Friday, May 9, 2014

Shaky Knees



First day off work since starting my new job last February, and I'm using it to go to the second Shaky Knees Music Festival.  

Not sure how much the weather's going to cooperate, with a 50% chance of thunderstorms after 3 pm today.
Friday's Thunderstorm Forecast


It's still much better than last year's forecast, though.  That, and the festival has been expanded to a three-day format, and has an even better line-up than last year.  I'm particularly looking forward to Spoon tonight (first time since 2010!), and overall Friday > Sunday > Saturday.


Meanwhile, over on the other coast, this was just announced:

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Little Tybee on the Album 88 Affair


"OK. This guy is SO clueless about what his own radio station does and represents. Student produced television programing on the knowledge channel?!!?!?!? A program you would have to diligently search for on the Xfinity account that NO GSU student has! In Mr. Covey's opinion, This would be an amazing opportunity for GSU students to reach the masses.  
More so than a 100 year old 100,000 watt radio station that reaches 75 miles in all directions and has been hailed as "the voice of the south"? 
I don't think that WABE or GPB is in the wrong here. They are jumping on a great opportunity for them. This whole situation reminds me of when the Woodruff Arts Center sold out Atlanta College of Art to SCAD back in 2006. Money Money Money. I wish that NPR didn't have to have fundraising drives 1/4 of the time I listened to them. I would love to hear Radio Lab and This American Life on WABE as opposed to the Baroque standards they are forced to play all day. These are issues that WABE needs to address at their own station. Their programming does not belong at WRAS. 
Please do not complain to WABE. They need to prosper.
Complain to DOUG COVEY and the administration at GSU for this ignorant attempt to pay off their football team. 
There are so little outlets for original music these days. College radio is cute and nostalgic to most but crucial to artists swimming up stream in this Pitchfork era. 
Lets fight to keep hearing the mispronunciation of band names and ticket giveaways while stuck in the worst traffic in the nation! 
Viva WRAS!"

WRAS Press Release

WRAS Staff Pushes Back Against Station Takeover By GPB, Which Was Decided By GSU and GPB Without Consent Of Staff Or Management


(ATLANTA) – Georgia State University and Georgia Public Broadcasting announced an unprecedented deal yesterday (May 6, 2014) affecting WRAS Atlanta – shocking the all-student radio staff.  According to representatives from central GSU administration, this deal will begin a 2-year contract that will increase GSU’s presence on the GPB statewide network of affiliate stations.  With this new deal that begins on June 2, programming on WRAS 88.5 FM will consist of GPB news programming from 5 AM to 7 PM.  WRAS programming will fill the 7 PM to 5 AM time range on the analog station (88.5 FM), but will air around the clock on our HD FM stream along with our online stream.  WRAS Atlanta Album 88 is a 100,000-watt student-run and managed radio station that has been operating from downtown Atlanta since 1971.

This unilateral move by the GSU administration – in coordination with GPB – was made without any student input or forewarning. Failure to consult WRAS leadership and the Committee for Student Communications – which consists of leaders from all GSU student media outlets – marks a huge misstep by the GSU administration in our view. Timing of this announcement coincides with the end of spring semester as well as changing of the guard within WRAS management – both of which give the impression that the GSU administration wants to push this forward quietly and quickly. Motivations for the decision were described in relation to ratings at the initial meeting, while more recent statements simply emphasize the ‘opportunity’ for collaboration.

GPB characterizes the deal as a benefit for students, since WRAS will forfeit 14 hours of daily airtime in exchange for “unprecedented [student] access to GPB’s resources.” Further, GSU president Mark Becker has described the deal as “a proverbial win-win” for WRAS. However, WRAS staff takes issue with these claims for a few reasons. First, WRAS staff was never of the understanding that our ratings mattered prior to this announcement. As a college radio station, the mission of our station has never been to make the rich richer or to give airtime to mainstream music. Our interests, instead of ratings, are delivering quality and diverse music to our listeners and supplying an alternative to mainstream radio. Second, claims of new means for ‘collaboration’ and access to GPB resources are simply misleading. GPB resources that WRAS will have access to involve a TV studio – of which WRAS as a radio station has no interest in. GPB has also stated they will offer 30 minutes of weekly music programming by students, which pales in comparison to our current schedule of over 40 2-hour specialty shows. Overall, this decision reflects a “proverbial win-win” for two parties: GPB and the GSU administration – the former scoring a cheap way to finally compete in the Atlanta radio market and the latter via ill-perceived potential for promotion of the university.


Considering that no staff at WRAS were consulted about this sends a clear message that University administration does not value or take into account the input of the student body that produces its programming. While we respect GSU as the FCC licensee for WRAS, we believe the mechanics of this decision reflect the priority of self-promotion by GSU over the education and desires of its students. Following an extreme outpouring of support from GSU alumni along with the Atlanta community and beyond, WRAS management and staff have begun to review our options for moving forward. Other than filing Open Records Act requests with GSU legal counsel as well as GPB, we are working around-the-clock to find a solution that satisfies GSU while also allowing us to fulfill our mission. We encourage listeners and alumni alike to continue pursuing an open dialogue with GSU and GPB administration. As a staff, we hope to open up a dialogue with President Becker and Ms. Ryan of GPB to discuss how we will go forward.

