose compositional arrangements of the songs of Charles Trenet I heard the other night played at the San Francisco Symphony).

If you want to know more about Samaroff, you’ve got to watch my friend Wendy Slick’s wonderful documentary about her life. Plus, here is a website dedicated to her work and recordings.

The post When it comes to classical music (and classical radio), don’t mess with (San Antonio) Texas appeared first on Radio Survivor.

It started in college radio and now is sweeping stations around the world. No, I’m not talking about R.E.M. It’s Vinylthon!

This Saturday, April 13 – which, not coincidentally, happens to be Record Store Day – 140 stations will feature programming with only vinyl records, some going all day long. The ones that clock in a full 24 hour of records will receive the Golden Slipmat Award.

In addition to celebrating this venerable music medium, the event is a fundraiser for the College Radio Foundation, which raises funds for equipment to keep college stations on the air, and is also responsible for College Radio Day.

Our own Jennifer Waits is coordinating an astonishing 60+ hours (thats more than four days) of vinyl-only programming for KFJC-FM in Los Altos Hills, CA. You can listen to the analog goodness beginning Thursday at 10 AM.

I’m a life-long vinylphile. Even when I bought my first CD player in 1987, I bought a new turntable at the same time, and never traded in my albums for their digital equivalents. I learned to cue and play vinyl in college radio, and have never stopped collecting the 12" black discs. So I really dig Vinylthon.

Still, while many pixels have been spilled considering the “renaissance” of vinyl, some may still wonder why stations would dedicate a full day to such a cumbersome technology. College Radio Day founder Rob Quicke writes, “Vinyl is back because there has been a return to an appreciation of craft.” Indeed, pressing play on a CD player or automation system is never quite as satisfying as cueing up a record by hand, then back queuing a half-turn or so to be sure the turntable comes up to speed before the music starts to get a clean intro.

As an aside, I’m just a little amused that Quicke is the general manager of WPSC-FM at William Paterson University in New Jersey. You see, I went to high school just north of there, and used to listen to the station back in the late 80s and early 90s. So I remember when WPSC converted to all CD in 1988, making a big deal of the switch by renaming itself “Laser Hits.”

Of course, that was way before his tenure there. I’m glad to see the station is redeemed with Vinylthon.

So, tune in your local participating station, or dial in the stream as you head out to Record Store Day, or whatever you’re doing this Saturday.

May a million needles drop!

The post 140 Stations Celebrate Vinylthon this Saturday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This episode is dedicated to the compact disc. Paul recently published an article outlining 10 reasons why CDs are awesome, and it seems to have hit a nerve, turning out to be one of our most popular. So we dive into these reasons, and even talk to a Millennial, Jacob Choplin, who also loves CDs (though not as much as vinyl).

We’re not arguing against LPs, downloads or streaming music, just advocating for the lowly compact disc. They still sound great. We hope to inspire you to dig out your collection and enjoy some tunes.

Show Notes:

• 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)
• This post received some feedback on Facebook

The post Podcast #179 – Don’t Throw Your CDs Away in 2019 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Quite a lot of shade is getting thrown at CDs in the press these days. The LA Times reports, “The compact disc era may finally be entering its hospice stage,” while Rolling Stone declares, “CDs Are Dying Three Times as Fast as Vinyl Is Growing.” Putting aside the misleading equivocation of the RS calculation – CDs still outsell records by a generous margin – it’s clear that vinyl and even cassettes are hipper than the poor old compact disc.

No doubt, I love my vinyl, have a hard drive full of digital files and listen to online streams. But CDs still have a lot to offer. This is just as true for personal listening as it is for radio stations. Well, at least for community and college radio stations where DJs pick their music rather than just piloting an automation system or selecting from a tiny approved digital catalog.

So, before you toss your shiny silver discs into the dumpster or drop them off at the Goodwill, I want to urge you give them another look and listen.

Here are 10 reasons why CDs are still pretty awesome:

1. Used CDs Are a Bargain Right Now

This past weekend I paid a visit to the enormous Amoeba music store in Hollywood. There you can find racks upon racks of discounted CDs for $5 or less. Looking for some classic rock like Led Zeppelin III? It’ll set you back $30 on vinyl. On CD? I saw it for just three smackeroos. And it’s not just classic rock. If you’re looking for just about any popular album from the last fifty years, you’ll probably find it cheaper on CD than just about any other format, period.

You don’t even have to make the pilgrimage to Amoeba. Just check out your local record shop, thrift store or garage sale. Folks are nearly just giving CDs away. And that’s your potential gain.

2. You Probably Own a Bunch of CDs Already

They might be in the back of a closet or in a storage unit, but if you’re over the age of 30 there’s a good chance you already own a bunch of CDs that you might not be playing. Go unpack them and it’s like getting free music! Even if you don’t, chances are your parents, siblings, friends or other relatives have some CDs they’d be just as happy to give away, thinking that streams and downloads are somehow superior.

If you’re a college or community radio DJ, it’s likely your station has many hundreds or thousands of CDs.

3. There Are Tons of Out-of-Print Albums Only on CD

During the compact disc’s two decade heyday – from about 1983 to 2003, when the iTunes store went online – millions of albums were released on CD. By about 1993 record companies seriously scaled back which albums were on vinyl or cassette. By the turn of the century only a small percentage saw an analog release, or had tiny analog releases, while digital-only distribution had yet to take off. That means thousands of albums recorded during that time were pretty much only available on CD. Although many have been re-released for streaming and digital download, there are still countless out-of-print albums for which compact disc is the only way to hear them (outside of extra-legal file sharing).

This category isn’t just limited to obscurities. Even some critically acclaimed and classic albums remain unavailable except in the original CD release.

4. CDs Are Yours Forever

Sure, you can lose a CD or scratch beyond playability. But otherwise the music on that CD is yours forever. Even if Taylor Swift and Neil Young collectively decide they’re pulling all their music from Spotify, you can still hear their albums if you bought the CD.

5. A Broken CD Only Ruins One Album

CDs are more durable than vinyl or cassettes. And, although we were promised “perfect sound forever” when CDs first debuted in the 80s, we all know they can get scratched beyond playability. Still, one messed up CD ruins just one album. What happens when your USB thumb drive or hard drive full of MP3s crashes? Hundreds or thousands disappear. Regular backups and cloud storage help to prevent these disasters, but at a cost that adds up much faster than the price of a new CD.

6. You Can Sell Your CDs

Thanks to the “first sale doctrine” in copyright law, when you own a CD (or vinyl LP, cassette, book, or most physical media), you have the right to lend, sell or give away that album. The same is not true of an MP3 or digital download. Selling that file you “bought” (more like “licensed”) from iTunes or Amazon is actually called “piracy.” Of course you can copy it all you like, but good luck hocking it when you’re tired of that album (or need to pay the rent).

7. CDs Sound Great on the Radio

While the pops and crackle of vinyl have a certain charm, I defy most radio contemporary listeners to sit through hours of poorly maintained records played on misaligned community radio turntables. There’s a reason why stations rapidly adopted CDs in the 1990s, they’re easy to use and sound good on air. They also sound better than lot of digital files.

I hear plenty of poorly compressed MP3s that only get worse after put through broadcast audio processors. Streams from YouTube can border on unlistenable, taking on a gurgling shimmery underwater tonality. The situation degrades over a station’s webcast, wherein these already lossy files get encoded yet another time and further degraded. It’s true that digital files don’t have to be terrible, but it takes some care and attention to detail to ensure. CDs, by comparison, just work, and usually sound great.

8. Good CD Players Are Cheaper than Good Turntables

Although there’s been a renaissance in decent quality, relatively inexpensive turntables in the last decade, $250 is still pretty much the lowest reasonable entry point for anything durable. However, right now you can buy a pretty nice brand new Teac CD player for less than $150. And there are even decent CD boomboxes out there for well under a c-note, like this Sony. Moreover, if you’re willing to go used, these days thrift stores are filled to the brim with players for less than the cost of dinner out. Plus, even a bargain basement CD player will never ruin your CDs like a cheap record player will chew up your vinyl.

