On-air setlist from last night (Wednesday 25 January)

"Taste of Heaven" - The Chain Gang of 1974
"Helena Beat" - Foster the People
"Early Morning Wake Up Call" - Flash and the Pan
"Great DJ" - The Ting Tings
"D.J." - David Bowie

"Something's Got a Hold on Me" - Etta James (live 1963 version)
"Thought Ballune" - Unknown Mortal Orchestra
"Magic" - Girls
"Wet Match" - Etta James

"Hate and War" - The Clash (for Terry Chimes' birthday)
"Too Nice to Talk To" - The English Beat (for Andy Cox's birthday)
"Jules and Jim" - Nada Surf

"Whirring" - The Joy Formidable
"No Backbone" - The Lemonheads
"Ace" - The Descendents

"D Is for Dangerous" - Arctic Monkeys
"Lonely Boy" - The Black Keys
"Velociraptor!" - Kasabian
"Drunken Lullabies" - Flogging Molly
"Year One, One UFO" - M83
"Armenia City in the Sky" - Petra Haden

"Alone Again Or" - Love
"Parallel Universe" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
"East Side Beat" - The Toasters (live version)

Looks like a great show. Foster the People followed by Flash and the Pan...?

I've gone back and forth on that Petra Haden Who Sells Out thing for years.

Thanks, Jermoe. Among other things, I try to play artists who are scheduled to perform in Colorado soon. Nearly every still-active artist in that list is coming in the next couple months.

"Helena Beat" is ... well, I don't feel the least bit guilty about it, so let's call it a super-ficial pleasure. Anyway, I thought it fit well between Chain Gang of 1974 and Flash & the Pan.

Ah, and here I thought the sequence was a none-to-subtle dig at Mr. Foster et. al...

In any case, my reaction to Foster the People is similar to my reaction to Foster the Lager: fine for what it is.

"I try to play artists who are scheduled to perform"

A college tradition.

"I don't feel the least bit guilty about it"

To some extent you have to contrive an assumed engagement with your campus (sponsor) audience at their level as well as turn them on.

Most of the concerts that Colorado College sponsors are folk, blues, bluegrass and other roots-music variants. The school hosts a big bluegrass festival every Memorial Day weekend and a big blues festival every Fourth of July weekend. It's been quite a while since CC has hosted anything I'd describe as musically edgy. The last time the college booked a rock band on campus (The Apples in Stereo), fewer than 100 people attended. (Too bad; it was a great show.)

As for me, I steer clear of most roots music in my programming (including all folk music). I try to pick songs that'll keep the energy level high. I figure that if someone's listening to the radio in the wee hours, they're probably doing it to stay awake.

> To some extent you have to contrive an assumed engagement with your campus (sponsor) audience
> at their level as well as turn them on.

Truthfully, based on the phone calls during my shifts, I think most of my listeners are late-night workers of all sorts, along with a smattering of insomniacs and a fair number of stoners.

But that's fine. It's good to have loyal listeners. I do try to pick up on the general trends in the sorts of music my callers dig. Generally, most of them want to hear classic rock, but not the weary-assed warhorses that most classic rock stations play. And in some cases, "contrivance" is a kind word for my effort at engagement with them (like when someone requests the Grateful Dead).

But if there's any pattern that suggests the students are tuning in to my late-night show, I haven't perceived it yet. I suspect most of the students have blown off terrestrial radio, and would rather tune in to various web-based options. Either that, or I don't play enough hip-hop.

This station might be different, but I was referring to on-campus listeners being the ostensible goal because they're the ones paying for it (though they never account for more than a small percentage of tunees in the college-radio system), whereas the community (repeater transmitters) are tag-alongs. (I.E. if you were playing directly for Walsenburg and Limon you'd be playing Kenny Chesney). You're right about hiphop - you'd have to throw in some trip-hop or grime once or twice an hour, though it could be Gorillaz or some such. Seems most 20-year-olds call beats "music" and have zero interest in anything with notes, arrangement, or instruments.

As for concert-support tradition, I meant off-campus.

Your gig would be the only way I'd have enough money to set foot on that campus.

(expl.:: CC is the elite of COLO private schools. Tuition + dorm = $52,000 per 8 "class blocks". Kids that go there purchase condos and drive Lexus'.)



Post Edited (01-27-12 12:04)

> if you were playing directly for Walsenburg and Limon you'd be playing Kenny Chesney

Actually, I get a high percentage of calls during my program from those small communities, and although their requests usually are on the mainstream side, I have yet to receive any requests for country music.

If a listener requests something we don't have in house, I just get on the air at the next break and say something like, "And to the listener who requested Santana, I'm sorry, but I couldn't find that song." No one's called back to cuss me out yet.