Vibes of Bliss and Weirdness…
Interview with a
College Radio Host
One of my longest-running friendships is with a gal who hosts a college radio show called Resonance Vessel, on WCSB Cleveland, 89.3 FM, the radio station of Cleveland State University. The show airs every Saturday from 4 – 7AM Eastern Standard Time on 89.3FM in Cleveland and online to be heard by the masses.
I recently had a chance to speak with my dear friend, who on air goes by the name My Brutal Pony, about her experience as a college radio host and about the music that speaks volumes in her soul…
How did you get into hosting on college radio?
Well let’s start with how I first got exposed to college radio. To make a long story short, I got turned on to college radio by accident. I was scanning the channels while commuting from the university. I heard a piece of music by an artist I thought would never have been played on the radio! It was another college radio station in town, and I started checking it out regularly. I was amazed that this station was playing some obscure stuff that I thought nobody else knew about.
Over the next few years, I started checking out the other college radio stations in the area. I knew CSU had a station, but it wasn’t until last December that I actually thought, “I could do this… heck I should be doing this!!” So one day I filled out an application… and before I knew it, I was on the air.
You play a lot of interesting music on your show. Drone, ambient..what does it all mean?
My show description is drone, instrumental, ambient, noise, experimental, classical… vibes of bliss and weirdness. When I came to the station last year, I really wanted to focus more on instrumental pieces. Vocals are okay, but words? In my opinion they detract from the music. I’m not totally against music with vocals or words, but I just enjoy listening to pure sound, the music itself. Here are some descriptions about each of the types of music I listed.
Drone: long-form sustained sound, whether it’s being made by guitars with delay and effects, electronics / synthesizers, or any variety of ethnic or folk instruments. If you wiki drone music, you can come up with some interesting info.
Ambient: I’d describe ambient as generally quieter, relaxing pieces without percussion. I often lump new age and ambient together. New age has this stigma as being a sort of luke-warm cheesy music, but in the 70s, musicians were creating really interesting work with field recordings of nature, electronics and synths, along with other instruments. Some artists were very much into making music to tune your life and your body, music you could really connect with on an intellectual and even spiritual level.
Ambient and new age are not necessarily background music, or “muzak,” the stuff you hear in department stores. Ambient does serve as music to listen to when performing a variety of tasks, for sleeping, etc. but it is highly listenable in its own right.
Experimental encompasses a lot. You could describe it as avant garde or as outsider music. There are no rules. You can play the same note over and over, combine instruments or styles of music, utilize found sounds from the environment, use vocals to make a variety of sounds, blend genres.
Noise: I would describe noise as music that challenges the listener. Just the word noise brings up the idea of something dissonant, something you might not want to listen to! A lot of the Cleveland noise musicians use electronics, home built devices with all sorts of knobs and wires connected to amps, mics, processors, and other equipment. It might be walls of sound, it might be very subtle manipulations of frequencies.
I appreciate the works of classical musicians (the greats like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, etc), but I play more contemporary classical music. Some of it is created by musicians associated with universities or musical collectives.
What are some of the different artists you play on your show?
There’s a whole bunch! You can check out my playlists here or here for the full scope.
On the station application I filled out last fall, one of the questions asked about artists I would play. White Rainbow and Emeralds were two I listed. White Rainbow is the name of one of many projects that Adam Forkner is involved with. He’s based in Portland and has lately been doing wonderful ambient stuff. Some of his earlier, more drone-y projects are Surface of Eceyon and Yumi Bitsu. Emeralds is a local band here in Cleveland. They’ve done a lot with guitar, synthesizers, and effects. These guys are simply amazing live. They always seem to have the perfect blend of musical elements. Each of them is pretty prolific with solo and side projects, so keeping up with all their releases can be tricky.
What does music mean to you?
I was in an art gallery once, and I saw a small painting that said “music is oxygen.” That about sums it up! Music, to me, is pretty necessary for life. Music can hit all the emotions, and sometimes that one song or that one piece just really affects you as a listener. Some people are casual fans of music, but others really hunt for and find the pieces that have some sort of meaning for them. When I first came to WCSB, I wanted to play all the beautiful sounds I heard, put on the airwaves higher vibes, healing light, and positive energy… Send it out so people all over could experience such aural wonders.
