Radio that took its underwear from the drawer marked 'underwear'.
Sad ode to Brave New Waves, which'll disappear from the airwaves for good on March 19.
I like that Jamie O'Meara points out that the CBC didn't actually announce this change, and that they merely stated that a new show will begin to air in its place at that time. It takes a lot of nerve to not give any kind of sendoff whatsoever to a program that aired four hours a day for nearly 23 years. The CBC's actually done quite a bit that's alienated me over the past two years or so, and this is just one more thing.
I think I discovered it around grade 7 or 8 or so, and I really, really dug Brent Bambury as a radio host. He could take the driest interview and make it fascinating, and he had a presence on the air that I thought was very credible, but still approachable. And there was good music, too. This was right around the time that alt-weeklies were starting to get big, and BNW was hitting stuff that the XPress wasn't. Underground filmmakers, artists and zinesters were all given place on BNW. I discovered my favourite zine of all-time there: Beer Frame (now Inconspicuous Consumption).
I remember first hearing certain bands and artists there that I still listen to, in some cases more than 10 years after the fact: Lambchop, The New Pornographers, Kepler, Nardwuar... I remember Mrs. Gutsell's English classes, in which we had to keep a journal, into which I would dutifully copy down Brent Bambury's opening joke from the night before. I'll certainly also miss the wonderfully-named Official State Radio Disco Hour.
At first when I read in that article in Hour, I thought Patti Schmidt's quote about how the show, being based in Montreal as it was, probably got away with a lot of things a Toronto-based show wouldn't have was just bullshit, but, the more I think about it, the more I can see it. I bet whatever comes in its place is going to sound at least a little more corporate.
One reason that the way they've done this particularly stings is that radio's a pretty intimate medium to begin with, and here they have a show that aired daily from midnight to 4am, and most people listening to the show at that time on any given night were actually listening to it on every given night. It deserved better than it got, no matter how many listeners it had dwindled down to before the new schedule was announced.
I like that Jamie O'Meara points out that the CBC didn't actually announce this change, and that they merely stated that a new show will begin to air in its place at that time. It takes a lot of nerve to not give any kind of sendoff whatsoever to a program that aired four hours a day for nearly 23 years. The CBC's actually done quite a bit that's alienated me over the past two years or so, and this is just one more thing.
I think I discovered it around grade 7 or 8 or so, and I really, really dug Brent Bambury as a radio host. He could take the driest interview and make it fascinating, and he had a presence on the air that I thought was very credible, but still approachable. And there was good music, too. This was right around the time that alt-weeklies were starting to get big, and BNW was hitting stuff that the XPress wasn't. Underground filmmakers, artists and zinesters were all given place on BNW. I discovered my favourite zine of all-time there: Beer Frame (now Inconspicuous Consumption).
I remember first hearing certain bands and artists there that I still listen to, in some cases more than 10 years after the fact: Lambchop, The New Pornographers, Kepler, Nardwuar... I remember Mrs. Gutsell's English classes, in which we had to keep a journal, into which I would dutifully copy down Brent Bambury's opening joke from the night before. I'll certainly also miss the wonderfully-named Official State Radio Disco Hour.
At first when I read in that article in Hour, I thought Patti Schmidt's quote about how the show, being based in Montreal as it was, probably got away with a lot of things a Toronto-based show wouldn't have was just bullshit, but, the more I think about it, the more I can see it. I bet whatever comes in its place is going to sound at least a little more corporate.
One reason that the way they've done this particularly stings is that radio's a pretty intimate medium to begin with, and here they have a show that aired daily from midnight to 4am, and most people listening to the show at that time on any given night were actually listening to it on every given night. It deserved better than it got, no matter how many listeners it had dwindled down to before the new schedule was announced.