Keep on Truckin' [Pledge Drive part 2.]

It has been one hell of a morning and i can not wait for this day to be over. What does this have to do with radio you ask? Well the reason I am tired is because i was at the CJAM studios from 2 am until 8 am this morning making sure the airwaves were full of pledge drive goodness.

But with that, I will elaborate a little more on what is going on at the pledge drive. This year's pledge drive is, as stated in part one of this series of posts, drive for hard drives. And so we have set the bar at $25 000 for the station to bring in during this week of pledges. There are a few reasons we have set the bar so high:
1) We raised over $21 000 dollars last year and we do believe we can be even more successful this year
2) With the smoking ban that has happened in the last two years, the bingo industry has taken a hit in Windsor. CJAM has been working with a local bingo hall for years and been quite successful in fundraising but with the decline in bingo has come the decline in funding for us.
3) Since WDET, a local Detroit radio station, has gotten rid of it's music department CJAM has become the only source of independent non commercial music radio for the Windsor/Detroit area. With the flow over of listeners from WDET, we believe out listen support is large enough to garner a goal this high.

I will throw this in quickly right here I guess, if you are interested in pledging youself, you have serveral options.
1) listen to CJAM, at 91.5 fm on the dial or stream online at CJAM.ca, and call into a show and pledge that way
2) Pledge online at CJAM.ca, see homepage for details
3) Come into the station during extended hours and pledge in person, see what your money goes towards

Finally, I will go over what people recieve if they pledge. I know incentives are nothing new to the world of pledge drives. PBS has been giving away those damn tote bags for years. But CJAM actually had cool incentives to give to listeners who pledge money during this week.

1) for $19 or less you get entered into a daily draw for a really nice prize pack, these have ranged from gift certificates to restaurants to CJAM prize packs that include CDs, shirts and more
2) for $20, recieve your choice of coffee mug, toque or tote bag (ours are better than PBS's, psh) OR a CD from our incentives list that can be seen here .
3) for $30 you can get a really awesome ringer t shirt. They can be seen here. I have worn these shirt, I am actually wearing one right now, and they are comfortable and really good quality.
4) for $50 bucks you can recieve a CJAM jersey. It's not like a sports jersey but it's hard to explain, see here.
5) For $75, recieve both the t shirt and jersey
6) For $100, recieve the jersey, the t shirt AND your choice of mug, toque or totebag (WHAT A DEAL!)

So that's a little more of a look into the pledge drive. I will be writing a blog live tonight from Aaron Feldman's radio show, Semi Colon Closed Bracket, and I hope to get that up sometime this weekend.

Playlist #6

edit: blogging class, disregard this as a post

artist song
rockets red glare - empire state*
cuff the duke - difference between us*
the vandals - when I say you I mean me
goldfinger - nite klub
less than jake - is this thing on
nifty - a sparrow*
movielife - keep never changing
navy - hey drew*
said the whale - plans for the future*
from fiction - terry*
the mohawk lodge - everybodys on fire*
most serene republic - battle hymn of the republic*
murder by death - until morale improves the beatings will continue
citywide vacuum - much too jung*
measured in angles - one less a dozen*
locusts have no king - cruelty is king*
the get up kids - forgive and forget
mustard plug - life is too short
moving picture show - saturday night

cancon - *

Drive for hard drives! Part 1

Even though when you read this blog you imagine this extremely glamorous radio DJ, rolling to the station in my Cadillac, wearing my $3000 Armani suits, I am a volunteer. Yes, that is right. I do this for the love of the radio broadcast. And the main reason I am a volunteer is because CJAM is a not for profit campus/community radio station. And with being a non for profit station geared towards non commercial radio, we do need a little assistance when it comes to the finances so we can bring you the quality programing CJAM does.

So now I bring you part one of two in what I am calling, CJAM's Drive for hard drives. In part one, I will explain why we do it, and in part two, which might be inthe middle of the drive, I will explain what exaclty goes on.

Why does CJAM need money from the community via the pledge drive? Well I will tell you. The black and white explanation is, it costs money to run a radio station. Just like any other business venture, there are a lot of overhead costs to run a radio station the size of CJAM. We have a lot of high tech equipment, that is constantly in need of repair. We have extremely hard working staff that needs to be paid. We have office supplies and all sorts of other things that are needed in day to day operations. But usually each year we focus on one major upgrade the station needs and target that as our goal for the pledge drive.

With the technological world taking over, computers are a big part of the world of broadcast. Obviously CJAM is not going to have the BEST of the BEST of the BEST but the station does try it hardest to keep up with the always rising industry standards. This years pledge drive is no different as we embark on our drive for hard drives. Computers run almost everything in the station, from on air broadcasting, to the recording studio, to the day to day office work. Over the past years, as most computers do, the computers at CJAM have become obsolete. So in 2007, the CJAM Board of Directors decided it was time for some new computers. And the drive for hard drives was born!

to be continued....

...this is a recording...