9. Blu-Ray and DVD Players also Play CDs

Even if you don’t have a plain old CD player, there’s a good chance you have a device that will play CDs, since DVD and Blu-Ray players all support the format. On top of that, because of demand these video disc players can be had cheaper than single-purpose CD players. A perfectly adequate Sony Blu-Ray can be had for under 80 bucks, while a nice Sony DVD player comes in for less than that cheapo suitcase record player at Target.

10. It’s Easy to Rip CDs to Your Computer and Smartphone

Though you can still buy some off-brand CD walkmen, you still won’t see me walking around with one. Like most folks, I listen to music on my smartphone while on the go. But that doesn’t mean I have to rely on streaming or digital music stores. CDs are a snap to rip on your computer, using free built-in software on both Windows and Macs. It’s true that most new laptops don’t come with CD drives anymore, a brand-name USB drive that reads and writes both CDs and DVDs sets you back less than 35 clams.

If somehow the files you ripped get lost or corrupted, just go back and re-rip your CD. Easy peasy.

For those who like to make and record music, here’s a bonus reason:

11. CD-Rs are Cheaper To Make than Cassettes (or Records)

Want to record and distribute your own music? It’s cheaper and easier to do it on CD than cassette or vinyl.

Of course you can completely D.I.Y. both cassettes and CDs. A spindle of 100 CD-Rs will only run you about 17 bucks, and can still be had at your local discount or office supply store. Finding blank tapes is tougher, though cassette stalwart National Audio Company will sell you 100 fresh C60 blanks for $90 – more than 5x the cost of CD-Rs.

Once you have those tapes, then you’ve got to dub them. Using a double-deck that’ll go no faster than double real-time. Better make a weekend of it.

Using just an inexpensive CD burner you’ll probably finish a full CD in just a few minutes. It’ll take just an evening to make enough to sell at a show.

And if you want to go the way of pro duplication, there’s probably still a company that makes CDs nearby. Even if you send it out, you can get 100 CDs made and printed, in custom jackets for under $200, and get them in just a couple of weeks. Cassettes? Budget more like $300 or more. And vinyl? Think more like two grand, and waiting for months.

I guess that’s why I still see stacks of new shrinkwrapped CDs in cardboard slipcases at local bands’ merch tables. Cost and convenience still outweighs hip, even in indie rock.

The post 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio) appeared first on Radio Survivor.

A week ago Old First Concerts in San Francisco sponsored a sold out performance of the music of Julius Eastman. Hybrid Highbrow has discussed Eastman’s history and significance before. I wish that I could have attended this event, but my friend Sherry Gendelman, who hosts the Piano program on KPFA, went and sent me her notes:

“There were four grand pianos on stage,  three of which were lent to the church for the performance by R. Kassman Pianos of Berkeley. Julius Eastman’s music is not traditionally melodic, though it is infused with many classical influences. It is atonal, assaultive, percussive and mind boggling. The first three, short pieces, were religious in theme. ‘Touch Him When,’ ‘Our Father,’ and ‘Hail Mary.’ They were unique in their conception, particularly ‘Hail Mary,’ which consisted of a performer speaking the Hail Mary prayer over and over through a megaphone, accompanied by piano. I can only imagine what Eastman suffered at the hands of organized religion.

After intermission there was performance of his piece ‘Crazy Nigger,’ composed 1979. It involved all four pianos. It began with just four pianists. The program indicated that there would be additional players at some point in the piece. I listened with my eyes closed. I heard in the beginning the brilliance and classical training that Eastman had. The music also spoke of what it feels like to be called “crazy”  and “nigger” for your entire life. I was so lost in the music that when I opened my eyes was startled to see at least two or four more people surrounding each piano and banging out their parts and hearts. I was startled by the number of people onstage and the cacophony of noise and music that they made, all from Eastman’s score. When the piece was over the audience erupted with applause and cheers. I’m really happy that I attended.”

The post Julius Eastman comes to town appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One of the things I like about G-town radio is that it starts every morning with jazz programming. The internet community station broadcasts to the Germantown section of Philadelphia. From Monday to Saturday the jazz streams from six to nine am, and to ten am on Sundays.

“Get out of bed mix featuring classic jazz, mellow pop and downtempo electronica,” the station’s program schedule explains.

I don’t know why, but jazz in the AM makes me feel optimistic and hip at the same time. I drive into work and there is a ballad by Dexter Gordon or something similar, and I feel like the world is a loving, rational place, even though it isn’t. I feel like I am connected to everyone around me, even if I am not.

“If music is a place, Jazz is the city,” says the writer Vera Nazarian. I’m with that. Speaking of cities, G-town is doing an interesting weekly series on the future of its environs.

“The first eight-episode season focused on local government, and the second honed in on the neighborhood’s network of small businesses,” an article in Billy Penn notes. “The current leg of the show has a broader scope. Each episode will explore a different Germantown attribute, from the neighborhood’s history to its modern crime, poverty and housing inequity.”

The post G-town radio offers jazz and perspective to Germantown appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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Variety has a wonderful profile of Los Angeles radio pioneer Saul Levine, age 92, who launched his first classical music station KBCA-FM almost 60 years ago. Author Roy Trakin obviously had fun writing the piece:

Like Daniel-Day Lewis in “There Must Be Blood,” Levine bulldozed the land atop Mt. Wilson –which he leased from the U.S. Forest Service for $350 a year — driving the tractor himself. He acquired a transmitter from a defunct Michigan station for $1,500, had an antenna crafted out of a lead pipe, and bartered commercial time on the yet-to-air station for a $300 flag pole so they could broadcast. He even built a makeshift studio on the site itself, where an eccentric Seven-Day Adventist-turned-engineer who literally lived off the land kept the station on for as close to around the clock as humanly possible.

Since then Levine has operated classical, jazz, and even country music stations. I am most familiar with his K-MOZART outlet, available at FM 105.1, via HD, and online. He predicts that terrestrial radio will last another “15 to 20 years.”

“It’s free, it’s local, it’s live,” Levine told Variety, “and it’s the only medium that deals with your community.”

Levine’s Mt. Wilson Broadcasters company is a not infrequent correspondent with the Federal Communications Commission. In this 2017 broadside, he urged the FCC not to accept proposals that would lead to further consolidation on the AM/FM bands, referring specifically to recommendations coming from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

Levine writes:

“Separate and apart from failing to provide documentation in support of the alleged adverse impact on competition, the NAB filings ignore the multiple ‘downsides’ resulting from group owner consolidation,

1. less diversity of viewpoint ownership (evidenced by substantially fewer radio owners- the 39% decline in radio ownership between 1996 and 2006), which will be further reduced if caps are eliminated, increased or maintained at the existing limits;

2. less meaningful localism (evidenced by out-of-market centrally located studios serving distant designated areas, Appendix III, Mt. Wilson Addendum);

3. less competition between group owners and independent radio owners (evidenced by the decline in radio ownership). While the number of stations remain relatively constant, the number of radio owners consistently is reduced – the ultimate result, less competition, less diversity;

4. additional layoffs resulting from consolidation.”

When not giving the FCC a piece of his mind, Levine has been dating via match.com, according to the Variety article. “There was one I liked, but she turned out to be a little meshugge,” he told Trakin. “She was attractive and intelligent, but she’s converted to Hinduism and wanted me to also. Then I found out she was spiking my meals with herbs. She kept telling me Big Pharma’s killing us, but if it weren’t for Big Pharma, we wouldn’t be here at all.” Whatever is keeping Saul here, it deserves our thanks.

The post Saul Levine, radio pioneer, still advocating for independent media appeared first on Radio Survivor.

After coming to the brink of a shutdown when grant monies were dramatically reduced, the Free Music Archive announced that it will live on under the ownership of camera rental company KitSplit. A few weeks ago my Radio Survivor colleague Erick Klein talked at length with FMA Director Cheyenne Hohman, who explained why the project was on the verge of shutting down, though leaving the door open to a possible recovery.

Although the FMA was originally conceived by founding community radio station WFMU as as a repository of music free from performance royalties for non-commercial radio stations to play online, it also became a place for independent film- and video-makers to find music for their productions, available for free or at low-cost. The KitSplit acquisition reflects that constituency, since the company supports independent creators in a variety of ways.

