Non Comm 2008 Report

Last weekend, I attended the Philly Non-Commvention, a gathering of community radio music programmers and their accordant promotion people, and music artists. These are the radio people formerly known as "granola." WXPN, Philadelphia hosted the event and other attendees included folks from WFUV, New York; WJCU, Cleveland; KSUT, Ignacio; Maine Public Radio; WFHB, Bloomington; KTBG, Warrensburg; KUT, Austin; KDHX, St. Louis and many others I am spacing on. I was there promoting and gathering content for this blog of course.

Shows

The most astonishing show of this year's convention was The Hold Steady. Ingrid Michaelson was immediately impressive with her GIANT setlist and memorable hooks. Astrid Williamson, Dr. John, Jakob Dylan and Interscope's "interesting" Carney were among the other bands we checked out.

Below is a bit of vid I took Paddy Casey performing a morning showcase in the hotel. The nighttime music was at the fantastic World Cafe Live facility. Vibes to Bruce, Dan, Quyen, Roger and all at WXPN for putting on a great conference and 15 years of growth for the station in general.

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Swag

The swag at the conference was unfortunately, lacking. As many public and community radio stations get larger items to use during fund drives, the convention package still only includes cds (in a promo knapsack). Reprise/WB Records sponsored a t shirt.

In the convention bag, there were cds from: Dr. John; A Taste of Triple A Sampler #42; "Sweet" by Pacifika; WTMD, Towson's Live CD; a Rykodisc sampler that promised to make the next 25 years "as storied as our first"; Peter Buffett's "Imaginary Kingdom" -- isn't he a new ager? I would love that stuff to come back. Kitaro was the first artist I promoted.

Back to the bag: FMQB Progressions Sampler #113; "Within" by Alyssa; Live Volume 2 from KTBG, which amazingly features Snoopy on the cover! WXPN Local Vol. 2; the Ike Reilly album; a great sampler from SonyBMG Legacy/Commercial Music Group ("This sampler goes to track 11"); the latest from Rachael Sage, Chandelier. She will break through at some point... Rachael Sage seems to have an endless ability to promote herself, which is a great talent to have these days.

Finally, Scarecrow Collection's "Radio Frequency Disaster" had a sticker affixed saying "#1 on Sirius Ch. 17" and "Nominated for a Jammy." They went for adds June 9.

Jefferson Pepper's American Evolution had a nice package I haven't opened yet that amazingly, had a quote from Cashbox on it! I thought they were out of biz!

Also on the old school tip, Jacqui Naylor is being promoted by Harvey Leeds, now indie and Michael Plen had a sampler from his Shangri-La Music included in the package. Full Disclosure: I'm old school and was there promoting Amie Miriello alongside Danny Buch.

Has anyone seen the t shirt w/the picture of a stegosaurus on it? The caption reads, "All My Friends Are Dead."

Catching Up with Shelby Lynne

Shelby Lynne is a great artist and I'm proud to call her my friend. Two years of working together at a critical time in both our careers, including a lot of tension, intense effort and including both major successes and failures, created a pretty strong bond.

So when Shelby and her manager Elizabeth Bottrell were in town a few Fridays ago, it was sweet to see a great show at the Society for Ethical Culture, and re-connect. In the fall, we had a big hang at the Hiro with Rita Houston and Laura Fedele from WFUV and Espo from WEA. It's always a sweet reunion, we all dig Shelvis!

As great as Shelby has always been, this performance was one of the best I've seen. The combination of Dusty Springfield songs and her own greatest hits was, and guitarist John Jackson's return to the band was close, if not beyond, the artistic triumph of her 2000 "I Am Shelby Lynne"
tour.

Here's a little vid (so little it's audio) of Shelby performing a long, typically sultry, version of "Dreamsome" from I Am Shelby Lynne:



Shelby also recently visited our friend Jody Denberg at KGSR. Click here to listen.

Wail on Shelby, wail on!

WRXP, The New York Rock Experience

WRXP, New York 101.9 FM went on air this week, the first new rock station in the city since maybe the last incarnation of WNEW in the 90s? The slogan is "WRXP, the New York Rock Experience, and it's run by some folks I know, Bryan Schock as Music Director and John Bradley of SBR Creative and Mike Henry of Paragon Media Strategies are consulting. For some reason, this is a very diffficult thing to do -- it's been years since anyone attempted anything different -- but I also think it is because WFUV, WSOU and WFMU are so excellent over the past few years especially. Good luck to all.

But thanks to modern technology (and my old Panasonic baseball game radio), you can decide for yourself, hit play below and tune in to hear a sample 45 minutes of WRXP, recorded this afternoon!



One fun thing they have on the air already, are little "rock memories" of New York as recalled by people who don't seem to have much local flavor. The stories are interesting, and detailed, such as one that mentioned Bob Dylan dedicating a song to George Harrison on stage at MSG. I must admit that I did have the full-on NY rock experience of hearing Springsteen's "Jungleland" and yelling "Clarence!" during the sax solo.

A truly bizarre promo mentions many old New York djs and radio stations, including some which are still in full effect: WPIX (which at 102.3 was a hair away from 101.9); WFUV, WPLJ, WNEW and Cousin Brucie. They left out Meg Griffin, a common thread in most of their spiel, Sirius Disorder, and the fact that WFUV is home to most of the old 'NEW djs and artists. We may as well throw in New Yorker Mike Marrone's XM station The Loft too even if he isn't around here in body (who else plays Dwight Twilley and Marshall Crenshaw as much?). When the promo had a quote from someone saying "when WPLJ was...", I went over to 95.5 to see. It's still there.

Speaking of Meg Griffin and Sirius, I only looked at my little baseball radio once to see what song was playing on the readout. It seems I've become accustomed to that great feature on satellite and on the ipod.

WRXP is also up against Cousin Brucie's old station WCBS, but will benefit massively by folks tuning back and forth between the two frequencies, based on MY way of listening at least.

I am not surprised that WRXP omits a large part of the New York Rock Experience (that btw all the other stations I have mentioned include): Black Americana music. They are pumping out white music for white people, a challenge especially without playing country artists (like Bon Jovi). There is plenty of new music and great old music to play but I feel people around here have more diverse taste and "experiences" even if they define themselves as rock fans. And some of the biggest artists come from these fringes or offshoots of rock.

RIP, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Times says he made the Beatles more productive. I say they were in the middle of nowhere and they were the Beatles, just w/o distraction.