Born out of TV talk shows—probably, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—the term “plug” came to mean that an actor or performer came on the show to promote their latest project. Today I’m plugging my blogs with our latest YouTube vids.
Stay tuned
©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck blog. All rights reserved
Over the last couple of years I have been toying around with several ideas for a new type of Christian radio station. Certainly not to compromise my beliefs, this new station would feature songs and styles from the many different artists both Christian and those not normally labeled as Christian performers per se. Taking some of the liners and id’s from my previous Internet stream, the GRIN, and combining music from the separate genres I put together a demonstration of how it might sound using Ableton Live software. You know what? It sounded great!
Songs such as Foreigner’s I want to Know What Love Is segued perfectly with Big Daddy Weave’s Hold Me Jesus. Good music is good music, no matter what the label. Back in the mid 80’s I wanted so badly to play the hit by Foreigner and thought it would fit perfectly with our gospel format. Secular music was taboo on our air so we played the gospel version by the New Jersey Mass Choir, the actual choir used to back up the rockers on the original song. The gospel cover version was not bad, I just wanted to play the original. 25 years later, I still believe that playing secular music is not a compromise of personal beliefs. However, it does not fit most listeners expectations of what a “Christian” station should be.
My station would have a very deep playlist that featured songs old and new. It would not mirror the new way of thinking with Christian programmers these days: where a song that is older than, say, six months is discarded. For the first time in my life, it would be a format that I would actually listen to. Of course the idea is still incubating.
Stay tuned
©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved.
A new buzzword is sweeping the radio industry; That is, “New Media.” The term refers to podcasting, web shows, Internet audio and video streaming and such. It is my goal to make at least a dent in the new media pie with my show “Gospel Rewind” For now, the radio station I started last March is on the back burner. The instant, on demand, availability of my shows is very exciting as I introduce an original American art form to a new generation. Gospel music is root to most all genres of current popular music.
I made a living playing such songs on various traditional AM & FM radio stations over a 12 year period from the early ‘80’s though about ‘95. Music appreciation has been a focus of most of my years since; gravitating to the religious form, mostly. I have noticed living among the Conservative Christian community that secular music is gaining more acceptance with reports of “Christian” stations tweaking their formats to “positive” music allowing the more innocuous mainstream hits airplay. I’m afraid we’ve crossed a dangerous line by mixing secular with sacred. It could spell the end of Contemporary Christian Music as we know it.
Gospel Rewind will not be watered down. My New Media venture has a much more narrow focus, for sure. We do not limit the show to any sub-genre: Southern, Black Gospel, CCM, Inspirational, Choir, Christian Country, you name it; I have covered it all and try to blend the styles. My most recent podcast Heaven’s Jam is a great example of what I want the show to represent. Give it a listen. You’ll hear gospel music crossing racial barriers in a way I have seldom heard.
For those not privileged to the episode’s back story; my dad was a blind minister, a piano tuner by trade, who was white. I was his hired assistant and we had, by chance, brought along a Panasonic cassette boom box which we used to record a 14 year old phenom piano player at a small black church in Savannah, Georgia. Often we were treated to our customers’ playing a freshly tuned instrument with much skill, but this cat was off the charts. My dad compared him to Andraé Crouch; for which the young man seemed honored. His father, the pastor, also blind, joined the singing. What sweet music was captured that day. My dad summed up the jam session by saying that a vast majority of true talent is yet to be discovered. For the two of us our cassette document was proof.
Stay tuned