As it turns out, non-commercial radio stations were able to negotiate reasonable rates to play commercial music on their online streams, making the FMA less of an outright necessity. Yet, it still developed into a immense catalog of curated sounds that attracted an enormous community of listeners and creators. The irony is that its popularity only increased costs to host all these files.

As a for-profit company one assumes that KitSplit is in a better position to keep the FMA funded. While some from the community radio world might be suspicious of a for-profit taking over the archive, on the FMA blog Cheyenne assures that, “though KitSplit is a for-profit business, the FMA will remain true to its mission of sharing free, curated audio to all.” She also points out KitSplit’s efforts to support women in filmmaking.

On its own blog, KitSplit says, “FMA will stay up and running as is, and together we’ll be able to serve creators and our community even more powerfully.”

Though FMA listening and downloads have remained online while its future was being sorted out, artists have not been able to contribute new tracks for about a month. Fresh uploads should resume in a few weeks.

The scare that the FMA might go away (though with the current library backed up at the Internet Archive) serves a reminder to me that vital independent projects like this need our continuing support. It’s easy to become complacent and think that grant funding or others will keep them afloat. Yet, they’re often more secure and health when a multitude of small funders contribute rather than when relying upon a small number of large funders.
That’s why community radio fund drives are a necessary, thought sometimes annoying thing – the loss of a few individual donors can be made up by new ones, who might be brand new listeners. The loss of a multi-thousand dollar grantor is much harder to recover from.
So support your favorite independent non-profit, low-profit and what-profit? enterprises while they’re still here.

The post The Free Music Archive Lives On appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The holiday season approaches, and as has been the case since 1992, revelers will soon gather in a host of cities and perform Phil Kline’s composition Unsilent Night. They will each download one of four parts of the piece and play it on some mobile device as they stroll down evening streets. Anything from a iPod to a boombox serves the music’s purposes.

Here’s how the performance went in Greenwich Village, New York not too many years ago.

You can skip over to this website to download a part and find an Unsilent Night near you. As the international schedule indicates, the fun has already concluded in some cities, like Athens, Georgia, but the Puget Sound area will soom serve up the piece twice, once in Tacoma, then in Seattle.

Meanwhile, since I am woefully delinquent in keeping up with my Hybrid Highbrow podcast, I have cooked up some Spotify Hybrid Highbrow playlists. Behold one for the holidays. I’m not done with it yet, but enjoy . . .

The post Unsilent Nights: where to find one; what to do appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Soprano Nadine Sierra has produced a beautiful new album titled “There’s a Place for Us.” The signature song comes from the musical West Side Story. But the message is definitely Sierra’s. “No matter what happens in this world,” she says in an interview about the album, “no matter what kind of negative messages are being sent by certain people, eventually if we all stick together  . . . we can find a place for all of us to live freely, happily, and with ample love.”

Here is her rendition of the West Side Story song “Somewhere.” Quite beautiful.

I am increasingly confident that there is a place for everyone, especially on the radio. The other day in response to Jennifer’s annual Alice’s Restaurant radio survey we received a response from Al Gordon of WJPR (1640) in New Jersey. The station broadcasts a hybrid format: “Jewish all day and oldies all night.”

“I play Arlo every Thanksgiving on my station at Midnight, 4AM and noon,” Gordon wrote to us.

Here is the WJPR schedule from Monday through Thursday.

12 Midnight   Overnight oldies/Babalu
5AM              Daf Yomi/Rabbi Elefant
6AM              Gordon-in-the-Morning
10AM            Midday Music/Chaya
2PM              Afternoon Music/Chaim
6PM              Silent Mike
7PM              Talkline Communications Network Proramming
Tuesday        Rabbi Yaakov Spivak
Wednesday  Silk Road To Jerusalem with Chief Bucharian Rabbi Yitzchak Yehoshua

8PM             Talkline/Zev Brenner
9PM              Oldies/Babalu

The post There’s a place for us (and it includes Jewish music + oldies) appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide.

For many, tuning in to hear Arlo Guthrie’s epic tune Alice’s Restaurant on the radio is an annual Thanksgiving ritual. Inspired by events that transpired on Thanksgiving day in 1965, the 18+ minute “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” became a radio staple following multiple airings on WBAI in New York. Smithsonian did an excellent piece last year outlining the back story, explaining that,

…the song’s first true breakthrough…was ‘Alice’s’ February 1967 radio debut on New York City’s WBAI-FM. Said Arlo: ‘I’d been a big fan of WBAI. I’d been to their studios a few times and one night they asked me to perform live. I had no idea they were taping it, although it wouldn’t have stopped me from performing. I loved those guys.’

By May, the non-profit WBAI was receiving so many requests to play ‘Alice,’ it became a fund-raising gimmick. ‘WBAI…would play it after they’d been pledged enough money,’ recalled Guthrie, then quipped: ‘Eventually they were playing it so often, they took pledges to stop playing it, and…raised even more money.'”

Arlo Guthrie has been touring regularly in support of the 50th anniversary of “Alice’s Restaurant,” including celebrations of the song’s 1967 album appearance. Currently in the midst of a two-year tour to honor the forthcoming anniversary of the 1969 “Alice’s Restaurant” film, Guthrie tirelessly revisits his classic song.

For those seeking out the song this year, the following is a list of stations that have announced plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving, 2018. Feel free to look at my posts from prior years, as that may offer clues to other radio stations that regularly participate. If you know of others, join the conversation in our Facebook group. I will continue to update the list.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2018 – November 22, 2018

Last updated on November 22, 2018 at 8:20am Pacific time

Terrestrial Radio:

WAMC 1400 AM and 90.3 FM (Albany, NY) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon, followed by a discussion with Arlo Guthrie, when “At 1 p.m., WAMC’s Alan Chartock discusses the movie and the song with Arlo Guthrie before a live audience.”

92 KQRS (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving at 9am and 2pm

KQVN 100.1 FM (Thousand Oaks, CA) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 10am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm on Thanksgiving. As an added bonus, the station will play it again on Christmas.

100.7 KSLX (Phoenix, AZ) plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” five times on Thanksgiving: 7am, 11am, 2pm, 6pm and 9pm.

KTYD 99.9 FM (Santa Barbara, CA): KTYD will play “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” at noon at 6pm on Thanksgiving. KTYD tweets: “At 3pm we’ll play the ‘Revisited’ 2009 version, and you’ll have a chance to win tix to see Arlo at the @LoberoTheatre March 19.”

WRHQ 105. 3 FM (Savannah, GA) plans to air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9:30am, 12:30pm and 6:30pm on Thanksgiving.

WEXT 97.7 FM (Troy, NY) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” several times on Thanksgiving during the 6am, 9am, noon, and 7pm shows

WGXC 90.7 FM (Acra and Hudson, NY): WGXC tweets: “If you listen @WGXC on Thursday you’ll hear William Burroughs ‘Thanksgiving Prayer,’ Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ and Les Nessman’s flying turkeys.”

WZZZ 107.5 The Breeze (Portsmouth, OH) plans to air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am, noon and 5pm, tweeting, “Follow along as the story unfolds on Thanksgiving Day. It’s brought to you by Preston Family Funeral Home, Rt.5 in Ashland-Serving the community since 2002.”

95.5 FM KLOS (Culver City, CA): The station is running a poll on Facebook, asking, “We’ll play ‘Alice’s Restaurant‘ in its 18-minute entirety on Thanksgiving. What time should we spin it? Noon? 3pm? Both? Put it on in the background while you eat, it’s a #thanksgiving tradition.”

95.5 FM GLO (Peoria, IL): Will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6pm on Thanksgiving.

WXOX 97.1 FM (Louisville, KY) plans to air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11 am EST on Thanksgiving.

KPIG 107.5 FM (Freedom, CA) and KPYG 94.9 FM (Cayucos/San Luis Obispo, CA) writes that it will have “Four seatings for Alice’s Restaurant Thanksgiving Day on the Pig -breakfast – 9a lunch – 12p
appetizers – 4p dessert – 8p.”

WAPJ 89.9 FM and 105.1 FM (Torrington, CT) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 8am on Thanksgiving.

WXPN 88.5 FM (Philadelphia, PA) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WDRV 97.1 FM The Drive (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, noon, and 4pm.

