CSU Volleyball is heading to the Sweet 16 in Minneapolis, MN at the University of Minnesota to play UM in the first regional round Friday. Nick Sebesta and Andy Boshoven will broadcast that game and any further games live on KCSU.
For those fans wanting to listen online, you can listen FREE ONLINE RIGHT HERE AT KCSUFM.COM at the top right of this page!
GO RAMS!!
If you haven’t downloaded it already, our KCSU iPhone app is available for free from the iTunes store!
We fixed some bugs in it, and it runs smoother so you can hear KCSU wherever you go!
KCSU presents Away From Nothing, Speakeasy Tiger and Synthetic Elements at Road 34! December 4th, 2009 at 9:00 PM. 21+
The KCSU DJ-Athon is going live today at 1:00 p.m.! You can now donate money to the station on the right, which every donation is tax-deductible. Don’t forget to call 970-491-KCSU to make requests. Thank you for supporting KCSU!
In an effort to help raise money for KCSU’s local music coverage, the first ever KCSU DJ-Athon will take place on November 6th at 1:00 p.m.
Four DJ’s will man the KCSU studio for 24 hours straight next Friday hosting several local bands including Common Anomaly and Speak Easy Tiger as well as interviews, special events and giveaways.
Stickley, Wray, Smashface, and Nate will host the DJ-Athon for the full 24 hours.
As a listener, you will have the opportunity to donate online to KCSU to help bolster our local music coverage.
We’ll have more information as it become available…stay tuned!
Eric finds the DJs asleep
DJ Stickley tells you how it is
CMJ Day 4
By Erik Myers and Trent Wahlfeldt
Erik could only ignore his cell phone alarm for so long. He hadn’t gotten much sleep at that point, so it could excuse the fact that he slept in past 10. But sleeping past 11 was out of the question – Erik would miss his mentoring session.
We might be having a good time out here, but be irresponsible? No. Never ever. We’re better than that. Trent did need a little beauty rest though, and no one would want him to go without that.
Erik was able to reach NYU’s Kimmel Center just in time for his meeting with Jessica Weber, the vice president of SPECTRE’s radio promotion and licensing department. Erik’s been pretty worried about his approaching post-college life but Jessica soothed some fears.
She told him about her life straight out of college, working in radio promotion while simultaneously working eight or so jobs for media groups and websites. Erik enjoys the feeling of having a million things to do in a small frame of time, so it seems like this could be a worthwhile career path. Jessica said it was important to be conversational and outgoing, something few music directors seem capable of (with the exception of Trent and Erik, of course.) Jessica also advised to keep in touch with your contacts and keep them informed about one’s upcoming unemployment. It was a good session, and Erik’s eager to get rolling on the future. This has been stuck in his head ever since.
Trent wanted to check out some New York City sights, so we moseyed over to Times Square to gape at all the lights and eat some pizza. From there, it was on to the EMI offices (again!), but this time, we were getting a behind-the-scenes look at a record label.
Our good friend Erin showed us around, introduced us to the charismatic characters she works with: her fellow promoters, publicity people and a project manager to name a few. For working such stressful positions, people were awfully nice. We also met Justin with Mute, who was cool enough to hand us a copy of A Place To Bury Strangers’ new album, Exploding Head, which hadn’t come in to the station yet. KCSU’s programming director Dylan Wray will finally be able to get his “gaze” on – thanks Justin!
Erin bestowed upon us some awesome schwag (Radiohead reissues and the vinyl edition of Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique) and then we all made a mad dash for an AAM Listening Party. EMI was cool, and Trent and Erik have decided, barring they get sucked under a subway, to apply for summer internships there.
The AAM Listening Party was fun, nothing better than a good listening party. As the stereo rolled the new Beach House and Free Energy, we chatted with a bevy of cool kids: Sacha from Sub Pop, Autumn from Impact89fm at the University of Michigan State, C.J. from WVKR at Vassar University and a gaggle of cool kids from WMRA at James Madison University. Supposedly the super-new Animal Collective EP was to be played, but we didn’t stick around to take a listen – it was time to hit the Lit Lounge for Team Clermont’s rocking showcase.
