DIALSCAN: NEW YORK, APRIL 19, 2009

At 6:50AM, one remembers the strangest things. Not so long ago, and not that I remember the circumstances, but I found myself listening to a bit of a song called Sunday in New York. Mel Torme was singing it, but originally it was written and performed by Peter Nero for a film by the same name, one of Jane Fonda’s very earliest. Regardless of who sings it, Sunday in New York is as catchy a song as it is off-putting. So let’s take a taste of what radio is like on a (very early) Sunday in New York.

1010 WINS claims that more people wake up to it “than to any other station in the nation”. Every hour on the hour, they say this. Alas, I wake up to my CD player and it plays the most glorious music in the world. I have woken up to bad news before and I have not even tossed aside the covers without weeping like a bereaved parent. No disrespect to them, but that’s how it is.

Over at WCBS 880, my summertime flagship station (three guesses why to those who know and love me the most), it’s CBS News On the Hour, which they now take care to record and make available to CBS Radio’s various websites lest you miss one. That’s kinda-sorta good for people who need their news fix, and kinda-sorta bad for radio purists like me who buy into the concept that radio is the medium of the “Hear and Now.” But that’s downstairs. Upstairs, in Studio 8B, Cameron Swayze’s dry, avuncular voice greets me warmly, before settling into the bad local news. It could be my imagination, but at one time, Cameron had a picture and bio on WCBS’s website along with most of the rest of the broadcasters. It’s not there now. He is, however, savvy enough to tell you as leads into a traffic report that “Now that we’ve got you in a new car, let’s keep it moving.” I like Cameron’s rhythm, too. Easy, fluid without rambling, paced perfectly for Sunday morning newsradio. It’s not the machine-gun pace at which Pat Carroll and Michael Wallace and company have to talk at this time tomorrow, taking turns talking, being forced to finish each other’s sentences in that canned sort of way.

I do feel sort of sorry for people who live in Manhattan, and up into the Bronx. They have to listen real, real hard to hear the birds chirp as the Sunday sun rises.

Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy. As good as Cameron is, that’s as bad as the meteorologist, Christina Baker is. Either I’m catching Christina at the wrong time, which is entirely possible, or she has the disquieting tendency to up-inflect the end of her sentences. As if she didn’t know herself how warm or cool it will be today in New York? Doesn’t she know that particularly in newsradio, decisiveness means as much as the information she is giving? You gotta remember, you’re reading a man who has ears like an eagle. You better be clear and decisive when you’re giving me information.

Ugh. She’s at it again now, ten minutes later. I better change stations before I call WCBS and complain…

Over at Sports Radio 66 WFAN, I have no earthly idea what Bob Salter or his guest are talking about. But it has little, if anything, to do with sports. The conversation is glacially paced, too.

At WQXR-FM 96.3, I had hoped, reading the playlist, that Telemann had actually composed a concerto that lasted almost forty-five minutes in length. How naïve I am. Within ten seconds of turning WQXR on, the name Jesus gets mentioned. Jesus.

Over at WNYC-FM 93.9, for the first time in any number of years, I find Saint Paul Sunday. If I’m remembering this correctly, the program’s format was quite a bit different. Bill McGlaughlin, it seems to me, didn’t always invite classical artists into the studio to perform. Perhaps my memory is faulty, which to those who know me best, is not news. Just now a tenor is singing that “Pure genius/Makes us shiver.” I already know that. While this tenor sings things I already knew, I do some cursory research. Turns out this McGlaughlin chap was raised in South Philadelphia, and like me, is of Scottish ancestry. That being said, maybe I should think twice and give a listen whenever his other show, which I believe is called Exploring Music, airs over at WQXR. I should also think twice when I hear tenors singing about being warthogs.

I skip over WNYC-AM 820 entirely—if NPR’s Hearing Voices doesn’t drive me crazy, Weekend Edition will come on in four minutes and do a dandy job of it. So I try WNYC-FM 93.9-2, their digital station, where I join Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. This sounds nice. I can take this…

The best news of all is that the Franck was a live recording. I do so love when that’s the case. Sibelius now; The Tempest, Opus 109. Waves of drums and horns, rising and falling, strings and winds suggesting a world gone temporarily haywire, hints of little boats being tossed about out in large, raging seas, in stark contrast to the dawning of the Sunday that this writing has encompassed. And then the music quiets, the seas calm and the chirping of the egrets can be heard, a counterpoint to the solo flute. On it goes, while I lay down on my bed and float away…

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Up until now, these Dialscan features have shown, if nothing else, how very difficult it is to find something on the radio that an urbane, civilized, intelligent person wouldn’t scoff at. Let me give you some perspective. It is now 9:11AM Eastern Daylight Time. Had it not been for some marvelous classical music programming on WNYC2, the odds are better than average that this piece would have long since been posted and I’d move on to the next thing. However, WNYC may have jumped the shark with me on this day, for now they are airing a piece by an American composer I’ve never heard of called Roger Rubinstein. The piece is called State of The Union, it was probably written last week, and is being performed by a hitherto unknown chamber ensemble that probably understands all too well what the State of the Union is. Now I don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about.

So we make our last stop on the tour, crossing the GWB into Newark to listen to WBGO-FM 88.3, just in time for the obligatory test of the Emergency Alert System. A lot of good it’s done New Yorkers in this century, but that’s another story. My disgruntlement is leavened considerably when I hear a pianist swing into Chaplin’s Smile and the combo behind him begins riffing on it. Smile always makes me both happy and sad all at once. Sign of the times: the Announcer here this morning, a man called Dan Karcher, is also a production designer in the movies. There are worse things he could be, particularly nowadays.

So while Dan spins a George Culligan tune, I spin away into a glorious Sunday…