KRVM 91.9 FM (Eugene, OR) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

KMUN 91.9 FM (Astoria, OR) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am on Thanksgiving.

WNRN 91.9 FM (Charlottesville, VA), 94.7 FM Lovingston, 95.3 Lexington, 95.1 Harrisonburg, 101.1 Waynesboro, 89.9 Lynchburg, 88.5 Richmond and 101.1 Staunton will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am, noon, and 5pm on Thanksgiving.

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

WBLM 102.9 FM (Portland, ME) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

WFUV 90.7 FM (Bronx, NY) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

The Summit (Akron, OH) 91.3 WAPS Akron/Canton and 90.7 WKTL Youngstown/Warren/Struthers will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, noon, and 6pm on Thanksgiving.

95.9 FM The Fox (Stamford/Norwalk, CT) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 9am and 3pm on Thanksgiving.

WXRT 93.1 FM (Chicago, IL) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving.

WXKR 94.5 FM (Toledo, OH) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm on Thanksgiving.

WPLR 99.1 FM (New Haven, CT) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6am, noon and 6pm.

WPNH 100.1 FM The Planet (Plymouth, NH) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WRKI 95.1 FM i-95 (Brookfield, CT) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 8am, noon, and 5pm on Thanksgiving.

KRCC 91. 5 FM (Colorado Springs, CO) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 7pm on Thanksgiving.

Wyoming Public Radio will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am during the “Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving Special.”

WJPR 1640 AM (Highland Park/Edison, NJ): Airs “Alice’s Restaurant” every Thanksgiving at midnight, 4am, and noon.

Online Radio Stations:

The Big 8 CKLW plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thursday at 8am, Noon, 4pm and 8pm eastern time.

The Whip Radio will play “Alice’s Restaurant” four times on Thanksgiving: 8am, 12 noon, 5pm and 9pm Central time.

Charles Laquidara Radio will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 5pm Eastern time on Thanksgiving.

Totally 80s FM will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon Eastern time on Thanksgiving.

Classic70s80s.com will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon ET and 6pm ET on Thanksgiving.

REC-FM will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am Eastern time.

Time Capsule Audio Network will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 6 am, 3 pm and 11 pm Eastern time.

The post Alice’s Restaurant Maintains Spot on Thanksgiving Radio Dial in 2018 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My friend Sherry Gendelman, who hosts a popular Sunday morning classical music show on KPFA in Berkeley, started her program last week with a piece for violin and orchestra. No sooner did the performance begin than the phones started ringing. ‘What is this?’ six listeners in a row immediately demanded.

“I woke up to this magical music. It was so lovely,” one caller exclaimed.  “Thank you so much.”

I am not surprised at the reaction. Sherry started her lineup with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ radiant tone poem The Lark Ascending: A Romance for Violin and Orchestra. Marked “Andante Sostenuto” in the orchestral score, the composition begins with a violin cadenza that invokes the scene of a beautiful bird stretching her wings in a garden. It’s always a hit with listeners.

Sunday morning is the perfect time for a community radio stations to host classical music. While we are on the subject, I can’t wait for KSQD-FM (aka “The Squid”) in nearby Santa Cruz to start broadcasting. A big chunk of the classical music group associated with now sadly defunct KUSP-FM will be hosting programs on the weekends. Check the end of this post for more details.

Here are three more pieces that I think very successfully open a Sunday morning classical music program.

The overture to Russlan and Ludmilla by Mikhail Glinka. Some Russian composers, like Dimitri Shostakovich, specialize in dark sarcastic music; others, like Borodin, exude optimism. This Glinka piece, the opening to his rarely performed opera, definitely falls into the optimism category. In contrast to the Vaughn Williams score, it will roust up your listeners and inspire them to accomplish Great Things. While I was a kid growing up in New York City, the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History started its shows with Russlan. There is just something cheerfully cosmic about the piece.

Bela Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto, second movement, “Adagio religioso.” Bartok wrote this composition at the very end of his days. One of his students finished the piece after he died in 1945. The hauntingly beautiful slow movement begins with a homage to a Beethoven string quartet, then features orchestral imitations of the birds the composer heard from his hospital bed. It is a musical essay that invites us to meditate and be grateful for our lives.

PS: Yes, I believe in playing single movements of symphonies on radios shows. I know. Blasphemy.

Alan Hovhaness, Symphony Number 2, “Mysterious Mountain,” first movement.  Hovhaness composed this work in 1955 at the request of the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The rhythmically complex first movement begins with a gorgeous prayer intoned by strings, followed by celesta and harp episodes, then a beautiful oboe solo, then back to the prayer. It is perfect for Sunday morning.

Meanwhile the staff of KSQD-FM continues to fundraise and tackle obstacles in pursuit of a broadcasting date. You can read about some of the hairy details here, but I think a comment from one of the project’s movers and shakers, Rachel Goodman, summarizes the situation: “There’s a lot of legal twists and turns, and huge bureaucracies involved. It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill, and then you run into a bigger boulder.”

In any event, when it all comes through, there will be lots of interesting music on the weekends. Former KUSP-FM host Joe Truskot sent me an email the other day with details on some of the plans:

“My fellow hosts and I are very happy to bring locally produced, classical music shows back to the communities of the Monterey Bay. All four of us (Nicholas Mitchell, Jim Emdy, Chris Smith and me) were part of the KUSP classical music programs and are passionate about music.

It will be a different listening audience and will require some programming changes. I was a sub for all the classical music programs on KUSP so I understand the various niches that we occupied, but we were all evening shows devoted to particular genres. My show was 20-21, music of the 20th century and today.

My new show “Music of the Masters” won’t have those restrictions but it will have to jive with what listeners are doing on Saturday mornings. I find it exciting to match music with a “rise and shine” attitude. I’ll also have to keep an eye out for news, traffic, times, and weather. As far as selections, I’m amassing a large collection of works which will capture attention immediately. It’s been fun to go back to my college days (when I really got hooked on classical music and classical music radio) and recall which pieces grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go: Tchaikovsky “Capriccio Italien,” Ravel “La Valse,” Liszt’s “Liebestraum,” Glinka’s Overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla,” Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” and on and on and on.

One other goal of mine is to create programs which offer large orchestral works, chamber ensembles, lieder, choral works, and music from dance, opera, movies, and video games. I love themed programs and being challenged to assemble selections that fit the theme – all with the purpose of listeners enjoying the show and staying tuned in. For example, FRESH WATER MUSIC featuring Liadov’s “The Enchanted Lake,” Ferdé Grofé’s “Niagara Suite,” Smetana’s “The Moldau,” Schubert’s and Barber’s “Music to be Performed on Water,” Druckman’s “Reflections on the Nature of Water,” and, of course, excerpts from Handel’s Water Music.”

If you want to help make this happen sooner rather than later, The Squid is still in fund-raising mode. More information on the project as I get it.

The post Four great pieces for a Sunday AM classical music community radio show appeared first on Radio Survivor.

When Tipper Gore and the PMRC called rock and rap stars to testify in front of Congress about explicit lyrics, did this affect college radio? How could it not? Prof. Kate Jewell is examining the relationship between college stations and the culture wars as part of a new book project.

Jewell is Associate Professor of History at Fitchburg State University and a Fellow at the University Connecticut Humanities Institute. She joins the show to talk about how college broadcasts triggered conservative community reaction and outrage, and how stations internalized the cultural controversies that dominated the zeitgeist from the 1960s through the turn of the century.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes:

• KatherineJewell.com
• “Why musical innovation will continue, even as local radio disappears” by Kate Jewell, in Washington Post
• Wikipedia: The Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC)
• Rolling Stone: PMRC’s ‘Filthy 15’: Where Are They Now?
• “Radio by and for the Public: The Death and Resurrection of Low Power Radio,” by Paul Riismandel in The Radio Reader

The post Podcast #164 – College Radio and the Culture Wars appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Yes, Grimes Poznikov has a Facebook group where this photo and others can be found: https://www.facebook.com/Automatic-Human-Jukebox-Grimes-Poznikov-165205406850071/

The San Francisco Chronicle took me back a decade or two with this item about a homage to the late Grimes Poznikov and his Automatic Human Jukebox. From the 1970s through the 1990s Poznikov played his horn inside an elaborately got up used refrigerator cart. He began his career with a repertoire of about two dozen tunes. You picked a song, plugged in your money, and got your music delivered through the, well, box.

