Hedwig clearly wants you to listen to WCBN. |
I've been thinking a lot about the decisions that affect taking requests as a DJ. Hopefully you know this, but at WCBN, we take requests all the time. Every time I get a request, my gut feeling is, "I have to make this happen no matter what." First I run around the station frantically trying to find a hard copy of it (CD/Vinyl), but if I can't find it, I then have four options, in this order:
- My Personal Library
- Umich Streaming Audio via the Music Library Website
- Grooveshark
- Google (I am so, so sorry)
If I can't find it after that, it simply doesn't exist. Here's my moral dilemma though: should I even be considering any of these options (or the last 3 options)? The ultimate goal of the radio station is to give listeners high quality music over the airwaves. Am I betraying them if I play a YouTube clip, even if it was a listener that requested this song? A major problem I come to is this: if a listener requests something, they REALLY want to hear it. They wouldn't tell me to play a song that they didn't absolutely love. I want to give them what they want, and I want to share it with them. When I've had to tell someone that I can't play a request, it's like I told them their dog died. And if I can't please my one listener at 4:30 in the morning, then who am I trying to please?
Tell me what you think about this: would you rather have only high quality recordings, or have requests but at the cost of using a low quality recording? Does it matter to you? Can you tell the difference?
Tell me what you think about this: would you rather have only high quality recordings, or have requests but at the cost of using a low quality recording? Does it matter to you? Can you tell the difference?
[Artist: Song - Album]
- Victims Family: New World Hors D'Oeuvre - The Germ
- M.I.A.: Galang - Arular
- Anne Hills: Cloudships - Bittersweet Street
- Ladytron: Destroy Everything You Touch - Witching Hour
- Bob and Danny Weller: Cranning Call - Tree of Thorns
- The Dells: Oh, What A Night - The Best of Chess Vocal Groups
- Yoko Kanno: Go Ri A Te - Macross Plus OST II
- Coco Montoya: Do What You Want To Do - The Essential Coco Montoya
- Astor Piazzolla: Tanguedia - Luna
- Kanda Bongo Man: Liza - Soukous in Central Park
- Black Taj: L.A. Shift - Beyonder
- Soupy Sales: Somebody Else Knockin' At My Door - Still Soupy After All These Years
- Labelle: Sunday's News - Moon Shadow
- Genoa Keawe: Pupu A'o Niihau - Legends of Falsetto
- Skinless: Deathwork - From Sacrifice to Survival
- Maxwell St. Klezmer Band: Hopkele - You Should Be So Lucky!
- Uriah Heep: Devil's Daughter - Return to Fantasy
- Eroc: Feuerwolken - Eroc3
- Carlo Curley Concert Curios: Camille Saint-Saens: Fantasie in E-flat Major - The Allen Digital Computer Organ
- Evgeny Masloboev and Anastasia Masloboeva: Kvanshnya - Russian Folksongs in the Key of Rhythm
- Fred Wesley: Herbal Turkey Breast - Amalgamation
- Bon Iver: Perth - Sparks and Glowsticks
- Recorded by Alain Weber: Hilal Gesture (in Harmont alBabur) - Music of the Nile Valley
- (unknown): Steam and Diesel Locomotives - Railroad Sounds
- Luke Temple: The Owl Song - snowbeast
- Air: Il Secondo Giorno (Instrumental) - Marie Antoinette Soundtrack
- Erich Kunzel and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra: Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter - Epics
- Quetzalcoatl: La Gallina (Mexico) - Quetzalcoatl
- The Antlers: Bear - Hospice
- Värttinä: Vihma - Vihma
- Randy Grief: Octopus Robot - War of the World, an Emergency Broadcast
- Louis Prima: Route 66 - YouTube
- Brave Combo: J'ai Faim, Toujours - Kiss of Fire
- Jurassic 5: Brown Girl - Feedback
- Franz Ferdinand: I'm Your Villain - Remixes
- Embryo: Dreaming Girls - Steig aus
- Brad Adkins: Imitating Walking + Lying for a Living - Big Red
- Curve: Zoo - Pubic Fruit
- Supersprite: Ghost at the Fireworks Factory - Color Mixing
- Bootsy: The Pinocchio Theory - Ahh...The Name's Bootsy, Baby!
I'm Your Hero
- Trains!: Like I said on air, I love trains. I love riding them, I love the sound of them, I love the view, the people, the bumpy feeling of the tracks. I think the tracks I layered with the train sound effects were perfect, ESPECIALLY "Hedwig's Theme" from Harry Potter. It's like we're going to Hogwarts!
- Luke Temple: This was a really nice surprise, because I literally grabbed this CD because the album name was "snowbeast" which reminds me of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for some reason. Also...more owls.
- Hafiz and Rumi: Thanks to my good friend Katie, you got a beautiful Hafiz poem for your ears to process. This reminded me of Rumi's poetry, which is also lush and beautiful. Layered with the Nile Valley music, I think it came off well.
I'm Your Villain
- Ladytron Interruption: Right on the inside of the cover there was a sign that said, "Track 2 stops in middle! Bad rip!" But silly me decided to play track 2 anyway. So of course it stopped.
- Vielle Pause: I feel like I was not on top of the transitions today. Nothing in particular stood out to me, but I felt like it happened a few too many times for my comfort. I swear I will get better at that.
- Too much rock?: I realized after I came back from the rock section that half my pile of music for the show was rock. I hope I was still able to balance it out, but it still felt a little weird. What do you think?
I don't think there was too much rock, a good blend.
ReplyDeleteI thought the train over the song was very real. It felt like I was standing at the train station with music floating in my mind (which is almost always a part of my mind-wanderings)
Rumi. What can I say? I love love being put in violent terms, the picture was clear and not at all disturbing.
And the white birds I pictured gave a feeling of being in an "out of body" experience and describing the haunt of love.