I listen to most musical genres --with the notable exception of Country*-- and if you saw the albums I have on my typical playlist, you'd be bewildered by the range. But because of that range, I can enjoy all of the new (to me) music that Bhagpuss posts.
So when I was perusing YouTube for something or other close to a month ago, this particular video popped into my feed:
My biggest takeaway was Phil Aaberg. If you
hear his music, you may get a specific image
in your head of Phil, but the real Phil looks nothing
like that: gravelly western voice, a large frame,
and shock of white hair and beard sitting at the piano.
hear his music, you may get a specific image
in your head of Phil, but the real Phil looks nothing
like that: gravelly western voice, a large frame,
and shock of white hair and beard sitting at the piano.
As I watched the video, I kept thinking "How the hell did I miss this on Kickstarter?"
I guess the magical search engine failed to pinpoint me as a Windham Hill fan, because I easily found the Kickstarter campaign, perused it, and tossed a few dollars their way.
The campaign ended the other day, so I checked out the Community section just to see who were the people who backed the campaign:
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| Can you see it? |
On the left is what you'd expect of a musical label and genre that began out on the West Coast: Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, etc. And sure, New York City makes sense too, given its size and variety.
But what the hell are Dallas and Cincinnati doing in there?
I can't speak to Dallas, but I know exactly why my hometown is on the list: WVXU-FM.
***
If you listen to WVXU (91.7 FM) today, you'd think that it was always an NPR news/talk radio affiliate, but that current format only dates from 2005. (Yikes!) Before then, WVXU was owned by Xavier University (hence the "XU" in the callsign) and had an eclectic list of programs: NPR's Morning Edition at dawn, classic radio shows (Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, etc.) in the late morning, and music in the afternoon and evening.
The type of music the station played was something rarely heard these days on the radio: Jazz, Blues, Big Band Jazz, New Age, Acoustic, and Alternative/Progressive that bordered on the Avant Garde.**
'New Age' and 'Acoustic' umbrellas kind of cover a wide range of styles. Sure, there was John Diliberto's Echoes program, but the main afternoon show on WVXU, Audiosyncracies, was less New Age and far more acoustic oriented. Audiosyncs had a lot of Windham Hill artists in rotation and even featured Alex de Grassi's Clockwork as the intro music to the program.
I may have first been introduced to Windham Hill music while at college, but WVXU kept it going. In the mid-late 90s, while I was coding or debugging at work I'd have my headset on, listening to Audiosyncs. And when it was Christmas time, WVXU sponsored and promoted the Windham Hill Winter Solstice concerts locally when the tour came to town.
Alas that all good things come to an end, and in 2005 Xavier University sold WVXU to the local public radio company that owned WGUC-FM (formerly a University of Cincinnati station) and the format shuffle led to all of the NPR shows being transferred to WVXU, ending most of their music programs.
So yeah, Windham Hill has a history here. And I'm glad that a few of us were able to provide some funding to help tell the story of the small label that found success going against the grain. While the label Windham Hill is effectively dead --it is owned now by music giant BMG in the same manner that EA has done to numerous video game companies in the past-- the spirit of Windham Hill lives on in Will Ackerman's current label, Imaginary Road Studios.
Maybe I ought to send a link from that Kickstarter to a friend and ex-coworker of mine; she's a relative of the late George Winston.
*I've mentioned it before, but my dislike of Country music comes from my Catholic School music class as a kid heavily promoting Country music as an alternative to our 'traditional' music we covered: hymns for Mass.
**There was also Saturday Night Loud, a heavy metal program that played metal that you rarely heard on the radio back then.
#Blaugust2024
Thanks for the plug! Not my kind of music but the video was interesting and your background to it even more so.
ReplyDeleteIt's rather sad that radio is stuck in its current megacorporation state, because quirky radio stations are becoming fewer and fewer as they become caught between the I-Heart-Radio's of the world and the behemoth that is religious broadcasting. I sincerely hope you don't have to deal with religious broadcasting over across the pond, and let's just leave it at that.
DeleteBut aside from that, I've never failed to be inspired by your music posts. It's far too easy to let the algorithms provide you with more of the same, and you break me out of those tendencies by providing me with your eclectic tastes. I mean, I'd never have thought that I'd like Charli XCX were it not for you.