Tag: Radio and TV

Stinky Roo and Tijuana Bibles, Too

I live right inside radio when I listen…

Marshall McLuhan, 1964

Radio,
like beer and soccer, is totally immersive. As Ian illustrates this
morning, the seduction of the immersive can lead to strange places and
thoughts. Indeed, as M.McL. went on to say,

Anybody who wants to moralize about radio has to
dump Gandhi and Hitler into the same pot.

One of my favorite
programs is Weekend
Mornings from CBC in the Maritimes. Like Brent, the
music is eclectic, though, perhaps, they might not play the Tijuana Bibles, whose members dress like Stong
Bad. Band member Super Destructor and I exchanged emails last night as I bought
a CD via paypal:

Me:

Thanks Super Destructor,

Money sent.

That’s great. Brent Bambury was all over your music the other day on his
drive home show [CBC Ottawa afternoons] and said you were the greatest thing
since something…something like the Stampeders…and that is something.

He played a cut or two and I am sure going to whistle your tunes while at the
workplace.

I am just so happy being able to write someone by the name of Super
Destructor I want this email to last forever. I’ll probably do a review on my
website (10,000 visits last month) [Ed.: you are always in my
thoughts]and you can come over there and brag me up. That’d be great.

Super Destructor:

thx for the kind words amigo. there’s a reason
europe keeps bringing us back for tours – forget about the masks and how we
look, just LISTEN – we have good songs! our next cd Fists Of Fury is gonna
smoke, we got 10 songs recorded, 5 more to go! pkg’ll be sent our mon or tues, i
have some other mail to go out…

adios,

SuperD.

The band’s name refers to slang for Mexican ’60’s
porn and their get up and names are a respectful homage to the
contemporaneous Mexican wrestling scene, cousins to Atlantic Grand Prix
Wrestling of ATV of the 70’s and my love, the Cuban Assassin. Apartment
Wrestling, their first CD will be mine soon.  Driving Mexicali
sounds.  Zounds.

The host of Weekend Mornings is Stan Carew, who our daughter at 3
dubbed Stinky Roo. The music is a bit corny and comfortable and aimed at seniors
laying in bed drinking tea and contemplating a tumble mostly without the
bibles. Stan and the crew play with the conventions of radio,
sometimes sounding a little like an old time dance hall live broadcast,
sometimes like Orsen Wells toying as a teen.

Playing with the knobs all around.

Wine by Radio

I was listening to the AM dial yesterday as summer’s close leads [as you all say with one voice] to improved amplitude modulation broadcast propagation and caught the oddest show on WHAM 1180 Rochester, New York: The WHAM wine show. I thought I was listening to good college radio. It was unstructured, amateur and funny. During the show the host and guest were popping corks, comparing wines, comparing glassware and talking over music they liked. It must have been live as they were also giving running scores for the Buffalo Bills game being played on rival radio stations, perhaps to a 95% market share, given western NY tastes.

Given the medium, the show could not rely on long pans of vinyard vistas or uncious hosts puckering their lips approvingly. They actually had to describe what was happening in their noses and mouth.

Fitba

All his kids recovering from the blackout of 2003 blackouts.  Only grandkids 1500 km to his west.  Behind my mother’s voice on the phone, Dad can be heard shouting out his only real concern: “Who are they playing?”

Stenhousemuir, as it turns out, where they, the mighty Greenock Morton, won 2-0 away from home. Arsenal won, too, over an outclassed Everton – despite Arsenal being down a player after the reappearance of Sol Campbell’s boot’s desire to practice proctology. Sol is the best defender in England but has had a bad run of involuntary arse kicking lately. Caught the game on Rogers Sports Net. Oddly, here in Canada we can get more soccer than most anywhere: four live or nearish English league on two channels, German live, French live, Argentine, Spanish, Brazilian and Dutch on tape delay. I may spend another $2.99 a month this winter to get TeleLatino to pick up the Italian league.

Not just a slave to the tube, the August When Saturday Comes showed up yesterday and I am working through a small stack of fitba books from amazon.co.uk. One, Out of His Skin, is about John Barnes – one of my favorite players from the days of TSN’s Soccer Saturday – and the crap he had to put up with from his own Liverpool fans for having the gall to be both black and good at soccer. Even just 15 years after he entered the top level of the English game, it is amazing to this that this was the case watching the diversity of players on Arsenal. The implicit racism of the game is now seen more in the lily white composition of the fans in the stands. If you get ESPN Classics Canada, you can see Barnes play on certain Friday evenings in a few of the late 80’s early 90’s English FA Cup Finals they show from time to time. He taught me everything I know about crossing from the outside – everything I know…not what I can do.

Tag – You’re It!

