The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Good morning everyone. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I stayed up to watch the 2 hour season finale of 24 that we had recorded. When I finally got to bed, I was able to sleep for only a few hours until Spencer woke me up. He had a bloody nose, poor dude! He's getting really good at having nose bleeds, he doesn’t cry much anymore. He gets them so often and I don’t know why.

Well, anyway, he would lay back down for a bit, then wake me up again because he needed a new tissue, etc. My alarm was set for 4:30 because I had every intention of taking the bus to work. But, in all actuality, I only got about 4 hours of sleep, and all I wanted to do was sleep some more.

I got out of bed, moved downstairs to the couch and set my cell phone alarm. Each time it went off, I hit snooze. Dumb! I finally got up at 6:45. I didn’t have time to take a shower, just wash my face and wet my hair… I hate starting my day without a shower. I usually feel itchy all day without one.

So I got to work at 8:15, when I’m supposed to be here at 7:30. I didn’t call in late or anything this time, so hopefully it might go unnoticed…

Last night after I posted our little video, I checked the Roll Call thread a million times to see if anyone had commented on it. BLT did and I appreciate that! It’s pretty pathetic that I refreshed the page that many times! Can you say “loser”?

I have two long meetings today – 10:30-Noon and 2-4. Looks like I won’t get much work done today.

The radio station I used to listen to one day just disappeared, only to be replaced by LOVE 105 – repulsive oldies love songs. I’m so happy that I have my iPod and a car adapter! What would I do without it?

Sorry for the dumb QotD but,

What’s your favorite radio station?

Since I moved to Minnesota, I have not found a suitable radio station, except for Drive 105 that, as previously mentioned, disappeared one day. So, I will have to go with the station I listened to from 7th grade until we moved away

KkkRrrrrOoooooQqqq

106.7 the world famous KROQ, Pasadena Los Angeles

My day is remarkably boring today, so I'll skip right to the QotD.

The only radio I listen to is in the car. And it's either the local college radio (WPCR) or the local sports radio, which isn't very local and doesn't come in too well. Oh, and an AM station has the Red Sox game on sometimes.

I thought about getting XM or something like it, but instead I got a car stereo that plays CDs and MP3s and even has a USB port on it. So instead of radio, I listen to SF and such.

Okay, my WWNMTB song is submitted... I wound up redoing the vocal a few times because at one point the lyric is "lies were told / and if you believe" and it kept sounding like I was singing "and a few believe," so I hadda shove a little pause in between "if" and "you." Mix is probably a little muddy, although winamp seems to think it's reasonably well distributed, frequency wise. "Oh, crap, I lost this round."

QOTD: I hardly ever listen to the radio, when I do I'll put on NPR in hopes of maybe learning something. Many years ago, KZON here in Arizona went, umm, "adult alternative" or something? David Wilcox, Jackson Browne, Shawn Colvin and a bunch of other people I get compared to in the review threads... KZON was great, on Sunday mornings they even had an "acoustic sunrise" show. I'd go up to Amoeba in Berkeley and go through the clearance bin and find all these artists that I knew from KZON that the college students had traded in... they changed formats three or four years ago to whatever everybody else plays, and that was about it for radio.

I was out last evening recording a band concert at the school where the Mrs. teaches, middle school and high school bands. Coolest piece was a thing called "Head Talk" by Mark Ford which was played on various drum heads by five or six players. Reminded me a bunch of the Drumz at a Dead show (or the drum circle outside), except that you could tell they were playing like orchestricians, counting it in their head instead of feeling the beat. Has anybody here ever gone through the process of figuring out copyright clearance so that something like this could be sold to students and parents afterwards? So far I'm just recording them for the director to listen to later, but I did have one parent ask last night. The recordings sound pretty good for just an X-Y pair of SM58s and an Oktava aimed at the soloists...

Another very full day today, hoping to get around to watching "24" this afternoon. I'm supposed to go by and pick up a new foster dog, now that Ben is adopted.

Charles (KA)

I started off the day right with last night's Heroes episode and the new Smashing Pumpkins song. The rest of the day can only go down from here. Not really. There are a lot of good things on the way for me. Septemberian, the serial story that I'm writing has reached another plateau. I write everything in composition notebook. Yes, I know it's 2007 and I could be typing it all. But I don't have a laptop and I spend way too much time on trains. So while I travel, I write. Today I reached the end of a notebook. That's a lot of story to have written especially in my miniscule handwriting. It also marks the end of the first story arc of sorts. It's a big step and I'm so glad that I've reached it. I have no clue where to go next but it wil come to me.

