ReDial

Here comes our first week for TerraSonic at KGNU. I'm excited about being the newcomer at a place I've been involved with for 16 years. Broadcasting from the production room instead of the airstudio will be odd too. But then we'll hear the zaghareed at the intro, and those Yemen Cutta dhols, and everything will be OK.

Not to get too geeked or touchy-feely on the programming perspective, but if this AM-only broadcast experiment works (and why shouldn't it?), it's going to open up a whole new world for KGNU and its listeners.

Music. How about some of that? A few weeks ago, Jose called me at 1190, offering to send me a CD of the great Venezuelan singer Simon Diaz' music remixed by what I'm guessing are Venezuela-based DJs and producers. Jose had just returned from a trip home, where he had picked up the disc.

We should all thank Jose for his generosity as we'll be hearing a lot of this CD in the weeks to come. I was apprehensive about what this would sound like, but the disc is full of really nice touches applied to music that is lonely, delicate and haunting.

Simon Diaz is approaching 80 and a musical institution in Latin America. But he went relatively undiscovered in the States until the BBC's Charlie Gillett included a track on one of his World compilations. World Village released a lovely record by Simon in 2005. Unless you did some crate-digging in Caracas, that's about all that was available by him. And now, this remix record, the origins of which I know very little about. But when press "go" on this remixed Venezuelan cowboy record, suddenly I forget to care.

Simon Diaz - "Tonada del Cabastrero" (from Mis Canciones)
Simon Diaz - "Mi Querencia" (Simon Diaz vs. Garnica) (from Simon Diaz Remixed)

ONE MORE RADIO THING: KGNU's AM webstream won't be up and running for at least a couple of weeks. For now, it means it can be heard only in real time on 1390AM, as the podcast will likely not be available either. We're working on getting that going soon though. Until then, if you want file from me directly, just ask.

See you Saturday: 1200-1300 MT, 1390AM, KGNU.

End of Story

Well, friends, this is it: the last TerraSonic on Radio 1190. It's been a trip. Thanks again to all the great people at KVCU for giving me the chance to play this music for you. Thanks most of all to you the listener for your valuable time and your discerning ears. I hope you'll join me next week at our new time and place.

Every Song Is Good

Just came off a float trip down the Colorado. One of 1000 ways to get away from it all, I know, but this weekend, floating topped the chart. Searing heat, cold water, good friends and reasonably cool beer, all served up on a glassy ribbon woven betwixt and between black rocks and red canyon walls.

As if that weren't plenty, we also had music. Uncle Dub procured a booming box replete with radio transmitter for plugging in iPods and a separate volume control just for the bass. Deep, as they say. A lot of time and effort went into assembling playlists for these iPods, and it showed. Considering the absolute slow stillness of the languid float, we would've had to work pretty hard to find a song that didn't work.

And speaking of music on the river, earlier in the week, before the float, I was in New Orleans for a music distribution convention. It was my first time at this particular distributor's con, and my first time in NOLA in about 11 or 12 years. I was there for only a couple of days and pretty much saw only the French Quarter. It looked more or less like I remembered it, though much quieter. Not quite Andromeda Strain quiet, but noticably hushed for sure.

Walking down Bourbon Street at midday on a Tuesday and seeing so few people was sort of eerie. Jesse, the owner of the internet cafe I frequented a couple of times, told me that business is 35% of what it was pre-Katrina--and that's on the rare "good" day. According to Jesse, 80% of the housing in New Orleans is still unlivable. There are no decent hospitals. Best-case scenario, NOLA is back on its feet in 10 years. But really, he says, it's going to take more like 25-40.

Those are sober thoughts for a place called the Big Easy, but not everything there is lost. The people are the same. A little weariness seasoned with a valid sense of abandonment, to be sure, but the locals are still friendly, hospitable, welcoming. You can still grab a go-cup on your way out into the night.

Meanwhile, back at the record convention, despite the most dismal summer in record biz history, spirits were high. Hanging out with these record reps, retailers, rackjobbers and label freaks, there was perhaps a sense that we're survivors too (or, at least, so far). A storm is wreaking havoc on the music industry. The landscape is already irrevocably altered and the water's still rising.

