Live from CJAM 91.5

Okay, it's near the end of this blog-thang so I wanna try something new and exciting. Live radio and blogging!
So here is the deal, I am going to do my show as well as blog and see how far I get. When my show is over, the blog is DONE....well this entry at least. Please forgive spelling, I am working on the fly.

Well, here I am sitting in the studio as always on a Monday. What makes this job, the incredibly glamourous occupation of DJ, so tough? Well lemme tell yea! Usually, prepared and professional DJs preplan shows, get a burned mix CD ready or at least a play list. Not this disc jay! Well I was in a rush this past 24 hours, so I am picking CDs from our gigantic CD library and this is not an easy task. I have to make sure CDs in a three song set, thats the usually radio standard 3 songs, talking, 3 songs, talking etc, mesh nicely and have a good flow. That is a task and a half because you gotta keep your show fresh each week. Not only this but I also have to play 30% Cancon (Canadian content), I will go over the qualifications of Cancon in a upcoming post, which is a pain in the ass somedays. I love supporting local and Canadian bands, but god damn some days you wanna play a certain band but it doesnt fit in the play list because you need more Cancon.

side note: I am played Cain and Abel, excellent Canadian band, check them out at myspace.com/cainandabel

I am going to keep posting and editing this entry to make it semi real time, how exciting!

Another pain of being a DJ is being knowledgeable on all sorts of quirky facts about bands, which i love knowing, but when you dont have any info on a band youve just played you kind of look like an idiot.....like i did earlier in this show.

side note: remember when I said the 3 song sets needed a flow? Well here I go ruining the flow of this set.....Less than Jake followed by Mutemath....yikes... (for those of you unaware of these bands...think poppy punk ska followed by electronic melodic rock....awesome job, Pat!)

What others wonders can i share with these fine people....oh yeah! Commercials! CJAM has mandated themselves to less than 2 mins of commercials an hour. And yes, that is what CJAM plans to do. But often, idiot DJs like myself, forget to play the commercials and cram them all in the last 30 mins of our shows. Whenever I do this I feel bad because people really don't like to be sold things well in their car driving, or in the shower, or when being awoken from a slumber, or where ever else you listen to your radio. Reminds me, I will play a commercials right now. This one is on a book drive, good choice to play well blogging I think.

Side note: CD player in studio is killing me! Just open with one push of a button! Not 12!

Another thing in studio I always forget is the fact there are giant windows. I used to do the 6 am - 8 am time slot, so noone was there. I could look like hell, I could adjust my under garments, I could...well you get what I mean. Now that I am 10 30 am - noon, people are actually around the station. Good example, about 2 mins ago I stood up to remove a wedgey I had collected in my travels around the station and I am pretty sure one of the St Clair journalism interns definitely saw me pick it. And it was a girl! God, I am classy.

side note: Cave In, from New Jersey, awesome band!

Something I always forget when I am on air is the telephone in studio. There is a phone sitting right beside me, but the ringer is off so it just has a flashing light. I do not know how many people have called in and I have just not seen the light flashing. I would say 500. I probably have a huge. unknown by me, fanbase with fan club and mailing list and t shirts and yeah I am taking this too far. But if you have tried to call in and I have not answered, don't be offended!

side note: I just screwed up again, announced one song, played another. smooth.

I have 9 mins left in my show, so I hope you enjoyed this LIVE blogging entry at the CJAM studios, I promise it will never happen again.

Playlist # 8

maritime - be unhappy
the color fred - hate to see you go
land of talk - all my friends*
the ex boyfriends - spanked by lightning*
saves the day - kalidoscope
navy - can you deal with my peel?*
saint alvia cartel - stones on the road*
weakerthans - a new name for everything*
cain and abel - good morning son*
less than jake - mostly memories
mutemath - picture
cave in - beneath water
royal wood - suzanne*
coconut records - slowly
lagwagon - infectious
sydney - sorry stanger*

* = Cancon

Nî hâo CJAM 91.5

I will start off by apologizing to the Chinese community for butchering the language in the title, but I think you got the jist of it. And why did I put the title of this blog in Chinese? That's because a lot of people are uninformed about ALL of CJAM's programming, and CJAM actually has a large block of ethno-cultural programming.

What exactly is ethnocultural you ask? Well, to be honest I am not 100% exactly sure what it means so lets define it.