It's confirmed that next week, I will go off on my trip and when I return I will have something musically fun to show for it. I'm very excited to be doing this at last and I can't wait to start making some new material for this. Plus, I have that other musical project on the way. Well, actually it has begun. I'm just waiting for one of the members to hand over some guitar parts and the wheels will be in motion. The results of that will be very interesting. Then a songfighter contacted me yesterday and suggested a collaboration and I was very happy to agree to it. So expect to see me in the fight soon but in what fashion? You'll be surprised. All that plus KBS whenever it gets its act together and I could be doing music with this girl Melis. Lots of good stuff in the music realm.

So things are going well, except for my beloved sister getting in a car accident, one of my guinea pigs getting badly ill and having to eat soup for lunch on a hot day. But sis is all right and the cavy is still alive. I'm still pissed about the soup.

Radio sucks here in NY/NJ. I wish that WSOU (Seton Hall's Pirate Radio) had better reception as their blend of metal and screamo is much better to listen to than Z-100's top 40 pop, Free FM's talk radio, Hot 97's rap or WPLJ's Adult contemporary mix of the 80's, 90's and today which means a lot of Snow Patrol and Justin Timberlake with a sprinkling of Kelly Clarkson and Bruce Springsteen.

I dream of a day that all the songfighters would each make a 2 hour radio show, make it full of wonderful music and make an mp3 of it. So every week, I'd have little nuggets of musical joy. Alas, it is not meant to be.

I believe that I was able to recruit a guest singer for Nur Ein II today. This should be welcome news to all who have endured the Paco experience! Now I just need a song to give him.

The QOTD is funny as I was thinking about similar things yesterday. Last Friday, my band buddy, AKA Guest Vocalist, told me that an internet radio station he listens to was having its last broadcast and that day at noon they were going to play our entire (home made) record. So I tuned in and listened to the record for the first time in a while and got a kick out of hearing it kinda on the radio. Mentioned my name and all that, cyuk cyuk. But also typical that it was as they were going kaput!

I am sorry to say that I rarely listen to radio, which was so magical to me as a kid, as I watched the once mighty WBCN of Boston decay into a crap-fest of moron metal and people calling in and swearing. Lame, and that was back in the 90's. Growing up in Mass, on the New Hampshire line, I also got the NH stations which I always thought of as a bit too 38 Special for me. Public radio is great, but I don't always have the time or patience to kind of get enveloped in it.

Hey, Niv -

When you get to the end of a notebook, do you scan it all in?

I have a four-drawer filing cabinet full of old journals, all of which have been scanned in one way or another, and CDs with the scans are over at my mom's house. Includes a lot of song originals, old photos, that sorta stuff too. Plus digital photos, hi-quality MP3 versions of all my recordings of my own songs, etc.

One of the tricks I discovered was that I could photograph journal pages a lot faster than I could scan them in, and a 1 megapixel .jpg of an 8.5x11page from a journal is quite readable. Uses more disk space than scanning, but the process is a lot quicker.

Charles (KA)

king_arthur wrote:Hey, Niv -

When you get to the end of a notebook, do you scan it all in?

Not with the small handwriting I have. After I'm done, I start the arduous task of typing everything.

The one I work at... duh. But second place goes to KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle, WA. It's formerly the University of Washington's college station, then Paul Allen threw a bunch of money at them. They're still affiliated, though. Anyway, great station. KZUU, Washington State University's college radio station, is also good. And WFMU, from Jersey City, which operates a cool blog. KROQ (LA) has some neat stuff, but to me it seems like it's past its prime. KDVS, from UC-Davis, is dope. I'm also a fan of NPR, or at least many of its component programs... TAL, Prairie Home Companion, the news, the classical programming, Morning Edition.

Today I'm going to have a gyro for dinner with a friend I met my freshman year, in fall `03, who is now graduating. I still have three semesters left, because my spring `04 one was withdrawn and I took `04-`05 off. Oh, well.

Heather. Redmon. wrote: Last night after I posted our little video, I checked the Roll Call thread a million times to see if anyone had commented on it. BLT did and I appreciate that! It’s pretty pathetic that I refreshed the page that many times! Can you say “loser”? [/b]

It took a millyun years to load for some reason, but your video is funny! Nice work!

It is my conclusion that you kids should live in a place like Portland where you can easily bike from watering hole, to venue, to watering hole...although I've had some public transit adventures of the sort your describe.

Nothing beats the Chicago 'L' on New Years, though, I think.

Niveous wrote: I dream of a day that all the songfighters would each make a 2 hour radio show, make it full of wonderful music and make an mp3 of it. So every week, I'd have little nuggets of musical joy. Alas, it is not meant to be.

Are you telling me that the house needs to return for 42 more episodes?

(I uploaded a few of the old episodes and put them here recently.)

ROCK!

Glenn Case

GlennCase wrote:

Niveous wrote: I dream of a day that all the songfighters would each make a 2 hour radio show, make it full of wonderful music and make an mp3 of it. So every week, I'd have little nuggets of musical joy. Alas, it is not meant to be.

