Playlist, WBLV / WBLU FM, 10-18-07, 10p.m.-3a.m.

[Uncle Skid]

Skilled lawyers and salesmen? Purveyors of weasel words and MBA-style double-speak?

I nominate my man Clem to give a power point presentation (w/optional pay-per-view webinar) on how to use excessive verbiage to obfuscate whatever point one was originally trying to make.

IIRC, you did criticize Lazaro about things other than Marsalis: re local jazz artists -- it is almost not worth a response (as any humble correspondent in West Michigan will attest), but here's a quick list of artists that Lazaro has promoted over the years: Organissimo (Live on Blue Lake), Dan Jacobs (trumpet), Carl Allen/Rodney Whitaker (Michigan State University) w/our very own Joe G. on guitar, Western Michigan University Faculty Quartet (w/Tim Froncek on drums), Blue Lake faculty and student concerts with numerous local and regional musicians, Marcus Belgrave... to say that he doesn't promote Michigan artists is simply ludicrous.

I'm no where near hip enough to live in "South Brooklyn", but from my vantage point here in Hicksville, West Michigan, we've got it pretty damn good with Lazaro. I'm sure you realize that he posts his playlists as a (much appreciated) service to many of us board members who listen via FM and/or the web.

I'm quite positive that Lazaro does not shy away from dialog on any subject. I thought he addressed your concerns about the Marsalis playlist very early on in this thread, and right or wrong, he did a great job of explaining the realities of the situation.

Oh, and the Blue Lake Public Radio Jazz Datebook is pretty damn good, too!

[Lazaro Vega]

Playing the featured artist for 20 minutes or so of each hour and then new records or other ideas that might not have anything to do with the featured artist for another 40 minutes of each hour is how we've rolled since 1983. The kind of across the board programming you're advocating actually puts more focus on the featured artist, in this case one you don't like.

If you look at playlists from jazz radio programs from all over the country, see the Jazz Programmer's List, you're as likely to see new music by Wynton or Branford being played on local radio as you are Mark Elf. Despite the fact that Wynton is on XM, and television, and has so much of the national media attention as the corporate/institutional face of jazz, his music does not dominate radio playlists. The new record was up on playlists for about 2 weeks or a month, then gone. And the amount of airplay he gets when you get away from his partisans on air diminishes even more. It's true.

So, where do the high school music students in Spring Lake, Forest Hills Northern or any of 30 or 40 other high school music programs with jazz turn to hear it? Because, to them, he's the guy. First, to radio. Then, if they don't get it, to the net, just like the rest of their friends who don't listen to radio at all. The only aspect of youth listening to radio today are music school kids. All of their friends are Ipoding it. So, Wynton is to them what Grover Washington was to me: a bridge figure. What you're doing is screaming, Grover's no Johnny Hodges!

Actually, you're not. You're not dealing with an individual's right to express themselves in music, at all. You're only talking about economics and saying because one person has more economic reward than another that invalidates their individual right to have their music reach their fans. And you've expressed that as an unassailable fact. But what you're missing here is the very thing you say we lack: this is non-commercial radio. It is not about, on a daily basis, selling music. It is about ideas. Individual's ideas. And there are a lot of them. And the people listening to the station from the Manistee National Forest deserve to experience them. What you call obsufication was my attempt to show you how to deal with an artist's output, especially one you don't enjoy, from a musical point of view (a goal that I often fall short of, but none the less, a goal). Same with the Lee Konitz set. You threw out the Nonet, but you missed the point that the set wasn't just about Lee, it was about "Angel Eyes." Did the Nonet record "Angel Eyes" or "Kary's Trance"? I don't know. But I wanted to play the new Bobo Moreno CD, and the new Eric Rassmussen CD "School of Tristano" and put into airplay some of the ideas coming out of Lee's new book (published by The University of MICHIGAN Press) and, voila.

Thing is, there's plenty of room in the pool. Everyone does radio differently. And this isn't "my" station. It is Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp's. They set the tone: educate.

But I knew, yes I knew, how well I knew the meaning of posting a playlist with Wynton's music would bring about all this fuss, while many, many others attract maybe 13 hits. That's why you play him, so there's enough wake behind the boat for the ski pyramid to get up and wave their flags over the sparkling waters. That's why you pay attention to the multi-million dollar marketing activity that the record companies put out and tap into it: for momentum so a more obscure musician from the faculty at Grand Valley or Western Michigan will have a chance of being heard by a larger audience. So, Clem, listen Sunday night and you tell me what you think of the local musicians from West Michigan. I'd be interested to know what you think of Dave Spring's tune, "One for Lazaro," too. If you don't, then this thread is a failure, a busted valentine.

We've been streaming for a couple of years. "Going national" is not the right term for streaming. What I do know from monitoring the traffic on the stream that if we play Benny Goodman or Duke or Basie we'll double our on-line audience. And when we did the Muhal show, we doubled the on-line audience. This Wynton program was listened to by the core.

The economic discussion and justification was in response to your unclear writing, which is how we were crossed up. Attacking Chuck for being aphoristic is like telling Basie to play more like James P. And you missed the point. Discuss YOUR life. Justify YOUR economic rewards, etc. Stop with the Peggy Fleming routine.

Edited October 25, 2007 by Lazaro Vega

[Chuck Nessa]

Up.

Just want more folks to have an opportunity to read this.

[clifford_thornton]

I've only done college radio (non-NPR affiliate) and therefore can only speak for that segment of the market. I was lucky to feel like I got a lot of psyched listeners on a Smiley Winters or Gerd Dudek trip, not to mention Ayler/Trane/etc., but hey, I wasn't one to play loads of Austin artists on KVRX, either, and probably should have (apart from a few in-studio live gigs and interviews).

But it seems to me that of the PR affiliates that I have heard playing jazz, Laz is doing a hell of a lot better than, say, whatever the hell was going on in Chicago years ago. I almost shit my pants hearing Andrew Hill on KANU-Lawrence in 1999, and though I know they didn't try REAL hard most of the time, it was still about as decent as one could hope for jazz on the radio in those days. I mean, with all the satellite radio/podcast/what have you now, it's gotta be difficult to walk that tightrope on real "air," so Winston-gaffes aside, it seems to me like Laz is doing a helluva job. I don't think I could do anywhere NEARLY as well as he.

And iirc Laz has posted playlists before, many of which escaped comment.