Saturday At The Movies

Stuck at home like everyone? Pouring with rain or snow outside at the same time? Tune in to Virtual Community Radio for Saturday At The Movies, one of our collections of Genre Days, each featuring a different genre of music.
Movies are where most people today hear orchestral music, and there will be plenty of that today. But movie music is a much broader field than that, and today you’ll hear music from the movies of many different kinds, from the very start of the genre (with Camille Saint-Saens) to the latest blockbusters; from orchestral music to rock, to Fifties songs. There is a slight bias towards fantasy and SF movies, but never mind, we all need a bit of an escape these days.…
So… Grab the popcorn and settle down in front of the speakers in the best seat in the house — your own.
Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash
Genre Day: Light Classical

Today on VCR, we’re pleased to present a programme of light classical music, in our first live playout broadcast.
The programme features a wide range of both artists and composers, some well-known and some, perhaps, who are seldom heard of. Listen out for the likes of Tomlinson, Ketelbey, Alwyn, Gunning and Addinsell, for example, to name but a few, and enjoy a day of tuneful, often relaxing orchestral music.
Photo: The Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra, by
Building a Virtual Home

We are currently in the process of building a headquarters location in Second Life as a base for our operations in-world. The “VCR Theatre” is being brought together by Honey Heart and will be completed soon.
It takes the form of an Art Deco theatre, with a stage, seating that can be overlaid for dancing, and a broadcast studio. In addition it will house administrative functions like the devices that will handle sponsorship payments and renewals to make that operation as smooth as possible.
We are also intending to hold live readings and other performances as well as dances and other activities in the auditorium. Here are a few pictures — though bear in mind that the build is not yet finished.
The foyer of the VCR Theatre
A view of the stage from the back of the auditorium
The broadcast studio
Coming Soon: The Black Mass

Coming shortly to Virtual Community Radio is the landmark radio drama series The Black Mass, created at the Pacifica radio station KPFA in Berkeley, CA, over fifty years ago. In 30 chilling tales of mystery, imagination and the human mind, The Black Mass brings you some of literature’s most haunting stories, by masters of the craft.
Realised with the minimum of audio equipment, the performances were quite remarkable and trod ground seldom covered by radio drama before — or since. Watch this space for details on when the shows will air. There are 30 episodes of up to 30 minutes each, and each weekly episode will be broadcast twice on the same day, once for UK/European listeners and the other for those in North America.
John Whiting produced most of the episodes, and he writes:
“Black Mass was born in 1963, the brain-child of Jack Nessel, who was the Drama & Literature Director at KPFA in Berkeley, the first voluntarily listener-sponsored non-commercial FM station in the world. Jack suggested the idea to Erik Bauersfeld, who taught aesthetics and philosophy at the California School of Fine Art, and had recently begun to do readings of classic and modern literature for the station. Erik was not wildly enthusiastic, but thought that it might be interesting to search out some of the best stories of the supernatural by first-rate authors who did not normally write within that genre. Obligation soon became obsession.
“I was the station’s Production Director at the time and had already produced some rather elaborate radio dramas. Jack, already a friend before he joined the station, was aware of my childhood fondness for horror stories and suggested that I collaborate with Erik. Thus was born one of the most fruitful creative relationships in my life and, to this day, one of my closest friendships.
“A working pattern quickly evolved which thenceforth never varied. Erik would edit the stories to a workable length and, as resources permitted, adapt the dialog to a dramatic format. I would then record him reading the text in the studio, with or without other actors, and he would take the tapes away to edit, which he did himself, often piecing them together word by word from almost infinite retakes.
“Once the text was assembled, we would reserve a night in the main studio to put the program together with music and sound effects. Sometimes these were plotted in advance in great detail, sometimes not. Usually I would have a chance to hear the voice track before the production session.
“Because of extreme demands on studio time, each adaptation was begun in the early evening, after the news had gone out, and carried on until it was completed, usually some time in the wee small hours. The most remarkable aspect of this collaboration was that we soon discovered that, when it came to radio production, we had a single brain between us. When Erik made a suggestion, I immediately saw that it was the obvious way to proceed; when I suggested a sonic framework, Erik would declare that it was exactly what he had had in mind. At the end of the session, we always left the studio with a tape which either of us would have been glad to put his exclusive name to. The happiest moments of all were between about 2 and 4 a.m., when we retired to Eric’s apartment in the Berkeley hills and quietly drank our way into oblivion on Erik’s excellent Tanquerey-based gimlets, knowing in our hearts that we had produced yet another masterpiece.”
Erik Bauersfeld passed away in 2016. Many thanks to John Whiting for access to the materials and for permission to broadcast them.
The Black Mass artwork was produced by Terry Lightfoot.
Get the App!
We are working with Patrick at Kaleidoscopic Creation to develop our own mobile apps, but in the meantime…
VCR is hosted by Live365, and they make iOS and Android mobile apps available so you can listen to member stations on the go.
Unfortunately these apps don’t automatically tune to VCR — you can use them to listen to any Live365 station — so you need to search for “Virtual Community Radio” to locate us and start listening. Click the heart icon to label it as a Favourite and off you go!
Due to music licensing agreements, these apps are available in the UK, US and Canada only at this time.
Remember that we are still doing test transmissions, so the stream may go off the air from time to time and you’ll hear a curious variety of music across the day.
Test Transmissions

We are now preparing to go on the air, and in advance of our official launch at the start of the year, we’re carrying out test transmissions, primarily fine-tuning the playout system to give us the right mix of music and other content. As a result you may find that the stream is not always present.