Canada's premier weirdness radio show, Brave New Waves, has been cancelled by CBC radio.Since 1984, Brave New Waves has been generating late-night strangeness for insomniacs and underground music fans alike. I happen to be both, so it was perfect for me.
Long before the internet was a household reality for most of us, BNW was the primary source of bringing us the newest music from outside the margins, and filling in the blanks in our music knowledge with their extensive artist features. As a reformed record-store snob, I can say that these artist profiles helped me understand the interconnections and collaborations between artists in different cities: Portland, Oregon; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Louisville, Tennesee; Cologne, Germany. This kind of stuff used to be really important to me.
Lying in bed in the desiccated suburbs of an Okanagan town, my world expanded every night. In university, we had a party to mark Brent Bambury's last show and Patti Schmidt's first. What I've found over the last few weeks is that everyone I talk to has a s
imilar story. Brave New Waves had a major impact on a lot of people, over the years.Let's celebrate it.
I'm looking to collect some of these stories from Brave New Waves listeners. I am pitching pieces at various magazines about the end of BNW, and how important it was to us, and I am looking to hear some peoples' anecdotes about the show's impact on their life. This is not about getting CBC to change their decision (that can be someone else's job), it is simply about officially recognizing the cultural impact of this important show.
If you are interested in participating, either leave a comment below or email me. I'm looking for all Brave New Waves tales, be they tales of woe or tales of WHOAH!
5 comments:
I guess I'm first in line, hehe. I'm a rare breed, I'm a long time American listener of BNW. I don't live in Detroit/Windor, or Seattle/Vancouver. I live in Philadelphia, PA. And by some force of sheer luck, one night 15 years ago, scanning the dial I discovered this show was simulcasting on one of the local public radio stations here. I was 12, about to turn 13, and at the time I was living with my family in a shelter. I hated being there, the food was awful, and the beds were not that much better. I heard this crazy cut-up of Heatwave's "Grooveline", and everything changed. I had no idea what it was, but it was the escape I needed every night since. To make a long story short, the simulcast didn't last long, and then when we found a new place to live and I got online I have been listening ever since. All I can say that it wasn't just my musical tastes that have been altered by this show. It also affected my philosophies as well. Losing this show is losing the driving force of my life, and as much as it has changed over the last few years, I still come home from work listening to it and being blown away by what I hear. There will be nothing on Earth like Brave New Waves again, and I'm glad I got to know it so well and for so long.
1995, after the news after the crappy jazz. The transition from news to white-noise music, to minimalist, and screaming was seamless. Patti's soothing voice, and the variety, and the borders of noise, art, music, pointing to "what is music";...and that is where I began my love afair. I didn't know too much about what was out there, university radio was good, but this!...you still can't find shows like this. Anyway, what it provided for me was the question above: What is music? What is art? I guess we can only answer that for ourselves, and it was this sort of introspection while being introduced to underground artists, illegal songs, and the movement between sound and music, that has left its mark on me, like a cool older brother, or that motorcycle riding, convention tossing cool unkle. Some favourites that I will never forget are: Scanner (eerie break-up message, guy rambling on, with the creepiest music in the background), Underworld (pre-Transpotting), Richard Cheese: Lounge Against the Machine...that's all I can remember. It's charm was that you didn't have to remember, it was just about being in this world, you could turn on the show 4 days a week?, for over 20 years, and like the ocean in your back yard, it was limitless and always there. I managed to record about 20 hours of BNW on my mp3 player when I was planning a move, thank goodness I did that. If anyone wants to trade/share let me know. This weekend, I'll have a drink for you BNW. joel2j$oel@gmail.com
i know i'm supposed to email stories, but i don't see an email address, so to the comments section this goes...
I guess that I always took it for granted that there would be weird shit on the radio in the middle of the night. It was always just there to be tapped into sometimes.