In the 1990s his presentations became more free-associative, so to speak, as per this YouTube.

Poznikov died in 2005 from booze, mental illness, and living on the street. Now he has a decorated porta potti in his honor, made to look like his then popular box.

Moondog; from Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondog

This brings me to one of my more dubious claims to fame. I knew Moondog. Yes, that Moondog, the composer, musical instrument inventor, poet, and philosopher. The very same Moondog who stood silently in his Odin outfit around midtown Manhattan for many years.

Back in the 1970s I worked relatively close to his various haunts. I would sometimes sit next to him and eat my lunch in his vicinity. “How’s it going Moondog?” I would ask. Pretty good, he would reply. In truth, I don’t remember the exact response, but it was close to that. We wouldn’t say much more because Moondog decidedly was not into talking. But I somehow convinced myself that we had a relationship.

Moondog’s real name was Louis Thomas Hardin. I am reminded of him because my wife and I visited the travelling Peter Hujar photography exhibit yesterday, which included a Moondog photo. It was only years later that I learned that Hardin successfully sued none other than Alan Freed for infringing on his name, as per Freed’s “Moondog Rock and Roll Matinee.”

Here is a portion of Hardin’s marvelously syncopated “Moondog Symphony.”

While we are on the subject of dogs, this Youtube is making the rounds. It reminds me that no matter how aroused a canine may become by an unusual sound, in this case that of a young lady practicing “Frère Jacques” on her flute, it will not allow the disturbance to interrupt its rest. The Nap Must Go On.

The post Street jukeboxes, Moondogs, and flutists in the noonday sun appeared first on Radio Survivor.

About six weeks ago I bought a persimmon colored Honda Fit. I love it. The car replaced a stick-shift Honda Civic with which I awkwardly navigated the hills of San Francisco for fourteen years. No more of that pseudo-James Dean nonsense. My Fit has automatic transmission and effortlessly putters up the Cool Gray City’s worst inclines without breaking a sweat. It also came with a free introductory subscription to SiriusXM satellite radio which I sampled and found, somewhat to my embarrassment, that I greatly enjoy.

I say embarrassment because I have been writing about SiriusXM in one capacity or another for years. A decade ago I covered the controversial merger of the two companies for Ars Technica. I also included a section about satellite radio in my book Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium. But I never really listened to SiriusXM that much, until now.

My Honda Fit SiriusXM interface.

What won me over is that the service has concatenated a gaggle of music channels into a section that the panel on my SiriusXM interface calls “Jzz/Stndrd/Clscl.” These channels, which I can easily toggle through while driving the Fit, include a Metropolitan Opera channel, a show tunes channel, a 40s big band channel, about half a dozen jazz channels, and a symphony hall classics channel. Basically, this covers almost all the elements of what I call “hybrid highbrow” music, save a world music component.

I wish there was more classical fare (a classical soloists channel would be grand). And, as I just mentioned, a world music channel that aired Indian ragas and Egyptian oud ensembles would complete the concept. But the hosts are full of enthusiasm and charm and their selections are first rate. So I have to admit that I’m hooked . . .

The post How SiriusXM won me over with its “Jzz/Stndrd/Clscl” zone appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Of late I have been trying to keep track of storefronts that play classical music in San Francisco. They make for excellent locations for classical music lovers to loiter. So far I have found two, briefly videoed in this Youtube clip.

Obviously there’s much to lament in this practice. Andrew Mellor, writing for the Rhinegold music publisher website, notes with sadness the spectacle of genius assigned the task of making various places unpalatable to “certain people” (aka, the homeless and destitute). Mellor is talking about the London transit system in his essay:

“When I lived in London, Mozart’s last symphonies were a favourite at my local tube station where they were piped through the public address system in order to dissuade certain people from sticking around for longer than was absolutely necessary. So there’s a new role for three of the most astonishing works to have flowed from the most dazzling musical genius the world has produced: the creation of an environment in which people feel uncomfortable (though to be fair, as an industry we were excelling at that objective long before Transport for London got involved).”

But there is one saving grace, at least for me. I happen to be very fond of hanging around on the street and just talking to whoever comes by. It’s a particularly fun thing to do if some nice loudspeakers are piping out Vivaldi or Telemann or a similar composer (these services seem to favor the Baroque, Rococo, and Classical periods [eg Mozart and Haydn]. I am not sure why). There’s a pawn shop in the Mission District that broadcasts classical pieces. So sometimes I get a taco and hang out in front there and chat with other classical fans who linger for the music.

If you know of any other venues, please tweet me at @matthewlasar and I’ll add them to my video. Do try to get a quick clip with your mobile device.

The post Places in San Francisco to loiter while listening to classical music appeared first on Radio Survivor.

If you Googled anything over the last twelve hours or so, you learned that today is American conductor Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday. Classical radio station WQXR-FM in New York City has a wonderful memorial to Bernstein, reminding us of his work as a civil rights activist during the 1960s and 1970s, and his advocacy of jazz and popular music.

It should also be mentioned that over the course of his career, Leonard Bernstein was relentlessly watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You can inform yourself about this by visiting the FBI’s own archive of its famous probes. “Bernstein (1918-1990) was composer, conductor, and pianist who was investigated by the FBI for his ties to communist organizations,” the site notes. “These files range from 1949 to 1963.” Actually, they continue through 1974.

As noted, in 1949 the Bureau began surveillance of Bernstein and his activities. A memorandum to its director J. Edgar Hoover noted his alleged involvement with groups like the Civil Rights Congress and National Negro Congress. The Communist Party launched the latter organization  to build coalitions of black and white workers and intellectuals. “Leonard Bernstein has been connected, affiliated, or in some manner associated with the following organizations,” the memo observes (see the screenshot from the file below). The vaguely worded comment even drew skepticism from an FBI functionary who later reviewed it. “This phraseology means nothing . . . ” someone wrote at the bottom of the document.

A snippet of Leonard Bernstein’s FBI file.

That did not stop the Bureau from staying on Bernstein’s tail, publishing a lengthy internal expose of Bernstein’s political activities from 1945 through 1949. These included involvement with anti-fascist, pro-civil rights, and free speech groups associated with the Communist Party during those years. Mostly Bernstein’s name appeared on various endorsement lists, the report notes, or he attended a testimonial dinner for some civil rights activist, or he consented to dedicate a performance to “free Spain,” or he participated in a National Negro Congress talent contest. The FBI even took an interest in Bernstein’s two month stay in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1950.

By 1953 Bernstein’s passport had been revoked, forcing him to submit an affidavit assuring the government that he had never been a member of the CP. The FBI noted this action in a 1953 memo titled “Security Matter, Fraud Against Government.” But Bernstein’s assertion was true. In fact, the conductor had given his name and energies to many non-communist front groups, from Planned Parenthood to the United Jewish Appeal. Eventually he won his passport back, and became the music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

My favorite portion of Bernstein’s FBI file is a letter that the Bureau obtained in which the Shell Oil Company, then a prominent educational television sponsor, came to his defense. Some anti-communist zealot had written to Shell objecting to his work. In 1963 one H.F. Brown of Shell’s public relations department responded:

“We feel that we are doing a very real service to the young people of this country in sponsoring on television from New York the Young People’s Concerts under the direction of Mr. Bernstein, who in our opinion is not only a gifted conductor but one of the great teachers of our day.

We appreciate your concern and your very honest reasons for writing us. We would, however, like to suggest that in this instance you are being misguided by incorrect information.

The final concert in this year’s Young People’s Concert will be telecast in your area on March 8th. We do hope you will tune in.”

Bernstein’s FBI file concludes with his brief support of the Black Panther Party in 1970 and association with the anti-war activist Daniel Berrigan. The dossier ends as it begins, with a lengthy timeline of his life’s political work, going all the way back the 1940s. “This summary has been prepared for use at the seat of government and is not suitable for dissemination,” the FBI document warns.

