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Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesMusic 101: A Three Album Introduction to 1980s Synth-Pop
by Clarence Ewing
With over 100 years of recorded music available to us, it can be hard to know where to begin listening to the art form’s many variations. This series provides ideas for those interested in exploring unfamiliar genres and styles of music.
What Is It: Popular music whose instrumentation is made up mostly or entirely of electronic synthesizers.
The use of electronic instruments to make music can be traced back as far as the mid-1700s. Synthesizers, the electronic analogue of keyed instruments like pianos, have existed in one form or another since the mid-1950s.
Until the late 1970s, these instruments were on the fringes of music styles like Disco and progressive Rock, played by people who had enough money to buy them.
The 1980s saw the widespread use of synths in pop music, especially by bands inspired by the Punk and New Wave sounds emerging from cities. The inherently bright, chirpy sounds from a keyboard could be used to make happy music, but also deliver lyrics that weren’t so perky. Electronica, experimental pop, and “bedroom pop” (where one person could create their own masterworks using electronic tools) would emerge from the synth taking its place as a common tool in music-making.
For listeners interested in 1980s Synth-Pop but unsure where to begin exploring, these three albums would be good places to start…
Some Great Reward by Depeche Mode (1984)
Depeche Mode is the most successful band in history that used synths as their primary instruments. Their fourth album contains the international hit “People Are People,” which directly addressed racism and war, along with more risque topics like S&M (“Master and Servant)” suicide (“Blasphemous Rumours”) and the general ennui that comes with working in a capitalist society (“Lie to Me”). It’s a dark album made up of uplifting melodies that could get minimal exposure on the public airwaves.
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (Mar 22 - Mar 28)
On the Podcast:
- Mike Nikolich speaks with musician and bird illustrator Robert Dean
On the Blog:
- Congratulations to CHIRP Radio's 2021 Best of Chicago winners and nominees
- Kyle Sanders reviews the new PBS bio-pic Flannery
- Kyle Sanders reviews WOJNAROWICZ: [EXPLETIVE] YOU [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE]
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 3/15/21:
The Sueves – Tears of Joy (Magicatalog)
Nikki Stout writesChicago Reader Best of 2020 Polls – Congratulations To Our Winners & Nominees!
The results are in! Though 2020 was one hell of a year, we at CHIRP are incredibly proud that we have been bringing you live, independent radio throughout it all. We couldn’t be more grateful for our listeners and supporters, who voted for us in several of the Chicago Reader’s Best of 2020 polls!
CHIRP is a community radio station, through and through. Our commitment to airing local artists, both new and established, is an essential part of our mission. To have the support of our fellow Chicagoans in The Reader’s annual “Best Of” series is a huge honor, and we cannot wait to bring you more great music, more artist interviews, and more curated content in 2021!
Wins and Nominations
Winner! Best Live Lit Series - The First Time
The First Time is CHIRP’s quarterly live literary event, with local readers telling non-fiction, first person narratives in front of a live audience. The First Time also features house band The First Five, playing songs corresponding to readers’ tales. The First Time hopes to safely return to the Martyrs’ stage in 2021—stay tuned for details!
Runner Up! Best Music Podcast
The CHIRP Radio Podcast releases new episodes each and every week, from artist interviews, to First Time features, comedy, and more! You can hear portions of the Podcast on our radio broadcast each week, or check out the full releases wherever you get your Podcasts.
Runner Up! Best Blog
The CHIRP Radio Blog hosts everything from album reviews, to film reviews, personal essays, and more! We have great content planned for 2021 and look forward to celebrating all things arts and culture with our readers!
Nominees! Best DJ
CHIRP had TWO of our incredible DJs nominated for Best DJ this year!
DJ Ninja is live on air Thursdays from 6:00 A.M. - 9:00 A.M and Fridays from 6:00 P.M - 8:00 P.M. She has been working in radio since 2001, and produces many of our on-air recorded promos as well!
DJ Nicole Oppenheim hosts Ear Candy twice per week, Wednesdays from 12:00 P.M. - 3:00 P.M. and Fridays from 9:00 A.M. - Noon. Nicole first got into radio by exploring the far ends of the dial on her Mickey Mouse transistor radio, and brings that same end-of-the-dial deliciousness to Ear Candy!
Nominee! Best Overall Radio Station
And last but certainly not least, CHIRP is proud to have been nominated by our listeners for Best Radio Station in Chicago. We are a dedicated team of volunteers on a mission to share as much great music as we can, and to be named as an essential part of city life in Chicago brings us great joy. We are thrilled to be an essential part of the “new normal” this last year has forced, and look forward to safely showing up for our community in 2021.
Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesMovie Review: “Flannery”
by Kyle Sanders
There are many celebrated female writers, but very few who have the eccentricity of Flannery O'Connor. Her southern upbringing mixed with an unmovable Roman Catholic faith concocted a sardonic, grotesque mentality that crafted some of the greatest Southern Gothic stories in American literature.
With such a rich and prolific imagination, it's hard to believe her writing career was so brief, having been cut short by Lupus, which would claim her life at the age of thirty-nine. Now, debuting just days before what would have been her ninety-sixth birthday, PBS' American Masters series is releasing a documentary about her life, simply titled Flannery.
Co-directed, written, and produced by Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco, Flannery examines the astonishing life of a self-proclaimed "shy, inarticulate" woman who yearned for "a cool, sophisticated wit." Growing up in Milledgeville, Georgia, O'Connor had an early sense of mortality as a child and a level of creativity where the profane blended with the sacred.
KSanders writesMovie Review: “WOJNAROWICZ: [EXPLETIVE] YOU [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE]”
by Kyle Sanders
I consider myself a proficient scholar when it comes to LGBTQ history: I've learned about the early pioneers, the Stonewall Riots, and the continuing struggles that still linger. But if you had ever name dropped David Wojnarowicz in a related conversation, I would have reacted like a deer in the headlights, and looked a fool.
But a fool, I am no longer. The creators behind RuPaul's Drag Race have produced a fiery and fearless portrait of the multimedia artist and AIDS activist, which they have appropriately titled WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER.
With an in-your-face, scandalous title like that, you get an idea of what you're in for. Stitched and sewn together with archived footage, photos, and answering machine tape recordings from the artist's personal archives, director Chris McKim crafts an absorbing collage that sucks you into the gritty cesspool of Wojnarowicz's early years of hustling on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, then spits you out in the aftermath of a post-AIDS gentrified world, where Wojnarowicz's viscerally breathtaking body of work continues to be rediscovered.