The merry ole morning shows of yore did not survive into the following spring semester. Neither, for that matter, did I ride onward into the next semester, either. I cannot recall now my reasons but I missed out on the station welcome meeting shortly after the semester began. Part of me tends to think I just forgot to show up and I was too timid to stop by and see if there was a news position open. I still had classes in the building (at least, one class) and so I picked up from time to time on some of what was going on. I remember, early on in the semester, seeing James (from the Thursday morning "Mike and James" show, see There where the air is free, we'll be what we want to be) sitting in the control room; I somehow garnered enough courage to stop in and chat with him. It was there I learned the morning show concept had been canceled.
After the three-hour morning show ended at 9 a.m., an extended block of classical music followed – until some point in the mid-to-late afternoon, somewhere between 3 and 6 o'clock, as I think they may have tried to fit some jazz in somewhere. I hope they tried to fit some jazz in somewhere. For the time being, classical music replaced the rock-themed morning shows, as I vividly recall James' disdain for the slow droning of the music that morning I stopped by.
I think this disdain of classical music was something many students shared, though I will not say every student. So then, you might wonder, why we even bothered with such a format? Well, let's say we had to do something with the thousands of classical CDs in the control room. Yes, there were literally boo-hoos of discs, many featuring names people had seen but never had to pronounce; foreign names that became something a joke for those who didn't practice before getting on the mic and ending up tongue-tied in their blissful ignorance. We had to have been on some distribution list, or noted in some newsletter as a classical station, because we often would receive complementary CDs of music from Sony or Phillips or some classical music label, sending us a recent recording of, as often was the case, someone's centuries old narcissistic experiment in sound. Really, how many copies of Bach and Wagner and Beethoven did we have stuffed in there, and more so how many were regularly played?
Well, all those multiple copies of the same "piece" – not song – were actually different because they were "under the baton" of a different conductor and performed by diverse groups of musicians. One disc might feature the Bayreuther Festspiele Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim leading, and another might have Reginald Zurcaled conducting the Elchkäse Orchester – subtle difference, yes, perhaps, to those dedicated listeners, but nothing a traditional college student spent time worrying over. To them, it was just the same song.
Speaking of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, best known for its Ride of the Valkyries piece, it was always a joy to have someone new to the classical format try to muddle through their shift without use of the pronunciation guides. Instruction on how to say "Wagner," and other names, was on the playlist, as well as printed in a vocabulary document someone had generated, and in a "guide to the classics" textbook-like tome that seldom got used. Still, even with three examples, this piece was often attributed to something that sounded similar to, "Richard Wagoneer" instead of "Reah-kard Vog-kner."
And stuff like that always warranted a ride from station management into the control room for a quick vocabulary lesson.
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Act III, No. 31, "Hojotoho" (Ride of the Valkyries)
(Richard Wagner)
Performed by Bayreuther Festspiele Orchester
Conducted by Daniel Barenboim
From the album Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), opera, WWV 86b
1993
