While at first extremely intimidated with the prospect and process of recording at home, and also knowing that perhaps there are maybe easier and better ways that I might be able to accomplish this feat, recording has gone very well. Shows are being produced and archived regularly and at times, when I am really on a creative roll, I can have a month's worth of programming archived relatively quickly and considerably early within the month.
During this same period, one of our DJs, the jovial Lefty Joe, host of the weekly two hour program "Midnight Vinyl," which airs right at the titular time slot of Friday nights, began a venture that afforded him the opportunity to expand our station's programming and reach into the community greatly.
He first began with "The VMO Show," which airs daily at noon and then repeats at 3 p.m., features interviews and content with local figures, musicians, artists, community members and even the WVMO volunteer DJ crew. Even I, your happy humble DJ, have been graciously interviewed twice! Beginning to feel the inevitable pressure to create and produce a daily broadcast, Lefty Joe reached out again to the WVMO DJs to ask us to create essentially mini-versions of our regular shows to assist him with having content.
And so, recording at home increased as I began building up an archive of shows, running around 25 minutes in length, which I have dubbed "Savage Lunch." After the first couple of shows, which really were mini versions of Savage Radio, I began to tailor these lunchtime episodes to fit much more snuggly into our station's official Americana format so as to not potentially upend our daily listeners who really are not in the mood for the likes of Flesh For Lulu and Living Colour in the middle of the day.
Savage Lunch editions of The VMO Show are now much more quieter affairs, relatively. More acoustic based, songs that can slide into areas of folk, blues and country easily and it is really enjoyable devising a short set of music that can work as a full, entire program. You get in, you get out, you get the tunes and a sense of the personalities behind the music being curated while also allowing yourself to be heard by people who most likely do not listen to your show at all. Maybe it will encourage them, maybe not. But, it is so much fun to be there.
These new adventures in radio have continued even further as Lefty Joe then created a late night/10 p.m. show entitled "VMO After Dark," a similar styled program to "The VMO Show," and again, he reached out to the DJs to assist with creating content. This opportunity allowed me to accomplish the same feat as with the midday shows but with one marked difference: these shows could sound like extensions of Savage Radio through the content that is perhaps heavier, edgier, stranger to even avant garde and with a much larger emphasis upon jazz and definitely, hip-hop, two musical genres that do not find much room for themselves upon the primary Savage Radio show.
To assist with even that piece of the puzzle, more adult content and language can be utilized as it is being broadcast after 10 p.m. So...no more swear word checks and audio reversing of profanities! In fact, my own personal caveat, my audio line in the sand is the frequent hip-hop usage of the word "nigger," a word I will not endorse by broadcasting it. So, that is the one word I will manipulate via Audacity when creating the programming that I have dubbed "Savage After Dark."
What a privilege it is to be a part of this radio station and what a further privilege it is to be able to build up additional content to will hopefully increase what the identity of WVMO can be while not jettisoning the Americana/locally produced bedrock that our format always will be. For those of you who may be friends of mine or who just may follow my activities upon Facebook and have been wondering what the occasional guest hosting is all about, I hope that this posting has given you a proper explanation.
I have been doing a considerable amount of recording over the past couple of weeks, from a full month's worth of Savage Radio episodes to a big batch of new content for both "The VMO Show" and "VMO After Dark," which Lefty Joe can archive and utilize whenever he wishes to plug them in. I am grateful and so thankful to have been included in these new ventures and I have to admit, it is fun to think that there are times when I can be heard on WVMO at different time period, which I imagine can further identify and connect me as being a part of the station.
If you have joined me or WVMO in the past, I again invite you to join in the fun as it has expanded beautifully.
No comments:
Post a Comment