CMJ Day 3
By Erik Myers and Trent Wahlfeldt
I fear you are underestimating the sneakiness, sir.
Today was a long day. But a good one.
Trent’s hipster cred has skyrocketed. He sat in on a College Day panel titled “Making Executive Decisions” and ever since, people from the event have been approaching him to chat, network and so on and so forth. It’s as if he was someone important.
Trent told the audience how important the webmaster was to a station, and that a key to keeping visitors coming back to the website was updating. Other stations around the country have had such a hard time with DJ/volunteer retention that the station as a whole is affected. Trent’s advice: Develop friendships with the DJs and volunteers, to the point where one is interacting with them outside of the station.
The rest of the day’s panels were interesting and informative, and we’ve scribbled many notes on tiny sheets of paper. We feel confident that they will bring back some knowledge into the station and launch think-tanks as to how to improve our station.
Even though it is a good station, heck, it’s a great station. We’ve been running a tight ship, judging by the advice bestowed upon us. We weren’t good enough to win any CMJ Awards though (we forgot to nominate ourselves in August), but props go out to the cool kids of Best Station (the cool kids at KSSU at Sacramento State), Best Promoters (Shil Patel of Team Clermont and Karen Moran-Thomas of The Syndicate) and Biggest Ray of Sunshine (Doug Blake of Pirate!)
After the CMJ awards, we reunited ourselves with Erin Ginty from EMI. We jaunted to a burger joint for blinner (breakfast, lunch and dinner.) Erik split to catch up with some old pals from Spin while Trent and Erin took towards The Hi Fi for the Medium Rotation Mixer. On the way there, Trent nominated Erin to partake in a street performance. As you’ll see below, she played the role of Obstacle #5 (in the brown cardigan.)
Shortly after, we found ourselves seeing a band that has been beginning to gain national attention, Hockey. We’d been rocking the Portland rock band in the heavy section of our rotation for a little while now, but the live show left us a little infatuated. Their steely guitar riffs and bombastic pop sensibilities added an extra level of closeness in the already-packed Mercury Lounge.
After their set, we quickly stopped by the AAM promo party, and finished up our night at the Merge Records party, where we once again ran into Jessi. Despite Erik’s NYC familiarity, we found ourselves totally lost in a massive unforgiving city at 4:30 a.m.
Thank goodness for maternal guidance. Band Mom, as she is known, is Jenn Misko, who runs her promotion company with sincerity and sweetness. She literally walked with us to our subway, and as Trent recalls, we swapped hugs before we parted ways. Thank you Band Mom, thank you.
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