The post Leonard Bernstein’s FBI file appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Second Inversion radio has an interesting interview with pianist Nadia Shpachenko. She has a new album that includes a composition by Peter Yates called “Epitaphs and Youngsters.” The piece requires output from a “singing pianist,” who, among other tasks, meditates on W.C. Fields’ famous comment that “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

Apparently Fields hoped that this statement would become his epitaph. At least that’s what he said in the magazine Vanity Fair in 1925. He also alluded to this desire in another movie, to wit:

Hangman: Have you any last wish?
WC: Yes, I’d like to see Paris before I die. (pause) Philadelphia will do.

In any event, from the Second Inversion snippet included in the interview, it seems like a nice work, nicely performed.

Meanwhile I love the soundtrack to the TV show Cowboy Beebop and am glad that Austin, Texas classical station KFMA has published a retrospective of sorts on its author, Yoko Kanno. Beebop’s opening track brings back memories of the anthems of TV shows from the 1950s, most notably Henry Mancini’s theme to Peter Gunn:

But Kanno is full of surprises, most notably this Faure-like chorus that morphs into a Chrissy Hynde style tune:

The post On W.C. Fields and Cowboy Bebop appeared first on Radio Survivor.

There are undiscovered musical treasures potentially fading away in closets, basements and storage units around the world. Seattle radio station KEXP teamed up with local universities and media organizations to help save a little of this cultural history with the Pop-Up Music Memory Digitization Lab. For one day members of the public were invited to bring their audio and video tapes of home- and self-recorded music performances for digitizing and archiving.

KEXP’s Media Asset Librarian Dylan Flesch and Libby S. Hopfauf, Audiovisual Archivist for Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound, guest to tell us about the event. They explain why it’s vital to preserve these music memories right now, and give some advice for folks and organizations who want to join in the effort.

Jennifer, Eric and Paul also discuss National Radio Day, which happens August 20.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes:

• Pop Up Music Memory Digitization Labs
• KEXP
• Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound – MIPOPS
• An Online Archive of the Fourth Community Radio Station: KRAB
• Podcast #134 – The KRAB-FM Archives
• Internet Archive
• Some history of the KZAM “Local Tape Extravaganza”
• Podcast #145 – Hip-Hop Radio Archive
• National Radio Day is August 20
• High School Radio Network

The post Podcast #154 – One Tape at a Time: Preserving Music Memories appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today is National Underwear Day, and radio station WWOZ-FM of New Orleans notes the occasion with a terrific video of the city’s Nat’l Underwear Day celebration from 2016:

The New Orleans National Underwear Day Parade rolls again Sunday at 7p, starting and ending at 3610 Toulouse pic.twitter.com/7VoQW2tqk9

— WWOZ 90.7 FM (@wwoz_neworleans) August 5, 2018

It should be observed that underwear unites almost all musical genres. Bela Bartok wore underwear. So did Sarah Vaughan. So did the legendary tango singer Carlos Gardel. I could go on and on. Of course it’s possible (I’m imagining) that some music legends skipped wearing underwear on occasion (see Ludwig von Beethoven and Roland Kirk). But their negligence represents the exception that proves the rule. So Happy National Underwear Day to hybrid highbrowists one and all.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun Times has a moving farewell to retiring music host Carl Grapentine, who served up the drive time classics on station WFMT-FM for 22 years.

“He melded the familiar with the esoteric, offering mini-lectures on the history and origins of the music,” reminisces columnist Laura Washington. “Carl would play a lovely piece, then tell me about it. I would scribble notes. There are scraps of paper about beautiful music are all over my apartment, stuffed in drawers, files, and sofa cushions.”

Chicago is arguably the second most important city in the USA for classical music (New York City is the first). It is where  Theodore Thomas established himself as the USA’s first major classical symphony conductor. Thomas also reinvented the idea of classical music in the 1890s, redefining the genre as the “serious” musical form.

That legacy is still with us. Laura Washington praises Grapentine for the accessibility of his broadcasts. “I am no classical music expert,” she writes.  “Carl Grapentine made me a classical music lover.” Gilded Age Chicago played a major role in promoting the idea (or at least the feeling) that you had to be an “expert” to enjoy classical music. I’m not sure that that’s a bragging point, but it is a historical fact.

Grapentine will be replaced by Dennis Moore on Monday. Hopefully Mr. Moore will continue to rescue listeners from the delusion that they have to possess some kind of expertise to love Debussy.

The post National Underwear Day unites all musical forms appeared first on Radio Survivor.

What killed smooth jazz radio? Why aren’t there any commercial classical stations any longer? And, why do radio stations have a “format” to begin with? Matthew Lasar joins us to explore these questions about the fundamental organizing principle of most music radio.

Matthew is a co-founder of Radio Survivor and the author of three important books on radio, including Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network and Radio 2.0.

Show Notes:

• Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music, by Eric Weisbard
• Matthew likes: KKUP, KZSC, Second Inversion Radio, WQXR New Sounds (formerly Q2)
• Hybrid Highbrow: New music for Paddle to the Sea + nobody told me that smooth jazz died
• Hybrid Highbrow: Somebody stop killing jazz radio please
• OMG a radio station actually keeps its classical format after protests

The post Podcast #150 – Sympathy for Kenny G appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One of my favorite classical radio stations is making a meal over measures that one of my favorite conductors is taking to combat coughing in the music hall. San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas now gives away cough drops at concerts. Or at least MTT did so at a recent Chicago Symphony event in which the proverbial throat frogs got unusually jumpy during several quiet pieces. These included a Stravinsky elegy for President John F. Kennedy and an early movement of a Mahler symphony.

The Maestro described the drastic step he took in a recent interview with Elliott Forrest at WQXR-FM in New York City:

“As it happens, just as I had walked on the stage before the Mahler piece I had seen that there was a big box filled with cough drops which is there for members of the orchestra to use it they need it,” Thomas explained.

“So that was in my mind and I thought, it is going to be a problem later in the piece, so maybe I can do something that will be helpful. So I said to the concert master, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.’ I walked off the stage and got two very big handfuls of these cough drops. I came back and said something to the audience like ‘I just happen to have a bunch of cough drops . . . ‘”

Full disclosure: my wife Sharon and I attended an MTT concert last year at the San Francisco Symphony. Thomas came on stage to make some preparatory remarks about a new composition commissioned by the organization. I started coughing just a little towards the end of his talk. We were sitting in the front left of the hall. As the conductor made his exit, it sure looked like he was giving me the hairy eyeball. Back then I thought that maybe I was being a bit paranoid. Not now. Happily Sharon had a cough drop handy and saved me from a celebrity beating.

This is all well and good. Who am I to argue with famous musicians handing out pharynx calming sweets to subscription audiences? But I hope that this doesn’t mean that classical radio deejays will stop playing records in which audience members cough. That would entail, for example, banning one of my favorite live Vladimir Horowitz  performances, that of him playing his heart out to Robert Schumann’s beautiful piano suite “Kinderszenen” (Scenes from Childhood).

Listen to this Youtube of the rendition, which is queued up to a section in which Horowitz concludes the most beloved episode of the piece, titled “Traumerei” (Reverie), and begins playing the next section, “Am Kamin” (At the Fireside).

As you can hear, several patrons in the back of the hall cut loose with a barrage of coughing that they simply cannot control. Yet Horowitz continues his marvelous, poetic playing as if recording in an air tight studio. Attention all classical radio presenters: don’t deny your listeners these wonderful slices of musical life because of a few tickled throats!

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I recommend a visit to Second Inversion radio for their wonderful video of the Third Coast Percussion ensemble’s new soundtrack to the 1966 Canadian short feature titled Paddle to the Sea. It is quite something. The musicians deploy skittering wood blocks and water-filled wine glasses to create a beautiful nature-filled sound environment.

Paddle to the Sea was (and still is) about an indigenous boy who carves a little canoe steered by an elder, and then sets it on its way. The documentary follows the mini-canoe’s adventures as it treks from Lake Superior to the ocean, tangling with frogs, squirrels, ice floes, fishermen, and small children. It was based on Holling C. Holling’s 1941 book with the same name.

Paddle to the Sea , Bill Mason, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

Meanwhile I am also reading with interest a San Diego Tribune story that briefly focuses on the vibrant life and sudden death of “smooth jazz” radio. The article focuses on the flute work of Nestor Torres and his influences, among them the brilliant flute and saxophonist James Moody, who died in San Diego in 2010.

