Friday, October 5, 2012

Music Director Notes 10-5-12: Those Darn White Labels

T'was the day before the Fund Drive, and all through the station
People watched the debates and shook their heads at the nation.

Well, okay, so I'm not that great at poems...but I didn't watch the debates, either.  I like being happy.

CD WEEDING

The topic for today's post is "Weeding: Why on earth do we have to put the date and the track number on those stupid white labels on front of the CDs, which block the information I need for my playlists half the time?  I just wanna play music, here!"

Okay, I don't blame you, and please note that, due to the squeaking of several wheels, I just moved those annoying DJ Feedback sticky notes from the front of most of the CDs to the inside, so that should help you out with the whole white label thing.

As always, there's a reason we do things the way we do them here (other than to torture you, which is fun, but sometimes counterproductive.)  We receive roughly 40 new CDs every week, and some of them eventually end up out in the library.  About once a year per section, it's the Music Director's job to go through the library and pull out CDs that nobody seems to be interested in so that we have room for the 2500 or so new CDs coming in.

How do I know whether or not you're interested in a CD?  You guessed it--I look at the white label!  If I see that a CD hasn't been played in 4, 5, 10, 12 years?  Out it goes, unless it's by a well-known artist or it has been played a lot.  If the white label is full of your handwriting, it gets a new white label for you make notes on.

Quite often, I see a white label with dates but no years on it.  Something like this:


If this CD hasn't been played since 2004, I should pull it to make room for something more appealing to you guys, but I can't tell.  Can you?

By the way, what happens to the CDs once they get pulled from the library is that first Gerald, our Program Director, goes through them and pulls out anything that should be kept in.  Then we ask the DJs who specialize in that genre of music to go through them and do the same.  The ones that don't make it through this process get taken to area music festivals and other places where KRZA sets up a booth and are given to people in return for filling out a survey.  Or you can take them home, too, if you like.

Okay, on to the New Releases for the week:

NEW RELEASES

Quite a haul this week!  The music promoters are finally beginning to get what we do and don't air here, so there's less junk to go through.  Which I like!  :-)

Jazzites:

  • Diana Krall: We have Diana Krall, we have Diana Krall, we have Diana Krall....okay, I'll quit boring you.  I'll just say that Glad Rag Doll really takes the 1930's Frank Sinatra sound to the next level! 
  • The Verge: And now, for something a little different...
  • Andrea Brachfield: You don't see decent jazz flute come along every day, and Andrea is now my new heroine.  If I focused exclusively on jazz and practiced eight hours every day for ten years with a top-notch band, I might...MIGHT...sound like her.  Maybe.  

Worldings:

  • Mary Jane Lamond and Macisac: Celtic music from Cape Breton Island; again, something we don't see every day, so let's encourage the music promoters to send us more by airing it.

Rockers: 
All I can say is, if you're not checking out the New Releases, you're missing out, big time!
  • R.E.M. "Document"
  • Steve Harris (Founder of Iron Maiden) "British Lion"
  • Mumford & Sons "Babel"
    Also, 
  • Local H "Halleluiah, I'm A Bum": Good stuff!
  • Mark Mallman "Double Silhouette": Quirky, quirky, quirky!
Classical:  Dave Brubeck--yes, the very same Dave Brubeck, jazz pianist extraordinaire--composed classical choral music!  Check it out in the New Release section!

Hip-Hop: I really enjoyed Background Noise Crew, AND it's FCC clean!

Folk: Apparently there's a film out about Sixto Rodriguez, 70's Mexican-American folk artist, and now KRZA proudly owns the soundtrack, which features music solely by him.  Oh, yeah!

See ya after the fund drive!