Former KCSUer and now-Team Clermont promoter Steve Hendrickson had been rocking all night long at the showcase, which featured the twitter-and-bang alternative British bluegrass of Peggy Sue and the suave South American charm of Helado Negro (Erik’s new favorite band), and finally, Bear In Heaven, a four-piece that has a strange mix of melodies that tend toward the downcast. Not that we mind; in fact, it perfectly suited the evening, since it was pouring rain outside.
Only one day to go. While Trent and I are excited to get in as much music and hobnobbing as humanly possible, we are feeling the burn. Here’s to keeping on.
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.
Our very own Music Directors Myers and Trent are in New York City for CMJ 2009. Click on the blog link above for daily updates on their adventures in New York!
CMJ Day 2
By Erik Myers and Trent Wahlfeldt
Captains’ Log – Day 2.
In this strange and foul-smelling terrain known as New York City, we are finding that one must be careful not to get caught up in the “excitement” that permeates our every other move. Sometimes, Trent and Erik feel a need to toss away their return tickets to home and pursue “making it” in the Big Apple. But that is a road measured in tear drops and McDonald’s wrappers.
These poetic musings have come to us in the few hours of sleep to be had, but we know in our hearts that neither of us would make very good bums.
Today’s panels did a swell job of instilling in us irresponsible dreams, but that’s probably a good thing. We realized quickly on that the panels we attended (Trent checked out a neat discussion on the distribution/marketing of music on mobile devices while Erik learned about what the major label landscape looked like) were more suited for actual musicians and not the folks interested in becoming a part of the industries built around the sound. That’s for tomorrow.
We were fortunate enough to get exposed to featured speaker Andrew W.K. Wearing his trademark white shirt and white pants, Andrew introduced himself and his method of life: “Just keep doing what you love to do and do it with as much intensity as you can.”
He showed off an interpretive dance with a chair, culminating in him ripping the seat cushion off and then just head-banging. “You really can see how CMJ has changed by how they’ve made me today’s featured speaker,” he later said.
Luckily enough, we caught up with the guys from The Knew. They told us about the cool bar they were playing in – Wicked Willy’s – that night in lower Manhattan. They appeared to be having a good time. Sometimes you can just tell.
After an hour or so of Andrew anecdotes and a neat piano rendition of “Party Hard”, we rode the L Train into Brooklyn to go to the Pirate Party at The Gutter, a cool bowling alley. There we would meet up with Doug, the guy running the show, but also meet up with the man we had waited too long for: Steve Hendrickson, formerly of KCSU, now of Team Clermont.
“My BOYS,” Steve yelled. “My boys.” This was a reunion long in the making. We didn’t have much time to catch up honestly; we hugged and all, but there were so many others there to chat with (including Jessi, who has misplaced her cell phone). This included Colin, who we better remember as Afro Thunder from the Miami (OH) University station. Their station is internet-only, which doesn’t sound as fun as doing terrestrial radio, but Colin assured us it was actually cool. People EVERYWHERE can listen in, he told us. The future of the radio is the Internet too, so perhaps its time we learn to embrace the future. Soon we’ll have Internet in our cars, so it won’t be all that different really.
We walked for a while with Steve and Sean from Planetary, another cool dude. Steve showed us the place he was staying at for the week and we all took a much-needed sit and watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother.
After that, we parted ways, knowing it wouldn’t be long until we met again. From there, it was on to the Studio at Webster Hall, where The Syndicate was having their party. It was very cool; we chatted with Karen about our days and watched the variety of great bands: The Swimmers had fun melodies driven by pop guitar and keys, while Twin Atlantic was more pop-punk-rock similar to The Photo Atlas, who are also playing out here. Trent hung out in the back while Erik took photos, ending up with chatting with the Finnish band Rubik, who told him about their quirky sound and Finnish origin. One of the best things about CMJ is being so close right to the musicians, we love meeting all these folks from around the world.
