Monday, November 30, 2015

Music Holds A Power Over Me

Gangster's Paradise - SAVE THE CHILDREN!
In August of 1995, rapper Coolio released a new single that immediately became popular. At the time, my mom worked as a DJ at the local skating rink and people were requesting the song like crazy. Since Coolio's songs typically had a lot of profanity in them, and the skating rink was a family environment, my mom wanted to make sure the lyrics were ok for all ages. There were no lyrics released with the single, and the internet wasn't nearly as helpful as it is now, so I remember almost wearing out our cassette tape of the song as we tried desperately to transcribe the words. After several hours of rewinding and playing it back, we decided that there were no swears, but the content of the song was probably not appropriate for children, and the rink owner agreed. My family tended to stray away from rap and hip hop music anyway, so I barely even noticed the ban on the song after that. I wasn't one of the kids to go hide in my closet with my walkman to listen to music my parents didn't approve of, so my brother and I promptly forgot the song existed and went along with our lives in ignorant bliss. Later that year, Weird Al did a parody "Amish Paradise" and we happily traded for the Coolio song talking about the life of a gangster for the goofy one about an amish man. Good times.

I appreciated that our parents let us be involved in the process of deciding if the song was appropriate or not. Since we got to listen to it carefully, tearing it apart line by line, we got a deeper understanding of what the song was about and why we shouldn't be listening to it. Not many of our friends parents at the time would have done the same thing.

Music is something that has greatly influenced me even from a young age. I started taking piano lessons when I was four years old and added a new instrument every few years until my first years in college. I played cello in the orchestra starting in 3rd grade, clarinet in band from 5th grade on, piano and electric bass in jazz band during middle school and picked up the tenor sax for jazz in high school. My first year in college, I was a music ed major, and my friends convinced me to pick up the trumpet to play in the pep band for basketball. I loved every second of it, and still pick up an instrument once in a while to keep my chops up. I have listened to nearly every genre of music out there and most of them I have at least a small appreciation for. What I listen to the most now is country or rock, though I will gladly listen to some big band jazz or classical too (1812 Overture still makes me smile when the cannons go off). I'd say my favorite artists at the moment are Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood (even though she married someone on the Nashville Predators, I still love her), Imagine Dragons, Owl City and Starset. Transmissions is the only album Starset has released so far, but it has been playing on repeat in my car since the beginning of the fall term and I haven't gotten sick of it yet!

LBCC NEEDS A RADIO STATION DO IT NOW!!
I love the idea of LBCC getting their own radio station. Not only does it give students a voice in the larger community, but it would allow students interested in radio broadcasting to get some real world experience in running a station/program of their own without the pressure of a popular local station. I fully believe that starting a radio station on campus is possible. Especially now that technology is so readily available to broadcast for cheap or free, I see no reason that our school shouldn't have a station. During my freshman year in high school, I was part of a small group of students trying to start a station for our school. Since we would have needed a lot of expensive broadcasting equipment that the St. Charles public school district couldn't afford, WSTC only played music and announcements as far as the school cafeteria that our booth was situated in, but now that the internet made more things possible, it would be possible for students to broadcast online from the same small booth we started with. All the LBCC students need is a faculty adviser willing to spend the time to teach the basics of broadcasting and the opportunity to grow.

Like any good radio station, I would love to see the station at LBCC offer a variety of music programs throughout the day. They could even coordinate their programming with a website to allow special requests/polls as well to ensure that the majority of listeners are hearing what they like. Utilizing social media is an amazing way to help them learn to manage their programs. As far as programs or services offered, I would love to be able to tune into the station at a set time and hear announcements about events on campus/school closings etc in addition to news sports and weather updates throughout the day as well.

The easiest way to come up with funds now is to crowdsource via gofundme, kickstarter, or indiegogo. Using social media, students interested in starting the station can share the fundraising campains across many different platforms and reach a much larger donor list that I was ever able to 15 years ago. As we talked about in class, the greater Albany area has a lot of local stations already in place. They may have extra or slightly outdated equipment they no longer have need of, and donations of that kind may help take the financial burden of starting a station down a notch or two.





No comments:

Post a Comment