Are you telling me that the house needs to return for 42 more episodes?

It would take more than just the House to satiate my radio needs. I dream of radio the Songfight way. Not just the house but many songfighters doing many shows. 12 hours of programming would be glorious.

I'll start with the radio station thing because I'm so excited to see another KROQ fan, Heather. I still listen to 106.7 KROQ to this day. My second and someday first choice is good old 95.5 KLOS in L.A. Ross and I have talked about our good memories from KLOS. Another station that we grew up on is KMET and I even mentioned it in one of my old "good memories" songs called Thanks For The Mammaries.

Still tossing around ideas for Nur Ein round 3
I have a concept
I have a sound
I have a chorus that doesn't suck, relatively speaking
Thinking I'll get one of the SF'ers here that's not in Nur Ein to be my guest vox.
I need to clean up my computer
It's freezing more than normal when I start getting too many tracks recorded
I have been bouncing my tracks which has been a huge help
Thanks to whoever recommended that
I seem to be talking about Nur Ein and not my day
My day in a nutshell:
Work
Eat
Drink
Hopefully punani
Recording music
Sleep
With the exception of work, there is no particular order
I should also mention that in between my main requirements of my day,
There is:
Tons of breathing
walking to and fro
sitting
tons of thinking
number one
number two
More thinking
a little stress
talking
the occasional hug
laughing
etc.
With the exception of breathing, there is no particular order
But you guys are flamboyant and have espn, so you probably already knew that.
Live, Love, Rock!
Chris

The radio where I live is absolutely fucking terrible. AWFUL.


So, no favourites from me.


Today I'm building models in excel for crew placement, and trying to find a balance between number of workers, cost per lb, and the available wages. I want to build a model that allows our employees to make the most money possible in the least amount of time while getting under target by about a penny. I find this kind of thing fun...

It takes a while, as each day we run different counts of fish due to the average size of the fish... and we are getting ready to install a new line that looks to solve problems that have been plaguing the industry... it's all rather exciting if you work in this industry.

WAKE UP.

In other news, I have consumed far too much coffee today.

For me, tonight is string-together-a-song-so-your-friends-have-adequate-time-to-help-you-with-vocals night. Unfortunately I don't have great lyrical dreams yet, so it might turn into find-a-groove-and-screw-your-friends-in-a-naughty-way-and-by-naughty-I-mean-timecrunchybad-not-sexual night.

QotD: 88.1 "The Ideas Network" (Wisconsin Public Radio / National Public Radio / BBC at night). Great discussions, without the yelling and commercials.

Figured I should chime in to mention I have enjoyed reading these each day. I'm terrible at posting (I think this is only number 99 in nearly two and a half years), but I usually keep up with everything here on the boards. I particularly like today's question as it brought back a lot of great memories.

I was a bit odd growing up listening mostly to talk radio, oldies stations, and country music (pretty much what my dad listened to). My favorite stations in LA up through high school were KABC (talk at AM 790), KMPC (oldies and Angels baseball at AM 710), and KZLA (country 93.9). I used to love falling asleep listening to the old radio dramas on KNX (AM 1070) or the various LA sports broadcasts on a little transistor radio. With Vin Scully (Dodgers), Chick Hearn (Lakers), and Bob Miller (Kings...loved listening even if I wasn't a hockey fan), I cannot imaging sportcasting ever being better than that.

It wasn't until the end of high school in the late 80's and then college that I caught on to all the other classic stations around LA like KROQ. It took me a bit to warm up to the music, but I do remember catching Loveline with The Poorman and Dr. Drew now and then. I remember KLOS and KMET (as well as KNAC and then that Pirate Radio 100.3 station that came out around 1989) but did not listen in much as I could only handle so much rock at that point. I'm not sure which station played Dr. Demento (post-KMET), but I listened to his show often in high school. I found out later he only lived a few blocks away from us in Lakewood. KPCC (more talk) and KCRW (and its "eclectic" music) were a couple others I liked in my post-college days before moving north to the bay area.

With a CD player and the iPod I no longer listen to the radio much these days. I have always been a fan of NPR and public radio programming, but rarely tune in. I only know three of the stations programmed on my car radio (Radio Alice at 97.3 and the two bay area country stations, KRTY 95.3 and the new one at 95.7). I don't even have a radio at home and haven't for nearly ten years now. KFOG has some good stuff whenever I get around to listening. Of course, KPIG coming out of the Santa Cruz area is another great one. I have noticed I tend to like stations that use "Drive" in their name. There is (or was one) in Chicago I would listen to when visiting family that played mostly good 60's and 70's stuff. Then there was one here briefly in the bay area that had a fairly similar playlist.

