Monday, March 22, 2004
The WFMU marathon wrapped up on Sunday night
As has become a tradition, numerous DJs performed songs with the Hoof n Mouth Sinfonia. It was my karaoke debut. Never even done it in a bar with recorded music. & there I was, live on radio, & internet cam, garbling Bob Dylan's "On the Road" with no rehearsal. I wouldn't exactly call it singing. I hadn't sung with a rock band since I last played in one over thirty years ago. Hoof n Mouth is a great "pickup" group comprised of real musicians, mostly WFMU staffers who actually play in bands. The amount & range of songs they have to learn is just amazing, & they have to sound good enough on every tune to let us singers impress & astonish with our own talent or lack thereof.
It felt like a DJ initiation I'd somehow managed to avoid for a long time. Earlier in the evening I mentioned in passing to Ken Freedman that I'd had a good year at the station & felt like celebrating. Ken couldn't be sure what I meant: For me 2003 was journey back from a self-imposed exile of a few years, partly because of personal problems - although everyone I know well on the staff has had their own - but mainly I think because I'd lost my sense of direction as a DJ/radio host. It wasn't about doing a weekly show; it was about centering myself as an older person. & that required, oddly, a lot of time reconnecting with the music I'd pretty much put aside in the early Eighties, until I felt comfortable & confident building programs around it. During Fabio's show, which I co-hosted, an internet listener from Norway pledged, recalling the program I played Carla Bley's Escalator Over the Hill in it's entirety (a Kenny G fill-in), & also music by Grieg. I'd decided that I wanted to get some special music in the WFMU web archives, & feature a variety of classical music in a free form context without sounding awkward. The decades of experience would take care of ithe rest. & it seemed to work, tentatively at first nearly two years ago ("Orffing Bizet," an archived program with an incomplete setlist). Retired Nino Rota's "The Clowns" as opening theme music. All I wanted at WFMU, I realized, was to be an authentic presence on the staff, supportive of younger DJs, not competitive with them - if you look at the program schedule, it's their station now & I'm more than OK with that. But I can still be myself, still be "Rix" to some & "Bob" to others, however or whenever I was introduced. Anybody who steps up to the mic with Hoof n Mouth Sinfonia on Finale Night is saying, "I'm crazy enough to do this, too." & since I'm one of the few certifiably crazy DJs there, I just had to claim my three minutes in the spotlight.
"Back in the day" - 70s & 80s, to 1990, the marathon ended with a performance by the Little Wally Band, truly a slap-together ensemble of just about anyone on the staff who could play three or four chords or bang on something & join in on "Roll out the Barrel." The true star of the evening was either Little Wally (Lou "the Duck" D'Antonio) who hawked chocolate covered frozen pierogis on a stick, or "Mrs. Little Wally (Kris 0, who really is of Polish ancestry), with the late great Frank "Vanilla Bean" Ballisteri pitching in. Irwin Chusid was the only alumnus of Little Wally who performed in Hoof N Mouth (drums), & a handful of others singing.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
It felt like a DJ initiation I'd somehow managed to avoid for a long time. Earlier in the evening I mentioned in passing to Ken Freedman that I'd had a good year at the station & felt like celebrating. Ken couldn't be sure what I meant: For me 2003 was journey back from a self-imposed exile of a few years, partly because of personal problems - although everyone I know well on the staff has had their own - but mainly I think because I'd lost my sense of direction as a DJ/radio host. It wasn't about doing a weekly show; it was about centering myself as an older person. & that required, oddly, a lot of time reconnecting with the music I'd pretty much put aside in the early Eighties, until I felt comfortable & confident building programs around it. During Fabio's show, which I co-hosted, an internet listener from Norway pledged, recalling the program I played Carla Bley's Escalator Over the Hill in it's entirety (a Kenny G fill-in), & also music by Grieg. I'd decided that I wanted to get some special music in the WFMU web archives, & feature a variety of classical music in a free form context without sounding awkward. The decades of experience would take care of ithe rest. & it seemed to work, tentatively at first nearly two years ago ("Orffing Bizet," an archived program with an incomplete setlist). Retired Nino Rota's "The Clowns" as opening theme music. All I wanted at WFMU, I realized, was to be an authentic presence on the staff, supportive of younger DJs, not competitive with them - if you look at the program schedule, it's their station now & I'm more than OK with that. But I can still be myself, still be "Rix" to some & "Bob" to others, however or whenever I was introduced. Anybody who steps up to the mic with Hoof n Mouth Sinfonia on Finale Night is saying, "I'm crazy enough to do this, too." & since I'm one of the few certifiably crazy DJs there, I just had to claim my three minutes in the spotlight.
"Back in the day" - 70s & 80s, to 1990, the marathon ended with a performance by the Little Wally Band, truly a slap-together ensemble of just about anyone on the staff who could play three or four chords or bang on something & join in on "Roll out the Barrel." The true star of the evening was either Little Wally (Lou "the Duck" D'Antonio) who hawked chocolate covered frozen pierogis on a stick, or "Mrs. Little Wally (Kris 0, who really is of Polish ancestry), with the late great Frank "Vanilla Bean" Ballisteri pitching in. Irwin Chusid was the only alumnus of Little Wally who performed in Hoof N Mouth (drums), & a handful of others singing.
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