…and I am going to quit playing for a while. 11 days off. Drove for 4 of them. 3300 km or so. Other 7 full of cleaning out the house which appears to have sold pending closing. Some thoughts from between Kingston and PEI, the length of the St.Lawrence:

  • The two best looking parts of Canada on the drive are both in Quebec: the Kamouraska areas between Riviere-du-Loup and Pocatiere on Highway 20 (huge granite mounds in the river and on the land, between which the river and the road flow respectively); and the waterfront road at the foot of the cliffs at Levis across from Quebec City (active working river, old rail bed used by hundreds as we watched for biking and roller blading, Chateau Frontenac in front of almost as many layers of mountains in the dusk as Montpellier, Vermont);

  • Old car tapes are a minefield of emotions. Bought before my CD buying days began around 1993, I was brought back to a rawer time. Garnett Rogers is pretty damn good. Damn song about a damn pigeon makes me cry every time I hear it;

  • Worst service in the world: The Kentucky Fried on the west 401 at Cornwall. Stood with wife and children at a till for five minutes as teen staff walked two feet past us setting up a fan for themselves to be told when we said we were leaving becuse the service was so bad, that the sign at the other end of the counter said “cash”. As there were five tills each with other families waiting, the meaning of this message eluded us. Please shun this establishment on your travels;

  • Cars are amazing. For about 75 to 80 bucks (Canadian) you can go 1500 kilometres either in one day (my trip to PEI) or over three (the return);

  • Best diners: the Irving Big Stop at Salisbury NB on the Trans-Canada (good diner food including a very respectable Ruben and 2 buck, 12 oz., large tomato juice), the Normandin at Levis (a favorite for over a decade – draft beer is a moslons ex and the waiting staff help you do the whole thing in our respectly poor english and french) – maple beans (aka “the bomb” in a couple of respects) with your breakfast; and

  • Best hotel in the Maritimes – the Sheraton at Fredericton. Great waterfront location in what looks like a park. Staff are capable and relaxed. Room service is fast and the wine celler is respectable. In 1999, they had no rooms left in the class we had ordered and we got the Royal Suite. Literally the rooms the Queen gets when in NB. We could have played basketball in the livingroom. The dinner table sat 12. We paid the same as the basic room we booked. Somnewhere we have a photo of our daughter, then 11 months having a pee on the floor. Although in the the same room, she was too far to run to in time but the camera was not. You have to think way ahead if you want to embarrass the hell out of someone at their wedding reception.

  • NPR – 90.1 Calais Maine; 106.1 Presque Isle, Maine, 106.5 Fort Kent Maine, 104.7(?) Vermont Public Radio St. Albans, 89.5 North Country Public Radio, Northern New York State.

Well, that is it for now. Thanks for stopping by during a slow posting week and a half.

Web Radio

I love web radio as I love radio. You don’t get the romance of the signal fading in and out but crappy buffering almost makes up for it. I love media that let you know they are there. I have recently switched to using the Windows Media Player – and it’s excellent listings pages – and so have had to give up BBC Live Five due to poorer BBC coverage, compared to the Real player, for improved NPR choices.

By the way, I understand there’s some flooding risk in New Jersey – have care if you are out and about there this afternoon.

WBZ

I am listening to WBZ radio 1030 AM here on the east end of Lake Ontario with pretty much the same signal strength I had most nights in PEI. WBZ is the oldest licenced station in North America operating now for 83 years. They claim they are heard throughout the continent east of the Rockies – which is probably true given they have a 50,000 watt licence and a clear channel without competition. Don’t judge the station by its terrible web site.

Paul Sullivan [who sounds exactly like Ray Romano except for a total lack of “duh, I dunno” schtick on Everybody Loves Raymond (they never asked me) that drives me nuts] hosts the 10 pm to midnight Eastern show following David Brudnoy – a Phd talking in the town where Harvard can be found – who starts at 7 pm. Both in their own way stake an interesting place in the talk-radio world as both are rightist libertarian without being republican right-wing a la Limbaugh. Brudnoy, for example, was merciless on the Clinton administration but not in the banal coarse way in which most US talk radio was – he was offended on principle. By way of contrast, one of the few real US liberal voices on any talk radio is Lovell Dyett evenings on the weekend. He also has the best voice on radio anywhere, making James Earle Jones sound watery and thin.

What is amazing to me is that the CRTC can’t block access to whatever radio waves on the AM band float over the border to be caught by a $9.99 Radio Shack transistor special. In Canada, we live in a veritable cultural police state when it comes to the control of access to television signals on the grounds of protecting Canadian values. If those nasty US values are conveyed by audio, somehow they don’t count.

Heck – on a good night you can hear Cuba on 600 Khz from most of eastern North America most nights on your car radio, especially in winter. Viva the old tech! Viva the low tech! Viva radio libre!

CB Radio for Today

Jevon has recently written about egos and blogging. This made me consider what writing on these things is like and I keep coming back to that wonderfully dead-end technology of the 1970’s – CB radio.

In both, you get on the medium, yap about what ever comes into your head and use funny names and other stuff inherent in the medium to abstract who you want to be seen as from what you are – “Foxy Lady”. Also like CB radio, you have to lug one bit technology around [PC or Mac/Chevy van or Mack] to get at the communication media [blog/CB radio].

So who will be the Red Sovine of bloggetry?