WRAS Atlanta Album 88 has been around for over 43 years bringing unique and eclectic programming to its community. The station prides itself on helping break out artists such as R.E.M., The Shins, B-52s, Deerhunter, M83, Tame Impala, OutKast (which made their radio debut on the station) and more. By intervening in the daily operations here at WRAS, the administration of Georgia State is setting a dangerous precedent. In order for student media to have any meaning, it has to remain in the hands of the students. Students of this University should be able to create and innovate without the fear of a unilateral takeover guised as a ‘partnership.’

May 7, 2014, The Signal

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Free the Album 88!


The protest is starting to pick up a little steam, and there was even an on-line petition at Change.org.  





Tuesday, May 6, 2014

RIP 'RAS

wras album 88

In the worst news to hit the Atlanta music scene in a while, it was announced today that Georgia Public Broadcasting will be taking over Georgia State's Album 88 airtime every day from 5:00 am to 7:00 pm with a  talk-and-news format.

Album 88 (WRAS) is one of the last of the truly independent, commercial-free college music radio stations.  More importantly, at least to me, they play the kind of music that I like, an adventurous and eclectic blend of indie rock, electronica, funk, punk, and folk, with just the right amount of hip-hop thrown into the mix.  And they play it better than anyone else I know. The student d.j.s are frequently terrible, but the good news is they don't talk all that much and tend to play five, six, seven or more songs in a row, uninterrupted, before simply announcing who just played what and launching into the next block of music.

There are better, more influential radio stations across the country, I'm sure (KEXP Seattle, KCRW Santa Barbara, KUT Austin, and WNYC), but while those other stations do an admittedly great job of promoting new bands, sponsoring shows, and providing webcasts, I've listened to their live streams and will hold Album 88 up to any of them on a day-to-day basis.

I've been listening to this station since the early 80s, when they were the standard bearer for New Wave music.  I first heard bands from Simple Minds to Yaz, from Flock of Seagulls to Frankie Goes To Hollywood on Album 88.  I first heard Run DMC there.  I first heard The Art of Noise there.  Together with shows at the long defunct 688, this is where I learned punk and New Wave, and I won numerous "caller number five" free tickets to shows here in Atlanta back in the day.  On Saturday mornings, they have a show called Reeling In The Years where they revisit their playlists from the 1970s, before I moved to Atlanta, and I can tell they did a great job of covering the "underground" music of that era before I got on board with the station. 

To this day, they're my morning wake-up music - my alarm's programmed to 88.5 ("left on the dial, right on the music").  I will miss waking up every day to something that I've never heard before.

This has also lead me to wonder what role radio has left in this wired, digital age.  How does it measure up to iPods and Spotify, MP3s and web streams?  To be honest, I rarely listen to the radio in my car anymore, and almost never listen to it at home except in the mornings as I get up. But I still hate to see one of the last forums for high-quality, independent music disappear from the air, especially for more talk, bloviation, and somatic NPR pablum.



Monday, May 5, 2014

The Coathangers



Happy Cinco.  Here's Atlanta's The Coathangers live in New York at Baby's All Right, as caught by NYC Taper.  Our home-town girls are doing well!

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Christopher Owens



Another new song by Christopher Owens, the greatest songwriter of his generation.  In this sad song about losing his little brother at the tender age of two, he sounds like a cross between Gram Parsons and War Is Over-era John Lennon, if either of them had been raised in the Children of God cult like Owens (and happened to have a gospel choir at their disposal).

Saturday, May 3, 2014

MFNW 2014

MusicfestNW

Okay, to be honest and to get off to a good start by addressing the positive comments first, this isn't the worst festival lineup of 2014 so far, and Sunday in particular is pretty appealing (any single day that one can catch Spoon, tUnE-yArDs, The Antlers, Pink Mountaintops, and EMA can't be bad).  But the only band I'd really want to see on Saturday would be Future Islands, there's no Friday shows, and this MFNW lineup is a far, far cry from last year's.

MusicFestNW Lineup

Yes, the lineup for the stripped down, single-staged, miniaturized MFNW 2014 has finally been announced, and there are no Swans, no St. Vincent, no Courtney Barnett, no Sun Kil Moon.  No riding back and forth across the Burnside Bridge on the No. 20 bus getting from venue to venue.  No KEXP daytime shows at The Doug Fir.  No Mary's.  No reason to travel to Oregon for the festival.

Now, if I happened to live in Portland anyway, and if I had nothing else to do that weekend, then, yes, I probably would go.  But I'm not going to fly cross country to participate, especially when I've got this coming up right in my back yard:

WebPoster

And this later this summer:


But rather than mourn the demise of MFNW, I can console myself that I got to participate in the old format for three years before the plug finally got pulled.