Let me first explain the title of this post. It's an old phrase I grew up with in Iceland and it simply means "Now I am truly surprised," which, indeed, I was around 5:30 this Sunday morning.
If you have followed this blog, you probably know how I feel about the recent addition of a "gospel" program. In fact, I have come down hard on its host, Daulton Anderson, for what I saw as a waste of air time that could have been spent on some great black church music. It brought to mind the disappointment I felt many years ago when I went to San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel to hear the original Supremes at the peak of their popularity. I loved the Supremes and their amazing repertoire, but what came from the stage that evening was something less than wonderful. No "Baby Love" for this mid-Sixties white crowd— someone had decided—give them "Rockabye My Baby."
Getting back to Daulton Anderson's High Praize program, it is still largely a bland mishmash of de-souled religious music, and I haven't changed my views on that. I have, however, done a 380 when it comes to my opinion of Mr. Anderson. You could hear those Nordic fleas drop all around me, and you will probably understand why when you listen to the following excerpt from this morning's High Praize. While you're dong that, I have some recently deceased Pulex irritans to despose of.
As I await your comments, let me say that I find it odd that Berthold Reimers did not announce these significant changes during Thursday morning's Report. The decision to bring Through the Opera Glass into the living room and kick Walden's Pond into the bottom of the night was, I think a good one. I will miss Beyond the Pale, however.
Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. LMAO
ReplyDeleteBeyond the Pale is one of WBAI's gems, and a wonderful example of what WBAI should be doing in furtherance of its mission. Why and how is it leaving our air?
ReplyDeleteAnd why do we have WBAI sponsoring church-sponsored programming? It is religious programming, and we don't do that. It sounds like pay-to-play with the strong suggestion of "a million dollar donor" out there.
Carolyn
I don't know what is behind the removal of "Beyond the Pale", I just hope it was their own decision to go. All of this should have been announced by Reimers, not one of the hosts.
DeleteAs for the religious aspect, I agree that WBAI should not involve itself in any religion, but I also think it would be a mistake to ignore religion-inspired music. Traditional black gospel music is great, so is Mozart's Requiem, so were the Carter Family, so, for that matter, is some Senegalese circumcision-ceremony music I once heard on a Folkways album. What struck me about Daulton Anderson's non-musical moment was what I registered as sincerity. There is very little of that at WBAI these days, and none coming from the front office or LSB.
Senegalese circumcision-ceremony music is great??? No wonder you hate Shelton Walden's program! Interesting!
DeleteI don't hate Shelton Walden's program, I just cannot think of any justification for WBAI having it as a part of its dusty inventory. Circumcision? It strikes me as being a useless practice, but the music is good. :)
DeleteFirst. Gospel music has a history on WBAI. Even Lenny Lopate used to do a gospel show years back. As long as it isn't advocating religion, I'm fine with it IF it fills a niche and gets support. I'm personally not a fan of the genre, but if people like it, their wallets will speak, and I'm cool with that..
ReplyDeleteTaking the religious theme to another WBAI program. There is a Muslim show (Muslim State of Mind) on WBAI, yet no one says anything about that, as far as I know. Draw your own conclusions.
Second. From what I gather, Daulton Anderson is basically promising to raise money from religious groups for WBAI? So, he's Big Daddy Monybucks coming to save WBAI? It shows how sad WBAI's position is that they can't get this from rich leftists, like Jane Fonda, Ed Asner, Oliver Stone (whose crap they hawk!). Seriously. They can't get some of the limousine liberals and cadillac communists to become $10/month WBAI Buddies? HAHAHAHA!
Third. Is it just me? I find it ironic that I suggested a New Age format for WBAI last night, and here's comes a religious savior. Weird....
Anyway. It's funny that he talks about negativity, since - let's be honest - WBAI and Pacifica are were built on negativity. Being against things is negativity. Hell, even Gary Null mostly speaks against people and things. You have to be negative to challenge injustices.
Well, Daulton Anderson has some nice thoughts and observations, even if naive. However, what do you want from a station that has based its "community" programming on angry black men who feel they are "entitled" and earn nothing for WBAI.
Oddly, watching the Radio Unameable documentary style puff film last night made me realize something. Pablo Guzman's ideas DID take hold over WBAI. Instead of making it a Latino station, it did the same thing as an Afro-American station.
"Time is going to move on without us." For WBAI it already has...
Franz Kafka has been joined by Terry Southern as co-writer of The Fall of WBAI.
SDL
Isn't it interesting that Reimers (who so willingly shares his income fantasies) made no mention of Yoko Ono's very recent $10,000 donation to the station? One wonders what other secrets he keeps... and why.
DeleteI particularly like the Terry Southern reference – I’m thinking, of course, of The Magic Christian.
DeleteSomething smells…
I dealt with Guzman a bit. He was fine, so far as I was concerned, in that he was intelligent, ambitious, and pragmatic – why, I suppose, he had the good sense to leave after the chaos had been loosed.
The intent which brought him in was from Above. Engelman, a bush-league academic, was the local point man, and I have no insight into what the heck was going on at National, but one would naturally guess it was indeed something along the line of Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers or a low-rent version of Radical Chic, because, of course, having failed in a top-down putsch along Latin lines, they immediately pivoted to That Other Principal Officially Designated Minority.
Forgive the repetition on my part, but I see the fatal error as the decision to redefine the ‘mission’ of Pacifica and of WBAI as political rather than free speech spanning a wide area of interests for a wide variety of people.
The particular form of that choice to redefine the place as political in its core purpose I see as trivial, just as I see the choice of a particular Officially Designated Minority as secondary, tertiary, or… well… off-the-scale-incidental.
Now if only, as in The Magic Christian, there were actually a steaming mess of filthy lucre beneath the offal…
… but no, merely awful… awful, like elephants… all the way down.
So it goes…
See this new show coming to WBAI? This should earn less than Thom Hartman.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xokFnk3H0Ns
Let's hope for WBAI's 27 listeners' sake that Julianna Forlano has a better ear for satire than her Youtube videos indicate.
ReplyDelete