“Before the national smooth jazz radio format began to implode nearly a decade ago,” author George Varga notes, “Torres regularly received airplay on such stations, including San Diego’s KIFM (which shifted to pop vocal-dominated programming in early 2011 and now plays ‘classic hits’).” Apparently in 2011 a San Diego smooth jazz festival cancelled itself due to lack of interest.

“It’s very ironic,” Torres is quoted as saying. “The smooth jazz radio format is dead, when — in fact — there is still a smooth jazz audience. So the format is far from over. It’s alive and well.”

Indeed, there are quite a number of Internet based smooth jazz stations out there, such as Smooth Jazz Florida and, well, Smoothjazz.com. But, now that I bother to notice, there’s an entire thread at Radio Discussions titled What Killed Smooth Jazz on the FM band. Prominent among the theories: that the format, which often softly plays in the background, could not properly send encoding signals to Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (later acquired by Nielsen).

Others contend that it was just Smooth Jazz’s time to die:  “The music got old, boring, and predictable. It became wallpaper music, like beautiful music in the early 80s. At one time, that format was getting big ratings everywhere. Then it dropped off the face of the earth. That was a long time before PPM. It has nothing to do with Nielsen. It just happens.”

What I find interesting are the influences that Torres cites, James Moody among them. Here’s a Youtube of Moody’s phenomenal rendition of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. It’s not a very smooth jazzy kind of thing, but it is gorgeous.

Last week I wrote a rather whiny piece about the unfortunate recent fate of two jazz oriented radio stations. I can’t really say that I mourn the death of smooth jazz on FM radio, but I’m glad it is still treading water somewhere. There’s even a smooth jazzish version of Bach’s Overture #3 that I like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oxQLZcpSN0

To steal a phrase from West Side Story, somewhere a place for smooth jazz.

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Oh for goodness sake would you people stop killing jazz radio already? You know who you are. And we know who you are, too.

In North Carolina there’s Fayetteville State College’s Board of Trustees, who sold WFSS-FM back in 2015. Of late somebody wrote into the Fayetteville Observer and asked: “The Fayetteville State University public radio station WFSS still comes on, but why did they stop the jazz section of its programming?”

Here’s the newspaper’s answer:

“WFSS, which broadcast from the campus of Fayetteville State, had featured jazz as the core format since its inception in the late 1970s. But an eclectic mix of formats were blended into the lineup, including bluegrass, gospel, blues, and African and Latin music.

Problem was, the station was losing money, operating on a deficit of $60,000 to $100,000 a year, according to Jon Young, who was provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at the time.”

Until the sale is approved by the Federal Communications Commission, the University of North Carolina’s WUNC is streaming on the signal via a Local Management Agreement.  So out went the jazz format and everything else, the deficit of which cost FSC around the same as a full time faculty member. Guess that was just one professor too many.

Meanwhile Canada’s Globe and Mail reports that Toronto’s JAZZ.FM.91 removed four hosts last week, including two “high profile” personalities. The operation let five employees and two contractors, all told. A spokesperson for the station said that the changes did not have to do with a recent sexual harassment and bullying investigation.

From The Globe:

“The departures follow the exits of Garvia Bailey, a former morning show host whose disappearance from the air in April prompted questions from listeners, and Dani Elwell, who left last year. The station has not told listeners the reasons for the women’s departures.”

Gah.

In happier news, James Cridland has a fun story about how to run a fully functional DIY Internet classical radio station for around $100. Attention all jazz programmers . . .

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Lorraine Gordon

Lorraine Gordon has died. She operated the world’s premier jazz club, the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, for almost 30 years. Gordon ran the place like clockwork. The New York Times obituary gives you the picture:

Ms. Gordon, often nursing a glass of vodka, presided over the scene with a personal brand of tough love. She played her role like the wisecracking star of a black-and-white movie, and she helped make the Vanguard an unfailing fountain of late-night music. But she was also a hard-driving manager; she had to be.

“We open at 3,” she once said, describing the daily grind. “Deliveries come in, the phones are ringing, the roof is leaking, there’s something always going wrong, and then musicians come to rehearse. Every Tuesday night there’s a new group, so every six nights there’s a changeover. Sound checks have to be done. Instruments have to be brought in or taken out.”

Back when I lived in New York City I went to The Vanguard from time to time. I’ll never forget listening to pianist Bill Evans perform to a hushed, reverential audience. Gordon was also a presence on Greater New York City radio.  WBGO-FM in Newark, New Jersey (where Gordon was born) has revived a 2006 interview with her. It’s a remarkable discussion that covers her early years in Newark, her marriage to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records, her promotion of the celebrated jazz artist Thelonious Monk, her time in Mexico, and her subsequent marriage and collaboration with Max Gordon, founder of the Vanguard.

In addition, NPR’s Lara Pellegrinelli has a touching remembrance of Gordon, posted at WBUR-FM in Boston. The piece also reflects on her lonely championing of Monk. “He came here [the Vanguard] and played,” Gordon says in the interview, “and there was nobody here except Monk, the group on the stage, and me and a couple of my friends.” But she did not give up on him, doggedly carousing reporters to pay attention to his genius. Years later I attended a Monk concert at Cooper Union in Manhattan. He had obviously reached the end of his days, but the auditorium was still packed. Gordon can justly take some credit for his fame.

NPR has archived some of The Village Vanguard’s more recent events. Here is the Pellegrinelli piece, well worth a listen:

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On Wednesday, into my classical/radio newsfeed fell this notification about Minnesota Classical Radio (MPR)’s playlist for May 23, 2018. Through the day you get the usual stuff: Schubert, Elgar, Vivaldi. Then the 10 PM hour arrives, and  . . . KABOING:

Refuge
Baljinder Sekhon
Robert McCormick
McCormick Percussion Group

Gumboots
David Bruce
Carducci Quartet
Julian Bliss, clarinet

Aguas da Amazonia: Amazon River
Philip Glass
Third Coast Percussion

Nihavent Semai
Sokratis Sinopoulos
Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello

Electric Counterpoint: 3rd movement
Steve Reich
Kasia Kadlubowska, percussion

Interestingly, the Federal Communications Commission’s safe harbor hour also begins at 10 pm. That’s when broadcasters can air “indecent” and “profane” material through 6 am. And, apparently, that’s also when Minnesota classical radio lovers can listen to Steven Reich and Philip Glass.

Speaking of the opposite of profanity, yes, I watched and listened to cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason wow the guests at the Royal Wedding with his moving performances of pieces by Fauré, Schubert, and a beautiful work generally attributed to Theresia von Paradis, Sicilienne.

What is it that makes cellos the perfect musical instrument for wedding celebrations? I just asked my wife, Sharon Wood, and she suggested that the lower range mellowness of the cello (as opposed to the violin) sets a nice tone for these events. There’s also an intimate physicality to the cello that other instruments, including the piano, lack.

Believe it or not, there’s a wonderful wedding/cello scene in an otherwise profane movie: The Hangover, Part II.

This performance of a Bach Cello Suite at Stu’s wedding celebration in Thailand really sets up the arc of the film: a  protagonist’s desire for a normal life, punctuated by occasional classy moments like this one, followed by the endless cavalcade of chaos that we expect of the Hangover comedy franchise. We seem to be getting that everywhere else these days as well. Good thing that cellos are still around.

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I must tell you that I was shocked to read this story. After protests, a radio station has decided to keep its classical music format. In Provo, Utah, no less.

BYU Broadcasting has announced that it will buy an FM signal that will allow it to broadcast a bunch of educational content it planned to stuff into Classical 89/KBYU-FM, presumably obliterating the latter’s popular classical music offerings. You can read the narcoleptic coma inducing deets about the deal here. The bottom line is that the outfit will purchase another radio outlet and to that signal will stream BYU, aka Brigham Young University, fare. This move will save Classical 89/KBYU’s classical schedule.

The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Scott D. Pierce has a nice piece on the protests on behalf of Classical 89. “My wife loves it,” one fan exclaimed at a meeting. “She says, when we leave the home, ’Leave it on, because the plants love it, too’.”