But, implacable survivors of the record wars are we (or perhaps Queens and Kings of Denial). We managed to have a fantastic dinner and then head over to Le Chat Noir for some music showcases (and open bar). There, I saw a genre-bending torch singer, an Ani-meets-Smashing Pumpkins singer-songwriter, and though I'm not really the singer-songwriter type (at all), a song called "People Look Around" slayed me, but that may have just been a location thing. And then, there was the smooth jazz group that had me through the opening "Grazing in the Grass" but then that muted trumpet sound meshed with the keys and I that it was smooth jazz. Back to the open bar for me.

But it does go to show you, whether you're mindlessly floating down the Colorado on a raft or hanging on a corner a few blocks from the mighty Missisip', pondering a city--every song sounds good on the river.

Here are two that sounded particularly good.

Andre Afram Asmar :: "Duniagariba" (from Racetothebottom)
Saeed Al Kaabi :: "Mabd'a We Nihaya" (from Music from the Arabian Gulf)

They Say That Heaven is 200kHz Away

Big news in TerraSonic land, friends. This summer marks the end of the show's glorious run on Radio 1190. It's been a true pleasure bringing you this show every Saturday for the last four years, and I'm moved by the support you've given the show--with your ears, most of all, and, at those special times of year, your money. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your Saturday morning. I also want to thank everyone at Radio 1190 for allowing me to do my thing there.

But though I'm moving on from Radio 1190, TerraSonic is not going dark. We're moving over to the Front Range's other very excellent radio station, KGNU. I've been involved there for 16 years and feel like now's a good time to wrap all of my radio involvement into one location. The Big Idea for TerraSonic is to try to syndicate this show, and KGNU is better suited for that kind of thing.

TerraSonic premieres on KGNU's 1390 AM signal (hoping to be on the FM as well before too long) on Saturday, 2 September, from 1200-1300 MT. We're still sorting out the tech details of streaming the show, but I'll keep you posted on how that's going to work. Given that the streaming is up in the air, it's also unclear whether the podcasts will continue, but I'm planning to offer streaming/downloadable files for a limited time following each show.

But that's next month, and in the meantime we still have four episodes left on Radio 1190. I intend to make the most of it.

Saw Manu Chao's Colorado debut last night at the Fillmore. I'd seen him July 2001 in Central Park, my first encounter with his music, and I was utterly and completely blown away. I was curious how it would go in Denver five years later, and a week after a scheduled Os Mutantes show was 86'd due to poor sales. The Front Range is weird like that for world music sometimes.

All I can really say is: wow! It was pretty amazing. I've never been to the Fillmore for music. It's a big room, I think the cap is 3k, and they announced from the stage before the show that it was sold out. It felt full w/o being uncomfortable.

The crowd was into it and, though I got the impression that Manu seemed to be working pretty hard to get response, it wasn't long before his Radio Bemba Sound System and the crowd were absolutely feeding off each other.

About an hour in, he would conclude every song with "thank you, Denver!" as if that were the last one, but that went on for about another 1h15m or so for a 2h15m show length. It was pretty non-stop, high energy, tight and hot. The band could swing from hardcore thrash to dub to flamenco all in one song and one instant.

He played all his solo favorites, plus a lot of Mano Negra songs as well. It wasn't quite as hopping as a Euro (or even NYC) show would be, but that's really only because they know the lyrics and are more familiar with the music over there, but he definitely made some friends in Denver.

The last of his five or six encores was the Mano Negra version of the Arabic classic, "Sidi H'Bibi", from Puta's Fever. It's got a very twangy, rockabilly sound to it, with the Arabic scales keeping it true. Manu introduced it by describing it as a song that "was sung together by Arabs and Jews." Imagine.

Seeing Manu Chao this week reminded me of the first time I saw him five years ago. It was the first time I'd heard his music and, as you know if you've listened to the show, he left his mark on me that day. That summer July afternoon was also my first encounter with Gogol Bordello. Here's something I stumbled upon by them a while back, maybe from some other music blog (apologies if it's poor form to play something from another blog). It's a pretty good remix of one of the few Gipsy Kings songs I like. Maybe you'll like it too.

Thanks again for stopping by, and for tuning in to TerraSonic. I'll make it as good as I can for this last month at Radio 1190. I hope you'll stay with me when we make the leap to KGNU.

Mano Negra :: "Sidi H'Bibi"
Gipsy Kings :: "Aven Aven (Gogol Bordello Remix)"