this is a review

Here is my review for our class, it is a bout a guest appearance on my radio show!

Music has intertwined with art for me as long as I can remember. Musical experiences fueling visual projects, vice-versa. Not yet have I embarked a visual project inspired by my alias as a radio DJ. But here it may come and I have been long waiting. I am writing this response to fulfill an Intermedia assignment and as a reference for one of my favorite extra curricular activities. KRUI is the University of Iowa’s alternative student run radio organization, and better tagged as “Iowa City’s Sound Alternative.” It is a family much like this class; you grow and learn a lot, most of all I have a hell of a lot of time doing it. To my intermedia class you may have experienced blogging when I may write about my time at the station. I have worked for KRUI for a year now, and one semester as a persona doing a show with my best friend Kevin, who lately calls himself DJ Mifune. This past Sunday December 7th after the hustle of Open House I played one of my favorite shows to date!
Mifune and I have taken this semester to become more personal with our listeners and be more specific about the music we play. We are general rotation DJ’s, we are considering doing a specialty show covering all things “lo-fi” production next semester if I am still in town. We started this semester strong and decided after a while we wanted to understand our audience and tell them as much about us as we can. On a side note this year KRUI is celebrating its 25th year anniversary. This was a time of happiness yet we couldn’t be. KRUI, normally located in the third floor of the IMU was affected by the flood and was forced to relocate to the Quadrangle Dormitory, sad. At times of frustration and being forced to a much smaller space with a reduced music library everyone was tense and we had to work together.
We had decided to attack every show by making a theme for the night; we would focus on one genre of music and use our knowledge to give facts and history of the musicians involved. My favorite show we have done yet was a history of rockabilly. We have since done a honorary show for our favorite psych/trip-hop label “ANTICON,” who have recently celebrated their tenth year anniversary.
I remember near the beginning of this semester talking to my friend Nick Carney, once the drummer of the Iowa City group The Sullivan Gang. I had asked Nick about performing live on my show. I had enjoyed the idea and wanted to have my work and work of my musician friends performed live on the show. We did this for the first time last night.
I was at work at the Co-op and my good friend Phil had stopped in. Phil and I have shared a lot of music knowledge together. This summer Phil and I bonded a lot while we were spending it’s better half picking blueberries at Bach’s Berry farm. Phil is a photographer and we are both drawing artists. Phil has since the summer created a lot of work around our time blueberry picking. At his show at the White Rabbit during the first Iowa City gallery walk, he showed photographs of our blueberries, sold his home made blueberry jam, and soon the two of us will collaborate on a series of large scale work, abstracting our experience in southern Johnson County in summer sun conversing of political and emotional changes.
To get to the chase, Phil played at my show last night. I laughed when we spoke of how he couldn’t use his real name because there was already a musician named Phil Ochs. The first Phil Och’s was a 1960’s politically active musician, who was friends with others like Bob Dylan. My friend Phil was been talking about putting out a vinyl LP in spring which he would self release and do his own artwork for. Exciting!
Phil did marvelous, and to dodge the name confusion he is “Phil from Star City.” “Star City” will be the alias to encompass all collaborative and solo work on the LP. He played his acoustic Fender guitar which has a great steel body resonator and steel strings, it sounds nice and twang. Phil is a skilled guitarist who has a very blues like finger picking style. He played five great songs, mixed throughout the show and the odd psych pop and noise I rotated. At one point his girlfriend Emma called in pretending to be Phil’s biggest fan in Iowa City to embarrass to talk to him on the phone. Emma requested her favorite boyfriend/musician to play his song “My Girlfriend Wanda!”
I loved this show and was so happy to have Phil with me experiencing one of my favorite activities. In the future I plan to have more friends play live, including myself. So whether you are in my class or just reading this review, I want you on my radio show! Continue listening to your sound alternative. Sounder as music, art as music! Thank you!