After their set, we went home. We got to bed around 2:00 a.m. and got up at 8:00 a.m. to write this blog. Not the most fun sometimes, but there’s so much to say and document. Day 3, surely, will be better: Trent is one of a five-person panel on “Making Executive Decisions.”
Executive decision #1: live hardy, party hardy.
By Erik Myers and Trent Wahlfeldt
Our plane ride was uneventful.
There were no screaming babies and even though Trent was wedged in the middle seat between Erik and some woman, he appeared to be comfortable. He watched almost the entire in-flight movie, A Night At The Museum: Battle of The Smithsonian, but the pilot literally cut into the climax of the film to announce the descent toward LaGuardia.
The two of us were on our way to the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival, a five-day New York City gathering of music directors and college promoters and lots of other important people to discuss the music industry, hobnob with one another and watch as many performances as we could (there’s about 1,000 or so over the course of the five days.)
It’s the best conference ever created. After only one day, we know in our hearts we will look back at it fondly when we have real jobs and are attending this.
Hopefully we won’t ever have to resort to that, as the CMJ Marathon presents a great opportunity to get to know promoters and maybe seek out job opportunities. Our good friend and former KCSU music director Steve Hendrickson wound up with a job at Team Clermont, though that took some additional outside effort. We look forward to meeting up with him on Wednesday and subsequently following him around like children.
While the prospect of post-grad work is always swimming around in the back of our heads, we’re here to learn and meet friendly people. Right after pulling into LaGuardia, we met up with Jessi, the music director at the University of Colorado’s radio station, KBCU. She was very friendly, so we’ve decided to set aside our relentless Buff-Hate for the sake of friendship.
We rode the N into Manhattan, checked into our hotel and shot down to the Judson Church at New York University to register. We got sweet orange lanyards and a grabbag full of things. There was also a room where promoters were giving away free things, so we scooped a ton of free magazines and some energy drinks. Trent would spend the rest of the evening carrying both of our bags in his backpack. They were very heavy. Erik felt bad but pretended not to hear Trent when he complained about the heaviness of his backpack.
We had missed all of the day’s panels by then, but Trent wisely RSVP’d to many different promoter parties, so all was well. We skirted over to the EMI Building where we finally met Erin, a college promoter who had sent us plenty of awesome CDs, like Florence and the Machine and (???). We talked with her about the city and her job at EMI while dining/wining pizza and beer. This was followed by an acoustic performance from pop-rockers The Almost right there in the building. It was very cool. We felt, for a moment, important. We made plans to meet with Erin later and left.
We met up with Jessi and caught the L into Brooklyn for The Music Hall of Williamsburg. It was time for some music. We caught Nathaniel Ratcliff & The Wheel, a fine Denver folk band that enjoys swelling instrumentation and loud-quiet-loud melodies. They even have the cellist from Bela Karoli playing with them! Jessi was a big fan, and now me and Trent are too.
We chatted with Jessi for a while, comparing and contrasting our stations and talking about the burgeoning Colorado scene. By our estimations, there are about four Colorado bands playing at this year’s music festival. That’s more than Delaware, we’re pretty sure.
We hung around the Hall for The Antlers, the synth-symphonic trio whose Hospice album rocked the #1 spot on our charts. After viewing the live show, it’s tough to decide whether we like the album or the live performance better. The lighting really makes the show, sliding together with the audio perfectly. Best song easily was “Sylvia”, ad The Antlers weren’t afraid to drop it right away. If you like the song, listening to it live is a whole new experience.
We wandered around town, met with a few promoters (we plan to meet with Steve tomorrow), and then dropped back into our hotel for some much-needed sleep.