Of my earlier experiences of the show, my favourite would be the late-night drives back to lethbridge... usually would have been a punk-rock show in calgary we'd have been attending and returning from...
in '92 we went as a convoy from lethbridge to calgary to see a band from victoria play in a bar. Something like 10 to 15 people. All us underagers had to scam our way in, all using the same ID from one guy who was of-age... turns out we were the only people in the audience and were treated to completely freaked-out fucked-up music... on the drive home, there was extreme prarie freezing cold, featureless landscape shrowded in dark, northern-lights in the sky, and some absolutely amazing soundscapes facilitated by brave new waves on the radio.
This kind of thing happened many many times during many many roadtrips, (including seeing the Ramones play a festival in highriver I might add) and I think that it's not possible to overstate that bnw was as much a part of the landscape for me as the railroad would have been 100 years ago...
One time driving home, I difted off to sleep in the back to something dreamy, only to be woken up by an amazing radio version of "Fear and Loathing...". So good.
One fateful drive back from vancouver, we were searching the dial for CBC-stereo hoping to find some of that 3-4am art sounds weirdness. We finally locked onto some crazy wicked shit and listened with that dreamy driving intensity until, like, 7am, only to clue into the fact that we must have been picking up some random in between stations noise. hey, now that's art!
One particular night when I was in high-school, a group of us isolated western-canadian kids with nothing to do but feel full of angst or whatever.. we drove down to the river-bottom, haphazzard group bored teenagers. Listening to that live CBC broadcast under the stars in the middle of fucking nowhere next to a river was so awsome and I think that's when I first started to really catch on to the real significance of the show, seeing other kids' reactions as well.
It's so completely fucked, but I think we practically sang the national anthem that night! but then, how could such an amazing state-radio broadcast not fill one with just a little bit of national-pride.
I seem to remember a certain newyears eve, 2001 broacast. whilst returning to my place of residence, a bastardized version of HAL singing "bicycle built for two" came on the air. pure genius. welcome to the new millenium.
But back to national-pride issues. upon moving to europe in 2002, i quickly became aware of what i was missing in terms of truely great radio. Every trip back to Canada since has attempeted to involve hifi-vhs-ep 8 hour video tapes (2 episodes per tape thank you very much) and record-timer. (even grabbed some 2 new hours and ideas sometimes.)
A friend brought over some vhs one time and later some stacks of mp3 recordings of various quality levels. great to have around because there is just loads of great music which can never get old.
my hats off to all the dedicated research, organization, and great delivery of all the rockin', intellengent, relevent, and just plane weird music. hey even when they played totally crap pieces (which was rare) it was educational and entertaining.
oh, and the interviews, though i find them totally annoying sometimes, were always really nice and thought provoking to be exposed to.
They even played stuff that i sent in and it was totally fun to hear the fact from friends who had heard it. once i was even lucky enough to have tuned in to hear a one-off art-school improv cd-r as it went out over the air.
I'm very sad to have seen the show pass-away. apathetically being able to take the show for granted for so many years was indeed a great privillage for me, and i hope the cbc gang who neglected and eventually canned the show can somehow come to similar realizations.
perhaps my little mp3 archieve of past shows will be posted on a web-server and then i'd hope that others would add their files and playlists.
hey there, thanks for the comments all. my apologies for delays in approving these comments - for some reason they fell into the spaces between cyberspaces.
thanks for sharing your stories. please tell your friends to share theirs too...there are strange similarities among all the stories i've heard, despite the kilometers in between listeners.
thanks again for the comments, y'all. swg.
Wow.. This is cool.
I used to listen to BNW religously each night. As a budding musician myself, I was a fan of classic rock, but I always had this thing for the unusual and BNW filled the gap. I was very influened by what I heard.
Had it not been for BNW, I would have never heard of The Nils, Billy Bragg, 3 O'Clock Train, Brian Eno, Husker Du, Art Bergmann, Wire, The Waterboys, Robin Hitchcock, Prefab Sprout, Jesus and Mary Chain, the list goes on and on!!
I found that almost every night, I heard something amazing that stuck with me. A lot of the music I heard, I have dug up again on YouTube and various places and the songs still move me today. I often wonder what great gems I missed on the nights I didn't get to listen to it. Brent Bambury was the perfect host for that show and added as much to the appeal as the music. "I'm Brent Bambury...Welcome to the Waves" :))
Dan Pettis NB, Canada
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