decidedlyodd

So tonight I did another show. Once again, it’s nice to be back on the radio, although I really didn’t appreciate having a cold and being on air. I took a decongestant around 10:30pm and while it worked my eyes are all dryed out now. Anyhow, I had to record this show so that it can be critiqued by my mentor.

Of course, I managed to press stop not once but TWICE on a playing CD. Doh. I don’t think I ever did that at KALX even. However, the controls for the CD players at WXYC are kinda odd. They have these ancient CD players that are connected to this special control panel. There are buttons on the control panel which let you switch which player you’re controling. So, me being the dumbass that I am pressed the stop button while the selector was on the CD currently playing. I should have switched to the other drive first. CD3 is actually a Sony like the ones we had at KALX with that nifty “Program” button and the joggle track changer.

Another DJ in the station at the time commented on my playing of the Monkees’. Something about not having heard that on the station before. Yet the music library has the multidisc CD set somewhat recently (as opposed to back in the 60s) released by Rhino of all their albums, not to mention *duplicate copies* of various greatest hits records on vinyl. Clearly, an underutilized station resource. Also, a different DJ pointed out that it was clear that I moved from the Bay Area. Ya, I played the Hi-Fives, the Dead Kennedys, Matmos and certainly many others.

I just haven’t been able to get into the whole Chapel Hill-Carrboro indie rock thing, at least not yet. This is frequently compounded by the fact that the Cat’s Cradle seems to charge what I consider outrageous prices for shows I might casually want to see. I should probably just start going to random $10 shows, although $10 for random is still a bit steep in my book.

Granted as I look at the schedule, the Brave Combo is going to play a cistic fibrosis benefit for $10 in March. I should check that shit out.

Also, an EAS test that came in somehow relayed itself or something, right in the middle of Moon over Marin. I stopped the record and did a whir start coming back out of it. Doh, again.

I didn’t get as many calls this week as compared to last week, but then again the music I played tonight was more random. I didn’t really plan things out (read, pick out all my favorite stuff that I was only able to play the first time, since now I have to dig again), but instead wandered through the library picking up random stuff that I knew or that looked good.

Also, I overpulled, despite the fact that I was certain I had underpulled. I guess I’m just used to getting together about 45 pieces of music for 3 hours, which just doesn’t work when the cuts that are in rotation are in the control room and not browseable beforehand. The new music requirements are basically 5-6 an hour, which means I probably need to be pulling about 50% less music (~30 for 3 hours).

I managed to rig up StreamRipper to copy the station’s MP3 stream to disk on my laptop. It seems to have worked well, but I computed the number of seconds to record for wrong (10810 instead of 11400) and lost about the last 5 minutes of the show. No more tapes for me (I hope), especially because my walkman-style tape player (the only one I have these days) appears to no longer play tapes ): I guess the radio still works, which doesn’t render it totally useless.