I know you’ve held a number of aliases over the years…delight my readers with some of those gems:
Oh geez. I think everybody at some point in their life has come up with some “code name” or nickname for themselves! When I first started hosting my show, I randomly called myself Esmeralda because a co-worker called me that for some unknown reason. But then I switched my name, and now it’s My Brutal Pony. I came up with that name when I was trying to think of a name I could call my show whenever I did a fill-in for other DJs. I guess if you really want to dissect the name, it’s kind of a marriage between weird, harsh, unpredictable sound and soothing, pretty, blissful sound.
College radio is sort of a niche market…do you see it’s popularity growing with the help of the Internet?
I can think of 5 other colleges and universities in the area that have stations with live webstreams. I honestly don’t know how popular college radio is on the internet. Some college radio stations archive their shows, so you can download the show and listen to it if you’re not able to listen live when the show is actually airing. That’s nice, but not every station has that capability. So many college students use computers these days; that alone might make it more popular, in the sense that it’s more accessible.
I think college radio has always been a bit underground, a bit underdog, too. There’s the risk of a “hipper than thou” vibe that can make the music more enticing or shy people away. If someone is really into music, they might be more likely to look for the college radio stations. But someone who’s not a hard core music fan may miss out — they may not even know if their college has a radio station. But our station really offers a lot to listeners, including blues, rock, world, country, freeform talk, folk, jazz, electronic, hiphop, metal, R&B / soul, reggae, classical, experimental… Plus we also cater to the greater Cleveland community with public affairs programs and a bunch of ethnic programming (German, Slovenian, Latin, etc). Here’s a list of our shows by genre, and the show grid gives more info on each show.
Are you interested in pursuing radio DJ-ing further than college radio?
No. I’m a music nut, I like volunteering at the station, but I wouldn’t want to look into broadcasting as a career. None of us are paid, by the way, and that raises some eyebrows when I tell people I’m on the air from 4am to 7am! I enjoy what I do; discovering new music is exciting for me. I’ll do this for as long as I can, but personally it’s not my chosen line of work.
It’s Radiothon week at WCSB! Can you explain what that is and what you’re doing to help promote it?
We are non-commercial radio, so Radiothon is an annual fundraising event, our only source of expendable revenue. Once a year during that week (this week, Nov. 9-Nov. 16) we ask our listeners to call in to the station, make a pledge and donate to WCSB.
This fall we moved our station’s location after having been in the same building for 32 years. We were running out of space, needed more shelving for our music library. So now we’ve moved to our new digs, and what’s really amazing is that we never once went off the air during the entire moving process. Our engineer and staff made a seamless transition from the old to the new location, so we were able to broadcast to our listeners 24/7 without any problems. Our first broadcast at our new location was a re-airing of the very first station broadcast, from May 10, 1976!
During Radiothon week, we of course promote the station and Radiothon like crazy. People come up with wacky promotional blurbs to play over the air, some DJs do something special like bring in a band, others make premiums to offer their listeners in addition to WCSB logo items (shirts, hats, hoodies, etc). For my show, I put together two grabbags containing a variety of CDs and tapes, plus some other fun stuff. I also made some compilation CDs of music I enjoy. There’s a 3 CD set of Cleveland artists, and a White Rainbow set with music from his out of print 5 CD box set. My other premiums are listed here.
Listeners can donate to WCSB by calling in to any show from now until noon on Sunday, November 16th. The pledge line is 216-687-6900. We also have a form set up online for credit card donations. General Radiothon info and payment options are listed at our website: www.wcsb.org/radiothon
Where can we learn more about your show? Any ResVes Links to social networking sites?
I’m not on any social networking sites… yet! Maybe some day, we’ll see
wcsb.org is our main webpage. We also have a forum where you can find all kinds of station info as well as playlists for a variety of programmers’ shows. You can also listen online.
I am a photographic & digital artist inspired by myth, dreams and nature. My work is infused with the magic of the natural world and of the unseen realms of myth and imagination.