To which I usually say ‘yeah yeah, good luck with this.’ Most radio station managements almost never renege on a format change after they announce it. Protests be damned. “We have to be realistic,” they always declare, stone faced, at The Big Meeting. “Times have changed. Plus: blah blah blah and here’s a lawyer and engineer to explain why you are screwed.”

I’ve even mapped out the process as the Five Stages of Format Change Grief.

But this time they actually listened to the listeners. I’ll be damned.

And not only that, but Colorado Public Radio is expanding its signal to reach northward along the Front Range. It appears that the operation will consolidate two towers into one more reliable transmitter on Lookout Mountain.

These excellent developments deprive me of my usual grumpiness about the state of classical music radio, but I think that I can live with that.

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The New York Times has published a nice essay urging people to get over their fear of classical music and just enjoy the genre. The piece does not say anything that doesn’t get said once every five years or so in some prominent venue. But it does say it well. Miles Hoffman notes the existence of the “Classical Music Insecurity Complex,” in which people disqualify themselves from even admitting whether they like a composition or not, for fear that they lack the education to do so.

The article drew a supportive letter from classical radio host Sam Goodyear:

As a musician, a music teacher and an announcer of classical music on the radio, I often get the apologetic “I don’t know anything about music” confession along with the perceived shame in such an admission. I like to point out that Handel didn’t write for musicians any more than Shakespeare wrote for playwrights or actors, or teams in the National Football League play for football players.

If their audiences were that limited, concert halls and theaters and stadiums would be nearly empty. In all cases, the aim is bringing pleasure and excitement to people, and opening doors to exploration and discovery into the bargain.

I wonder how many more centuries this dilemma will last. It really does feel like some kind of eternal condition that will never go away. Hoffman places some of the blame on stuffy complicated lectures presented before concerts and incomprehensible program notes. I think it’s got a lot to do with how isolated classical music has become. It mostly gets played in classical music halls and on classical music radio stations and rarely anywhere else. Even radio stations that play both classical music and jazz rarely play them together in the program or set. There is this overwhelming sense of separateness to classical music, resulting in the same serial discussion about how to get people to listen to it happening decade after decade after decade . . .

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If you, perhaps a regular Radio Survivor reader, have not seen The Death of Stalin yet, please know that it is a radio movie.  This is not an endorsement, just an observation. The tragic-comic film begins by concatenating a possibly real or possibly apocryphal radio story that took place during the Second World War with Stalin’s last days, which occurred almost a decade later.

Maria Yudina

The radio story involves an alleged 1944 performance of Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto, the solo portion served up by the pianist Maria Yudina. Soviet radio broadcast the rendition, which Stalin heard. He then called and asked for a copy of the interpretation. The problem, of course, was that it had been aired live. But there was a saying in those days: “If it didn’t actually happen, it should have.” So the station’s terrified staff rounded up the orchestra and Yudina and they labored through the night until they had a suitable black vinyl recording of the piece. Functionaries dutifully delivered the record to Stalin the next morning.

In the movie, this remarkable radio moment is taken up the elevator of time to 1953. The movie has the very religious Yudina include an eloquent hostile note in the recording, which Stalin reads and then collapses from the stroke that would soon kill him. In fact, Yudina may have written a courageous statement against Stalin, but when she received The Stalin Prize, presumably earlier. It supposedly read: “Day and night I will pray for forgiveness for the monstrous atrocities that you have perpetuated against your people. I reject the Stalin prize, and am sending the money for the renovation of a church and the salvation of your soul.”

But here is the problem with this frightening classical radio yarn, it comes from Solomon Volkov’s book “Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostokovich.” Speaking personally, I find convincing the scholar Laurel Fay’s contention that the tome is a fraud. But here’s the problem with that. It’s also possible that portions of the volume come from actual events, just not events told by the composer Shostakovich, but recounted from other sources. So here we have a movie that smooshes fact with fiction based on a “memoir” that some scholars say smooshes fact with fiction.

I conclude this post with a historian’s obvious question: has anyone tried to track this radio event down via one of its supposed participants? A member of the orchestra? The conductor? I am going to look into this in my voluminous non-existent free time. Until then, I have to admit, it’s a very juicy story, one that, dare I say it, may not have actually happened, but should have (not that I would have wanted to live through it, of course).

In any event, one thing I know for sure. Maria Yudina really did perform and record Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto. Enjoy.

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Good grief is there ever a lot of crossover classical stuff going on, much of it in the United Kingdom. Let’s see . . .

The Classic FM online service is teaming up with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and PlayStation to present a show titled PlayStation in Concert, billboarding “the very best in video game music.”

The RPO and the City of London Choir will serve up renditions of the soundtracks to: The Last of Us, The Last Guardian, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, LittleBigPlanet, and Horizon Zero Dawn

It all happens at the Royal Albert Hall on May 30. Speaking personally, I’ve tried for years to get into video games, but every time I play one I think, “gee, I could be practicing Bartok or Chopin on the piano right now,” and that’s the end of that. Still, I almost always love the scores to these things. How grand it would be to attend this concert. If you go, send a review to @hybridhighbrow.

Meanwhile I am following the Nonclassical music label out of London, which endeavors to get contemporary classical music performed in clubs on selected evenings. From the group’s About page:

“The success of the night partly stems from the fact that it presents classical as if it were rock or electronic music. Bands play through the pub’s PA, everyone has a pint in their hand and perhaps most importantly there are DJs playing throughout the night. Even the most sceptical visitors to the club can’t help but be stimulated by being so close to the high-quality musicianship presented at Nonclassical. Classical music can be part of everyone’s lives and this night is part of rediscovering its relevance.”

The outfit has a sample playlist on Spotify. I am particularly enjoying “Mohave Desert” by Floating Points.

Back here in the USA radiomilwaukee.org is promoting Between Two Worlds, a merger of folk and new American classical. That’s happening at the Helen Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts in Milwaukee on March 24. Here’s a sample of one of the artists’ songs:

So much great stuff. I want to get it all on one radio station! Someday . . .

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College radio history is near and dear to me; so I am thrilled to learn about the WNUR Underground Archive Project. Launched initially as a student project by WNUR (see my 2008 station tour) participant Brock Stuessi, the website features a glimpse into the Northwestern University radio station’s rock music collection. Featuring scans of album covers and handwritten music director-penned reviews, Stuessi started the project by taking a closer look at material from 1980 to 2000.

In his “Rock Show: The Early Days” exhibit, he writes,

The year 1980 marks an important shift in the culture and future of WNUR. From its first broadcast in the basement of Annie May Swift Hall on May 8th, 1950 to 1980, WNUR was a college radio station aimed at emulating more mainstream broadcasting style with an emphasis on newscasting and more popular forms of music.

In 1980, a divide within the station between those who wanted to continue the mainstream tradition and those more interested in the new underground music culture of the early eighties began to form. This split came to a head when, during the summer of 1980, the ‘revolutionaries’ occupied the station and locked themselves in the studio for a period of days. With this act, the rock show, and the rebellious ethos it embodied for the next 37 years had begun.  Within two years the station would change its branding to ‘The New Music FM,’ only to change to ‘Chicago’s Sound Experiment’ in 1995.

Stuessi looks at tensions at the station in those early years starting in 1980 and shares his analysis in his exhibit and in an accompanying podcast. Future podcasts will delve into other aspects of WNUR’s music history. I’m happy to see these efforts, especially since the music-specific discussions exemplified in the dialogue on LP album covers hasn’t been adequately documented up to this point. Examples exist here and there, including in KEXP’s “Review Revue” blog series cataloging its collection of KCMU album reviews and in some of the posts on the WPRB History blog.

Do you know of other stations that have archived or posted music reviews from the past? Drop me a line and let me know.

2/22/18 update: Thanks to members of the WNUR alumni community for sharing Michael J. Kramer’s extensive review of Stuessi’s project, which contextualizes it within the larger body of digital history work. Kramer writes, “Here is a sonic and visual and textual door into questions of aesthetics and politics, of the odd relationships between elite institutions such as Northwestern and the underground youth cultures they could sustain without even quite knowing they were doing so; of vexing issues of race, class, gender, and regional identities as presented in sound and iconography and commentary; of patterns of production and consumption in 80s and 90s America.”

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