*5 minutes later*

Okay, I cannot find a definition on the internet, so let me quickly sum up what I think it is. As far as a CJAM definition, ethnocultural programming is a block of shows that take place on the weekend, that showcase music, news, events and anything you can think of that pertains to a country outside of Canada.

Since CJAM is a campus community radio station, we do have a lot of volunteer programmers who are not students at the University. Ethnocultural programming gets a lot of its programmers from the local community, whether it be Windsor or Detroit. Shows such as Forza Italia (Italian Radio), Chinese Reflections (Chinese Radio), Asian Vibrations, Macedonian Roots and many more specialized programs that run Saturday and Sunday from 10 am - 6 pm.

CJAM's ethnocultural block is much more important that a lot of people give it credit for. Shows, such as Chinese Reflections, do mean a lot to their niche communities. Not only do they bring news, music and events to ethnic communities across Windsor and Detroit, they help new immigrants families (awful term, but I can't think of a better one) ease themselves into the community. This is just another key example of how CJAM is fulfilling their mandate, giving under represented members of the community a voice. But not only does CJAM help the ethnocultural community, the enthocultural community helps CJAM. The programmers of the ethnocultural programs have been known to bring in some of the highest amount of pledges during the pledge drive.

SO you see my friends, CJAM is not just a source of awesome independent music. It can offer you a whole world of possibilities..... *Editors note I am sorry for that lame ending....*

Playlist #8 - Special Post Worthy Edition

Oh, this is a special edition of the Soundoff College Radio playlist. Why is it special you ask? Well it's special because I had a special guest in the studio today and really only had to pick half the songs for my show; the other half were chosen by my guest. Adam Marz, lead singer of the Windsor rock outfit Solidarity, stopped by my show this morning to talk to me about a CD release party he is going to be apart of this weekend.

On a side note, the music he brought in was really well played, well recorded, well produced etc etc, but wasn't really my cup of tea. The reason I said yes to him when he asked if he could talk about the show wasn't because I am a nice guy, it's because I think it is really important to support local artists. Seeing as I have the means to reach over two million people for an hour and a half every Monday, I see it as almost my duty to help out local acts as much as I can as an ambassador of CJAM because without local acts, where does music grow from?

Anyways, back to the show itself. Adam brought in cds from the three bands playing the show, which is happening at the Chubby Pickle on Saturday (info here). I played two songs from each of Hail the Villian (from Oshawa, Ontario off their "Population: Declining" CD), Solidarity (off of their "Materializer" CD) and finally Ontology (from Windsor, Ontario off of their CD "Shotgun" which is being released that night).

Adam and I got to chat for about an hour about the event, between sets of music, and I think really got the show out there so hopefully it does well this weekend. I also got to play music I wanted to for the last half hour, so check out everything from the Evaporators and down for the usually tunes I play each week.

Here's the goods.


iron and wine - pagan angel and a borrowed car
sigor ros - samskeyti
ontology - shotgun*
ontology - compromise*
burn the 8 track - fear of falling skies*
hail the villian - runaway*
hail the villian - mission control*
band of horses - noones gonna love you
solidarity - human*
solidarity - bittergreen*
the evaporators - tellin youth the truth*
mad cowboys - askin for it*
the ex boyfriends - the only thing I can give you is everything*
specials - pressure drop
locusts have no king - cruelty is king*
mohawk lodge - hearts of lovers*
spoon - sister jack

* = Cancon

OH! And I also got a call in for a request today, tres exciting.

edit: I made a mistake in the blog, and also several times on the air, I wrong stated the band as "Hail the Thief" when the bands name is "Hail the Villian". The editor regrets this mistake and will try and be more careful in the future

and the Jammie goes to...

Every year I go to the Jammies and every year i lose. Thats actually a lie because I missed a year when I fell down the stairs running to go watch LOST on tv and broke my foot. Either way, I think it's rigged.

Jammies? What are these Jammies you speak of? Well, in about April, every year CJAM holds a recognition party for the volunteer programmers. At this party people socialize, there's free food, door prizes, free drinks (two per person, I can deal), and then the main event. The awarding of the Jammies. Much like a Grammy, a Jammie is given to different programmers in different genres of music or catagories of radio that have excelled that particular year. This is what a Jammie looks like EDITOR'S NOTE* this is not my jammie, as I have stated before I have been robbed on several occasions, I stole this from Aaron Feldman, host of Semi Colon Closed Bracket*

The different Catagories are:
Best Indie Rock
Best Special Interest
Best Electronic
Best Punk/Hard Rock
Best Urban
Best Music Variety
Best Spoken Word
Best Ethno Cultural
Best New Show

Every show is nominated for at least one award every year, and depending on the size of the field one or more awards are handed out. Since the indie rock field is so big they handed out three last year, yes yes robbed again! The awards are given to the show who gets the most votes from listeners. Voting is done online at CJAM.ca, here is an old sample of what a form would look like, HERE.

