Last year I dug into Have Not Been The Same – making a bunch of notes in a post. I am happy to report the I found my large box of cassettes with hundreds of hours of radio from some of my favorite programs in the 1990’s.
I don’t look at my Google Analytics on this blog all that often, but the last time I checked I noted that a great deal of my Google traffic is driven by searches for ‘nightlines’ ‘brave new waves’ ‘old cbc radio’ search terms. Seems like there are lots of people looking for some old CBC archives. While the CBC Digital Archives have some great audio and video in their online collections they wrap it all in Flash players and offer no direct way to download pieces. Copyright restrictions likely prevent them from digitizing a great deal of the music program archives.
So, I’m going to do my little part here to digitize all my tapes and host them here for friends and passersby. This will likely be a long, ongoing project but I am really looking forward to re-broadcasting, archiving, and listening to all these time capsules. I will throw up a new post each time I get another archive together, but will also attempt to date and catalog them all here.
The first one up for offer is the last hour of Nightlines’ Final broadcast, August 31, 1997. I’ve gushed in the past over my reverence for Wisdom’s radiocraft, but here is that excerpt again:
Wisdom also invited the audience to write theme songs for the program, inspiring four-track weirdos from across the country to submit their work, such as Norm from Richmond. The most prolific Night Lines composers were the Ween-ish Maurice Pooby from Cortez Island and a woman named Eve Rice, from Winnipeg, who also fronted a band called Vav Jungle. More well-known bands also recorded material exclusively for Night Lines, when the show picked up on Brave New Waves’ lead and started recording sessions at the CBC Vancouver studio in 1991. Between then and the show’s demise in 2007, over 60 bands were captured; the last session was the Rheostatics, which aired on the show’s final broadcast on August 30, 1997, and was later released on DROG records. They became the band that started the Brave New Waves sessions and closed the Night Lines sessions. “I loved that,” enthuses Wisdom, who had been one of the Rheostatics’ biggest champions since their debut album. “The session made me think that [ Night Lines ] had a purpose to it and had been worthwhile and was a part of something going on in Canadian music.”
The Last Hour of the Nightlines Final Broadcast (August 31, 1997) [Mp3]
[audio:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2251996/Final_Nightlines_Joined.mp3]
Hi Grant! I love the idea of your project because I was thinking of something similar! I have quite a few Brave New Waves tapes that I digitized over the years too. If possible I’d love to contribute some for your project when I can. BNW turns 30 in February so this project couldn’t come at a better time. The oldest one I have is from around 1984 – that was from a friend of mine. BNW was my only companion when I was going through some hard stuff in the early 90s, so I can’t wait to hear what you have. If you’re interested in my stuff you can hit me up on Twitter (@JacquelineMay3)
Love this. Thanks for doing it, Grant. And Jaqueline, would love to hear the 1984 version of BNW. I think that was the year the show started. I came to it later in life so those 84 versions would be all new to me..