But for all those great memories growing up, my favorite will always be a toss up between the old KMPC (loved those classic big band standards) and KABC (waking up to Ken and Bob and falling asleep to Ira Fistell) stations in LA.

Otherwise, today I was pretty much in the office working and going to a couple of meetings and this evening I will be trying to pin down ideas for the next Nur Ein song.

bwell wrote:...With Vin Scully (Dodgers), Chick Hearn (Lakers)...but I do remember catching Loveline with The Poorman and Dr. Drew now and then... my favorite will always be a toss up between the old KMPC (loved those classic big band standards)...

.

Wow, my grandma did, and still does, listen to KMPC! I used to love hearing those big band songs any time we would ride in the car with her! She also used to dance around the kitchen whenever Glenn Miller came on the radio. Chick Hearn and Vin Scully were staples in my home growing up, even though I was never a sports fan (my dad and grandpa were avid sports fans).

I used to listen to Love Lines when it was still The Poorman and Dr. Drew. And who could forget Doc on the ROQ, Rodney on the ROQ, and Jed the Fish, Richard Blade, Kevin and Bean in the morning, Flashback Lunch, etc?

Thanks for the memories Bwell and I'm glad you decided to post in the Roll Call!

bwell wrote:I'm not sure which station played Dr. Demento (post-KMET), but I listened to his show often in high school. I found out later he only lived a few blocks away from us in Lakewood.

Yes, it was 94.7 KMET, then they turned into 94.7 The WAVE easy listening. A little piece of me died that day. Funny thing is, now I actually like the WAVE every so often. Does that mean I get that little piece back?

Well, I'm almost hesitant to say this in such a music oriented setting, but my favorite radio station is NPR.

I listen to it in the car every day, to and from work. Every night at work i listen to the streams of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. If I'm feeling adventurous I listen to Talk of the Nation. If it's not a depressing guest, I often put on Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross. She's the best interviewer in the ever, I reckon.

Heather can't stand NPR. She says it's the voices, which I can totally understand. They are very subdued & mellow, but I kind of dig that it's always at a fairly reliable volume. it's like my stories, man, like a soap opera. I've been hooked for about a year, like, SOLID.

Music-wise, I guess, 770 AM, Radio K was the best for a real long time. It's the college station. Then a lot of my favorite DJ's graduated & moved on. 89.3, The Current, is pretty good, but they're almost... like...

You know those guys who go out of their way to tell you how many kinds of genres they dig? Like, they claim to love blues, but only own 1 robert johnson CD? That's kind of how the Current strikes me. It's just too scattershot to enjoy.

I mean, when I'm in "listening to music" mode, I do enjoy a grab bag, but it's gotta be a grab bag of stuff I dig, you know?

So, yeah, the news. I eat it up.

Also: Today marked the 100th episode of the Spy Vs. Pie Popcast. Yay us!

AND: Allison punched me a million times today, in the same spot, with her little pointy fist! It was so cute, and then, so painful!

Now I'm gonna go paint some letters silver.

p.s. sorry for the late post, the dog ate my watch.

KPIG. maybe that was yesterday. i mean yesterday's q of the d.

The older girl turned 4!

The pregnancy announcement was our Totally Digging Your Mom

She performed percussive vocals on Sincerity Machine

She co-wrote lyrics and contributed vocals to Prayer for Pancakes

She is hunting bubbles in our icon on our Artist Page

She got a sleeping bag, a princess costume, and a hot fudge sundae. Happy 4th, honey bear!

I wanted to chime in and mention that Florida radio (especially Tampa) sucks.

I loved 99x in Atlanta..especially the now defunct Morning X. (I miss you Barnes Leslie & Jimmy) It was once (and still may be) independently owned and a lot of it's staff were tied into the local music scene. (Examples, I worked with a co-producer CHAZ at a bar and I'd bump into one of their nototious reviewers Jeff Clark around town as well as Rich from the Morning X was/is in a local band there called Miller's Tale) I'm sure it's a different radio station now 8 years later. Even when I lived there they made changes that I didn't like.

In it's hay day there were the Retro-Plex lunch hours and the House of Retro Sundays that got me through a lot of brunch shifts. The Morning X with Barnes Leslie & Jimmy was the best morning radio show that I have ever heard. (way better than Bubba The Love Sponge which is the best Tampa/Florida had to offer) The station kicked off with it's first song being Blister in the Sun.

This morning show would have a 'web guy' come on once a week and talk about new and cool sites he found. He once spoke of this little gem of a site where a song title was posted weekly and musicians were challenged to write and record a song in under a week so voters could chose their favorite interpretation.

Hoblit wrote:He once spoke of this little gem of a site where a song title was posted weekly and musicians were challenged to write and record a song in under a week so voters could chose their favorite interpretation.

That's funny, we do that here at Song Fight too. Small world I tellz ya.....small indeed.