The Jammies are always a fun time and even though I have not won a Jammie yet -mistakes have been made I assume- I still really enjoy going and it's the highlight of my school year. So, cross your fingers for me this year....

Last One, I Promise [Pledge Drive Finale]

We did it. With 7 days, around 100 dedicated volunteers, over 40 programs, 168 hours of radio and one hell of a will we raised over $25 000 to keep CJAM on the air for another 365 days.

We will be using this money for some much needed computers as well as other upgrades to keep the station running at its best. I would like to take this time to thank anyone who actually went out of their way to pledge money towards our cost.

So, we reached out goal. What now? Well now is the tricky part. We got the promise from all these people that they would pledge collectively over $25 000. But now we need to make sure they make good on their promise. After the pledge drive, the biggest problem is people backing out and thus our $25 000 bucks could very well turn into $2. But luckily, last year we boasted a 95% rate on collecting on our pledges, so things are looking good and I could no be happier.

Check out the website for a small blurb about the end of the drive here.

Now that the drive is over, we can return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Live from the Drive [part 3]

Okay, this might be confusing so lemme preface. I have been really busy and as the blogging of ethics goes, you really are not supposed to back date a blog. So this blog was written on Thursday October 25th, but is not being posted till tonight.

So consider this a late addition:

So I am here, live at the Pledge Drive and I wanted to give you some insight into what actually happens during the shows for pledge drive. I am on-air as I type on "Semi Colon Closed Bracket", with it's host Aaron "I spoke english good" Feldman. Lemme go over how a pledge drive show is different from a regular program.

1) Content: This is the major difference. In a show like Aaron, there would be around 2 or 3 songs played during about 40 minutes of banter about different types of literary topics, because Aaron does a literature show. During the pledge drive, however, there is zero talk about topics related to the show. There are still 2 or 3 songs, but this is just to keep the host sane. Why you would they be going insane you ask? Well between songs, it's all pledge drive talk. We talk about why we need the money, what we do with it, what we bring to the community, how you can give money and all of this while saying the call in numbers about a billion and a half times. Content on the pledge drive show is not listener friendly, but CJAM reminds the listeners we do this once a year so we can bring you quality programming for the other 51 weeks.

2) Threes a crowd: During the pledge drive you always have to have extra hands in the studio to answers callers that wanna pledge. Now the studio is not exactly huge. If people complain about how small the rooms are in residence, they should try to sit with three people in the studio for long periods of time. It is tiny, but also needed because when the calls come in, it sounds really bad when there is dead air because a host is answering the phone.

3) Drop ins: Now the last two have been negative changes for the pledge drive, but this one is a positive one. CJAM is really a big family when it comes to events like pledge drive, so during a pledge drive show you will get random CJAM hosts drop into studio to chat alittle about the pledge drive. Now, this is good for two reasons. It gives the audience alittle change of pace to hear a new, enthusiastic voice. And it also gives the hosts a break from saying the same stuff over and over again.

So that's all I really have to say during this pledge drive show. I need to get back to Aaron's show as he is raking in the pledge drive dollars. I think we are at about $11 000 bucks, and have like 3 or 4 days to get to our goal of $25 000. Wish us luck.

Playlist #7

Playlist for Nov 4th, 2007. For interested people, check out Attack in Back, Canadian indie rock, on November 16th at the Phog Lounge.


wax mannequin you and all your friends
sydney when we were safe
wolfnote three bells
built to spill traces
attack in black chimes and church bells
operation ivey bad town
attack in black come what may
armour for sleep car underwater
bend sinister time breaks down
emery rock n rule
youthinasia crossing over
strungout blackhawks over los angeles
strike anywhere instinct
matt pond pa last light
new amsterdams lay on the rails
great lake swimmers to leave it behind
my american heart there are more freightning things
weakerthans sun in an empty room
scout nibblet do you want to be buried with my people