Pimp out your webpage with PimpWebpageRADIO NIGHTWATCH
The Details: The Nightwatch is a 3-hour radio show, broadcast on CKCU-FM, 93.1FM in Ottawa every second Sunday (..used to be every Sunday, but more on that later…) from 11 pm – 2am EST.  Host: Dave. Note: CKCU has a good broadcast range (about 100kms around our transmitter on the Camp Fortune Radio Tower ) and can be heard live on the internet at www.ckcufm.com.
Alternates Sundays with: The Sunday Night Mind Melt with Bijon. Lemme tell ya, Bijon does a great show. Listen to it, too. Lots of psychedelic and trippy sounds from a fanatic of the ‘head-music’ genre.
What you’ll hear: Essentially, whatever I like – it’s one of the joys of Community Radio (see the ‘What is Good Radio?’ blog section). The short version of ‘What I Like’ is: Night Music, music with an edge, music that sounds like the musician is trying for something different than the mainstream. I like music that’s high-energy, played like the artist means it, played with some passion.
                   Â
For the majority of shows you’ll hear some Punk/Hardcore/Thrash/Noise, The-More-Aggravated-Indie stuff, Garage, Rock-and-Roll, Psychobilly, Psych, Prog, Experimental (yeah, that’s a huge umbrella – everything from Avante-Garde to Drone),and Jazz (another really broad genre). Every so often I’ll also do Blues, Funk, Afro-beat, Dub Reggae, Ska (old and new), Spoken Word, and World music.
Usually, I’ll start out hard and fast and work towards more experimental music over the course of the show: ya wanna hear art/jazz/trippy/droney stuff? Tune in at 1am or later.
As for the genres I leave out - I appreciate them, but these are covered by other programs at CKCU who already do justice to the genres way better than I could.
Mandate:
-
I
try to play music more and talk less. I will come on-air every 5 or 6
songs, tell you what you just heard, and maybe spin a few tales about the
band, or give out their website. Generally speaking I don’t do interviews,
though there have been exceptions. I guess this makes me a dull announcer,
but hey, s’all ‘bout de muzik, right?
Variety.
When I joined CKCU, people hosted ‘General Music’ shows and people were
expected to get to know a good deal about music to justify them having
public airspace. Things have changed a bit – shows are often limited to
one genre, sometimes from lack of knowledge, other times just time
constraints – but I still cling to the basic tenet of ‘General Music’: don’t
limit yourself in era or genre, just make sure you mix it together so that
it flows.
I
try to spend half an hour of my program playing local music and profiling
local performances. After that, I also look  across the country and see if there are
any new releases or new bands to report on. That said, I have lots of time
to play music from everywhere else, too – the regulations require I play
35% CanCon (I usually better that by a bit…), but in my humble opinion,
35% percent of all great music is not necessarily Canadian (Yup, s’th’way
Ah sees it…), so I keep up with the non-CanCon, too.
A Bit ‘o’ History: I joined CKCU in the fall of ’87, and for 10 years was a constant presence at the station (yeah, I had to sleep and go to school/work, but sometimes – most times, actually – these took a back seat), at times hosting 15 or more hours of music shows a week.
Around Spring of  ’97, Alan Surmachynski wanted to lose his Sunday night spot in favour of a better time slot. It seemed like a great deal for me, aside from the fact that I have a blue-collar job that makes me get up Monday morning. Still, I accepted, and this show became the Nightwatch. I did it every week (and suffered the typical problems of going to bed at 3am and getting up at 5am to work a harsh job…) until early 06, when the Program Director finally noticed that I had a long time slot, and wanted me to share it, namely: do every second show instead of weekly.
At first I was pouty, and ‘Din’t Wanna’, but then the idea of sleeping on a Sunday night (perhaps I was getting older… just maybe…) started to grow on me. Sundays are rough to start with, ‘cuz my band practices in the afternoon (gotta plug the band! Click on the ‘Blackball’ link in my top-20 friends…). Then I met the new DJ and knew that I was giving up every second week to good hands. I fully endorse the gent, Mr. Bijon, and his crazy show, The Sunday night Mind Melt.
Now I’ve finally gotten into this ‘MySpace’ thing, and have found it a great way to research bands. If it sounds like your band could fit into the Nightwatch, ‘Add’ me. As far as the ‘Friends Space’ goes, I’m looking to keep track of bands – there will only be a few individuals in it. Feel free to check out the Friends – there’s more great music out there than you could ever play in a lifetime!