So I would like to wish everyone a happy turkey day and hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I know I did, and I especially enjoyed the extra day of leisure on Monday. But this lead me to a small minor problem. As most of you know, I have a radio program on CJAM which is broadcast mondays from 10 30 am till noon (PLUG! PLUG!). And this is where the wonders of technology take over CJAM.

A lot of people probably don't know that CJAM doubles as a recording facility. Not only do we have the ability to broadcast radio shows, broadcast live bands (within reason of course), but over the past few years we have built up a studio with the capacity to record a full band in a great quality recording. And why is this so important do you ask? Well, as CJAM is a community radio station, it wants to offer unique opportunities to the community. With the facilities up and running, CJAM soon hopes to get live bands in there, get the equipment recording and give bands the opportunity to record in a good quality studio for an affordable price. After a number of bands are recording, the idea of putting out a compilation CD or something along those lines could be in the works. The big picture of the whole thing is that CJAM has the opportunity to bring the community, the music community in particular, closer together and as a organization that is one of the main goals.

Back to the pre-recording. With these studios at our finger tips, CJAM DJs have the ability to record show promotions and pre-record shows so in case for some reason they aren't able to broadcast live, the audience won't miss a beat.

Playlist #5

Sorry for the tardiness once again, this weeks show was a little different. I was away for Thanksgiving weekend, so I did not do my show live, it was prerecorded. I will talk about this more in my next post. But enjoy, and my recommendation this week would be the Mohawk Lodge from out west who are coming to Windsor in the near future.

Russian Futurists - Paul Simon*
Bad Things to Such Good People - Pedro the Lion
Dear Kate - Dynamite Hack
Intoxikate - The Fullblast*
Roll On - Piebald
Turn - Christie Front Drive
Enjoy Your Day - Alkaline Trio
Freightliner - Hot Water Music
Your New Aesthetic - Jimmy Eat World
Ray - Millencolin
Making Music - Mohawk Lodge*
p.s. I hate you - Eleven Minutes Away*
Tortured Souls - The Next Best Thing *
The night the lights went out in Scotland - Real Mackenzines*
Geraldine - Chuck Ragan
Fear made the world go - The Dears*
(Hospital Vespers) - the Weakerthans*
Full flow angry go round boy - Strippers Union*
Uncorrect proofs - the Weakerthans*
Tiger vaccuum - Germans*
Try to forget - Saint Alvia Cartel *
Summer 2004 - The Turn It Ups*
Cliche Gueverra - Against Me!

Cancon - *

Playlist #4

Sorry it took so long to get this up, I really want to make sure I get my playlists up the day of, ie. Monday.

world inferno friendship society - thumb cinema
moneen - the passing of america*
bend sinister - tv war*
matt skiba - soul to keep
the details - I asked what we should do. You said "I just… *
the ataris - and we all become like smoke
always outnumbered - today*
dropkick murphys - workers song
thunderah - weighing and wanting*
rival schools - used for glue
keepin 6 - look at what you got*
smoking popes - megan
the slackers - married girl
the rentals - life without a brain
boys night out - relapsing*
motion city soundtrack - even if it kills me
grade - stole bikes they ride faster*
maritime - james

* = Cancon

CDs, CDs, CDs!

As a lot of music listeners know, Tuesdays mean CD release day at most major record stores. Well CJAM also gets these CDs, and we get all of them! Now when you get over a hundred CDs every week, there is no possible way, unless you have some kind of warehouse, that you can store them all. This is where CJAM's own Chris White comes in. Chris and his review army go through CD after CD and weeds them out. You can read the reviews Chris writes at his blog. There are many reasons why certain CDs don't make it into the CD library at CJAM. Some CDs just are plain terrible, well others might be too mainstream for the station's mandate to be independent of commercial radio. The CDs that do make it through the gauntlet make it into the on air studio, which is a set of CDs that live in the production studio and are easily accessed by the DJs.

To finish off this post, I am going to review a CD. I am going to do this every so often to mix up the pace of this blog.

Artist: Against Me!
Album: New Wave
Label: Sire Records



The boys of Against Me! have come back after their 2005, Searching for a Former Clarity, album with a record that a lot of die hards might see as too soft. On New Wave, Against Me! has toned down their brash vocals and crunching guitars and have turned to a more melody driven watered down punk rock. Now I sound extremely critical and negative with my description but please understand me, I really love this album. I find the songs on New Wave to be easy to listen to, as opposed to older albums which I found I needed to be in a certain mood, as well as New Wave seems to have lyrics that aren't as in your face, smashing the radical ideas of Against Me! into your brain.

Sadly, when a band takes a turn like this there are a lot of people who are going to yell, "sell out!" And if selling out is making a record that is marketable to a large audience, then yes I guess they sound out. Against Me! has made a catchy record, have brought some friends along for the ride (track 6 features a great duet with Canada's own Tegan Quin from Tegan and Sarah) and has become a mainstay in my CD player since the record came out.

Songs to listen to: Bourne on the FM waves of the heart feat. Tegan Quin
Sounds like: Rocket From the Crypt, The Clash

p.s. if you enjoy the album OR not, check out Ben Lee's version of New Wave