Record Store Day 2011 on Saturday April 16

I’m already starting to map out my list of record stores to hit this Saturday, April 16, 2011 for the 4th annual Record Store Day. Some people will be lining up for limited edition releases (particularly vinyl), others will be heading to stores to check out live performances, and many (like me) will just be happy to be out celebrating independent record shops and dropping some cash into their coffers.

As with last year’s event, there are a number of radio stations hooking up with like-minded independent record stores for special in-stores, DJ sets, parties, and limited edition releases. Here’s a short guide to some of the radio-related goings on:

Boise, Idaho: Radio Boise’s Record Store Day Pre-Party and Launch Celebration

On Friday, April 15 starting at 8pm, Radio Boise will host a party to celebrate the launch of their new community radio station and to serve as a kick-off for Record Store Day. Performances and DJ sets will be part of the event at Neurolux (111 N. 11th Street in Boise) which will also serve as a fundraiser for the new station.

Boulder and Denver Colorado: Radio DJs at Twist & Shout, Radio 1190 at Absolute Vinyl

University of Colorado’s college radio station KVCU (Radio 1190) will have members of their promotions team hanging out at Absolute Vinyl in Boulder (4474 Broadway) on Saturday for Record Store Day.

Twist & Shout (2508 E. Colfax, Denver) will feature a number of radio DJs spinning records at their store on Saturday. DJ Arturo Gomez from public jazz station KUVO spins from 10am to noon, DJs from community radio station KGNU are up from noon to 2pm, and Radio 1190 DJs are on from 2pm to 4pm (Professor Mikey and DJ Sam).

Calgary: CJSW to Air Record Store Day and Vinyl-Themed Programming

University of Calgary campus-community radio station CJSW will be celebrating Record Store Day with special programs starting at 7am Friday and continuing through Saturday, including vinyl showcases and interviews with folks from local record stores about both Record Store Day and the future of vinyl.

Chicago: Numero Group’s Pop-Up Radio Station

Take a look at Paul’s post earlier this week about the pop-up record store and radio station courtesy of the record label Numero Group. Their low power radio station WTNG will begin streaming at 9pm Central time on Friday, April 15. The terrestrial broadcast over 89.9 FM will air on Saturday from 9am to 9pm Central Time. A lovely PDF of the full schedule is posted on their blog.

Greenville, Illinois: WGRN Airing Record Store Day Special

Tonight from 8-10pm Central Time, WGRN at Greenville College aired a special focused on Record Store Day, featuring interviews with owners of local record stores, as well as an interview with one of the organizers of Record Store Day: Eric Levin.

Hoboken, New Jersey: WRXP DJ Paul Cavalconte at Tunes

Vinyl-loving WRXP DJ Paul Cavalconte (here’s an interview I did with him in 2009) will be hanging out at Tunes Records (225 Washington Street) in Hoboken, New Jersey from 1pm to 3pm. Another WRXP DJ, Rich Russo, will be trekking between various records stores in the vicinity of New York City and will document his journey on Twitter (@DJRichRusso).

Hollywood, CA: KCRW DJ Henry Rollins at Amoeba Music

At 2pm the rocker, poet, and KCRW DJ Henry Rollins will be spinning music at the Hollywood location of Amoeba Music on Saturday.

Minneapolis: Radio K’s “Stuck on AM 7: Stuck on Tape” Cassette Release

To coincide with Record Store Day, University of Minnesota station KUOM (aka Radio K) is releasing the latest in their series of recordings (“Stuck on AM”) culled from live performances at the station. This cassette, release (which also includes a code for free digital downloads of additional tracks) will be available free on Record Store Day at the Electric Fetus record store in Minneapolis. Radio K will also be at that event, playing music out of their Radio K van at a cookout in the backyard of the record store.

Portland, Maine: WCLZ’s Record Store Day Special

On Saturday from 9am to 10am Eastern time, Portland radio station WCLZ will air a Record Store Day special featuring Bull Moose staffer (and Record Store Day visionary) Chris Brown playing Record Store Day exclusive releases.

San Francisco: Live 105′s Aaron Axelson at Amoeba Records

Commercial radio station Live 105′s DJ Aaron Axelson will be at Amoeba Records on Haight Street from noon to 8pm Saturday with a live broadcast and on-air interviews.

San Jose, CA: KFJC DJ Curtis Kimby spinning at Streetlight Records

At 11am KFJC DJ Curtis Kimby will be spinning records at Streetlight Records (980 S. Bascom Street) in San Jose on Saturday. Live performances by Judgement Day and Mercy Ties will happen later in the day starting at 4pm.

If you know of other radio stations doing special events in honor of Record Store Day, please add details in the comments section.

Radio stations are often one of the last remaining outlets to celebrate April Fool’s with gusto. Morning show DJs read fake news reports, radio shows are replaced, and some stations switch their formats for 24 hours. Howard Stern once pretended that he’d been fired on April 1st over his crude content.

College radio station KXUA (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville) actually launched their FM broadcast on April 1, 2000 and in honor of their struggles to get on the air they started off with 24 hours of political speeches.

Back in 1998 several San Francisco Bay Area radio stations had April Fool’s-themed programming, including commercial station KITS (aka Live 105), which changed to KGAY for a day, airing gay-themed music. That same year college station KUSF read an announcement over the air stating that the university was selling off the station and commercial rock station KFOG devoted their “10 at 10″ segment to big band music. Another year KFOG spent part of their program day playing the best 15 seconds of songs as their new format.

