A Brief and Ill-Advised Road Trip, Pt. 2
On the drive home from the A Wilhelm Scream show (see previous post) I was, needless to say, tired as a hound dog. But an iced cappuccino and a packet of Skittles could only do so much and the seven or eight albums on the lone mp3 CD in the car was getting a bit rote after a couple of hours. Once we got close enough to Brandon (two hours from Winnipeg, three from Regina), I knew what would keep me at attention.
I went to school there for broadcast media training, and part of our course was hosting music and news blocks on the campus/community radio station that was conveniently housed on campus. Our first year there was the first year it even existed, actually, and that’s the impetus for this entry.
Our station’s mandate was non-hit music of any genre; if we played more than 10% hit music (anything that was on the Billboard Top 40 or comparable charting mechanisms in the last 40 years) we’d get fined or shut down. We got awfully close because of the laziness and poor taste of some of my classmates, so I spent a ton of my spare time in second year loading CD after CD from my personal library into the station’s music library. I’m talking daily for weeks and weeks on end, hours at a time.
This was when I wasn’t hosting the now-legendary (in our own minds) Pat n’ Henry Show with the very Henry behind the functionality and appearance of this site. We played whatever we want, spent a lot of time talking about the artists and whatever came into our heads (so much so that our future program director joked that the show was great because there was a lot of can/con and it was half spoken-word). I’m pretty sure our biggest demographic was people in a nearby prison facility, as we got more email, phone, and IM requests from there than from any other listeners (they just wanted to hear Slayer though).
Anyhow, whenever I drive through the area I flip on old CJJJ 106.5 fm and count the number of songs I’m directly responsible for. The number has diminished slightly in the five years since, as new students, PD’s, and staff members come and go, but there was still at least a half dozen during the 20 to 30 minute drive it takes to go in and out of the station’s minimal broadcast range.
This mix tape is a sampling of what popped up this trip. Not the greatest music in the world, but it certainly is representative of an important period of my life.
Hot Water Music - Trusty Chords [2:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download the Unicorns - Tuff Ghost [2:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Tenacious D - Tribute [4:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Against Me! - Pints of Guinness Make You Strong [2:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Thursday - War All The Time [4:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Jets To Brazil - Sweet Avenue [5:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadCheck out these artists if you want to, but you can also follow the development of a nascent community radio station here — now with streaming audio!
