Radiovision Day 1 - The Drive

TODAY'S THE DAY!

This morning I woke up and headed to the WCBN headquarters at 6am with my 4 days worth of clothes, my laptop, and some homework to head out to NEW YORK CITY. First though, we went on our first group stop to Espresso Royale on State St. to stay up. Some how, that didn't help me and I zonked out pretty quickly as we listened to "Dakha Brakha" at my request. This is probably one of my favorite things about the trip is that everyone has good taste in music, everyone brought CDs for the car, and everyone likes listening to the radio. 

I had a fun time figuring out how to live blog, and have come to the conclusion that this is going to be fun. I downloaded a few blogging apps for my iPhone, including Blogger, Wordpress, and an audio recording app, all to go with the Tumbler and Twitter applications I already use occasionally. If you head over to the WCBN Wordpress blog, then you can see all of my live updates from the day. 

At Grimaldi's Pizza

A big highlight of the day was when we passed into New Jersey, and thus into WFMU territory. Real. Live. Radio, guys. It was glorious. The first few minutes confirmed for me that we were listening to freeform, because there were clicks, there were clacks, and there was a huge stereo-soundscape for my ears. I had listened to WFMU before streaming, but this was a totally different experience. As we were listening, The Dusty Show came on with Clay Pidgeon, where David, Pascal and I witnessed a beautiful piece of live radio. Clay Pidgeon started to play his recorded how through a cassette-to-computer cable of some sort, but it simply wasn't coming through clearly. We thought it was because we were going under a bridge, and then because there were towers by us, until Clay Pidgeon's voice came on loud and clear, signaling to his audience that he had messed up. I had never witnessed to Clay Pidgeon, but I got the instant sense that he had no social filter, but was a super genuine guy. Instead of playing some records lying around the station, or playing another program he might have, he stopped the show and turned it into a talk-show hour by taking listener calls and chatting with some other WFMUers. It was a real moment of improvised, freeform radio. It was an amazing way to come into the city.

I will have more updates throughout the weekend, but let me just say this: I think I'm really going to like this city.