the rix mix

Quite pleased with how Sunday's fill-in for Glen Jones turned out. I finally figured out how to do Glen's first hour of non-stop music. Glen leaps into his shows the same way he swims in the ocean: immediate full immersion. I tend to ease into both. Doing a program with a large regular audience challenges me to hold on to as much of that audience as I can while drawing them into at least a portion of my peculiar musical universe. But I would not consider subjecting Glen's usual listeners - many of whom I've met - to, say, a dissonant quartet for strings with synthesizer accompaniment. I'm not in a mood for that early on a Sunday afternoon, either. But a little bit of Beethoven is always good for the soul. The final set of the program played out even better than I'd hoped. I usually don't know how a set will end up, but the last half-hour has to end on-the-hour with another DJ taking over, Bill Kelly & Teenage Wasteland on this occasion. About ten minutes to three, during some strangely ethereal Tahitian choral singing, I turned to Bill & said, "I'm going to drop this show off in the good place for you." By then I knew I'd not only get to the melancholy Skeeter Davis song, but also to a rousing Jan & Dean finale. Show-to-show continuity is rarely a concern of anyone at WFMU. There are exceptions. I fondly recall John Schnall's weekly "Transitional Moment" feature. & when you follow & precede the same shows week-after-week, it's tempting to get in a few jibes after awhile. Ages ago, I began using Nino Rota's soundtrack from "The Clowns" as an opening "theme," partly because I wasn't comfortable with inter-show bantering while little butterflies were jumping around in my stomach. It had live circus sounds, including a dog act. When that record wore out (an extremely gradual, interesting process in itself) I changed to any music by Rota, except when I felt like opening with something else.

Bil Kelly took vacation time all last week, & he got some crappy weather. I sympathized because the two weeks before & after Labor Day are excellent weather bets in Jersey, much better than July. Unless there's a tropical storm lurking about, the worst that usually occurs is a spell of prematurely autumnal temperatures.

Labels: WFMU