Brown University station WBRU pretended to have been sold to a corporate entity and changed its format from alternative rock to the more mainstream “Buddy FM” in 2006. Audio from that prank can be heard here.

Chicago commercial rock station WXRT also has a tradition of doing April Fool’s hoaxes. One year they pretended that the station had gone “adult,” with their purchase by Playboy. In 1992 they told listeners that they had become a digital “pay-per-hear” station with several specialized streams of music. Non-subscribers would be treated to a jumbled up broadcast of scrambled sounds.

I think it’s fun to hear stations getting creative on April 1st, but often listeners become outraged (even after they’ve caught on to the joke). Are you willing to let your favorite station mess around for a day or do you think April Fool’s is a tradition past its prime?

Did any stations in your community do something special for April Fool’s this year?

Getting a New Perspective on Radio

Today I spotted an article from this weekend’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer that extols the virtues of a Sunday night hip hop show called Sunday Night Sound Session on commercial station KUBE in Seattle.

The show runs from 10:45pm to 12:15am and plays music that isn’t normally heard on the station.

The piece points out that the show is a departure from the station’s typical programming:

“KUBE…widely seen as a corporate behemoth with a playlist as deep as a puddle is actually home to the best radio show you’ve probably never heard: ‘Sunday Night Sound Session.’

…hosts DJ Hyphen and J. Moore play the latest and greatest in hip hop from both a national and local perspective — 90 minutes that are unlike any other in the KUBE lineup.

‘Our show almost operates in opposition with KUBE,’ said DJ Hyphen, aka Dorian Bunker-Pardo. ‘But all we’re focused on is good music. It’s deeper than just playing a record. It’s about something you can appreciate, something you can feel.’”

KUBE’s not alone in taking programming risks on Sunday nights. San Francisco commercial station Live 105 airs its indie/local/imports show Radio Soundcheck from 7-10pm and follows that with a show in which the audience picks the playlist through Jelli‘s interface, which promises “100% User-Controlled Radio.” Through Jelli, listeners are able to vote on the songs that they’d like to hear and the on-air playlist is entirely crafted by users (although within the limited universe of songs that are populated in Jelli) from 10pm to midnight on Sundays.

Traditionally Sunday night time slots have been seen as less desirable, the assumption being that they attract fewer listeners. But if stations open up their programming to more experimental sounds in these “dead” time slots, then perhaps they may actually draw in an audience who normally shies away from commercial radio.

What’s the Sunday night radio scene like in your town? Are your commercial stations doing anything unexpected?

San Francisco commercial radio station Live 105 just launched a show on June 28th that airs on Sunday nights from 10 until midnight which is being touted as “100% User-Controlled Radio.” Listeners sign up for a service called Jelli in order to help formulate the playlist. According to Jelli’s website:

“Jelli is 100% user-controlled radio℠, enabling users to take over a radio station using their web browsers. Leveraging the power of the web to reinvent traditional broadcasting, Jelli empowers the community to interact with the broadcast in real-time and determine dynamically what plays on the air.”

I signed up for Jelli and have to admit that I was excited about potentially being able to re-shape Live 105′s playlist. However, as you might guess, the song selection that I had to choose from limited. I scanned through the choices trying to shake things up a bit by voting for all of the more obscure bands and for the genres that are outside of Live 105′s current playlist.

Amid all of the expected rock tracks from Green Day, AC/DC, and Rancid, I was surprised to see some wild card song options including soul, reggae, Tom Jones, Bee Gees, jazz from Miles Davis, country from Willie Nelson, hip hop from Jurassic 5, Run DMC, and a Tribe called Quest. There were even selections from college radio favorites like The Cramps, Vivian Girls, Squirrel Nut Zippers, American Analog Set, Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500, Sleater-Kinney, Dead Can Dance, !!!, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Diamanda Galas, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and old punk like Agent Orange. So, I wonder. If all the indie kids got on here and voted for a list of non-mainstream stuff, could we have a Sunday night commercial radio show that was both listenable and unexpected? I’d love to see that.

Jelli’s press release upon their recent launch reveals that users are selecting songs from a limited, pre-approved universe. And, amazingly, they admit that even though it’s “100% user-controlled,” it’s also automated programming. They describe this as a “social jukebox.” The press release states:

“The Jelli experience is enabled by an innovative ‘social automation’ platform, which combines radio automation capabilities with web services to enable real-time control of radio infrastructure by web applications.  This platform creates fully automated, highly targeted, ‘radio ready’ programming which is format neutral and FCC & DMCA compliant. In addition to live 24/7 online and mobile streaming, Jelli can uniquely transform traditional FM/AM/HD broadcast experiences with its partners around the country, enabling crowdsourced programming in their market.”

It’s an interesting idea, and I definitely found the whole voting experience on Jelli to be a fun time-waster. But will people tune in or feel in control? And will the playlists seem much different than what airs on radio already? One nice thing is that users can request that certain artists and songs are added to the system. Take a look at Jelli’s blog to see some of the recent adds, which include a lot of retro artists, new bands, and some surprisingly innovative choices like Tom Waits. Additionally, you can take a look at the most voted for tracks for a given week. This week’s top picks included the likes of Third Eye Blind, Beatles, Tom Petty, Ramones, and White Stripes.

I’d like to get more rebel users on there voting for non-mainstream artists in order to shake things up and broaden the on-air playlist. Diamanda Galas playing on Live 105? One can dream…