Join us today — Sat­ur­day 17th April, at 2pm Pacif­ic Time / 10pm UK time — for the lat­est in an approx­i­mate­ly month­ly series fea­tur­ing 90 min­utes of New Age music, pre­sent­ed from The Grove, a beau­ti­ful spe­cial­ly-cre­at­ed envi­ron­ment in the vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life — http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chestnut%20Hills/127/78/3805  - or sim­ply tune in at http://main.vcradio.org

The Grove harks back to the musi­cal expe­ri­ence of tun­ing in to the ear­ly “New Age” radio sta­tions on the West Coast of the USA in their hey­day in the late 1980s: sta­tions like KTWV, “The Wave” in Los Ange­les and KLRS (“Col­ors”) in  San­ta Cruz. You’ll hear a wealth of music of the peri­od, pri­mar­i­ly but not exclu­sive­ly instru­men­tal, fea­tur­ing both syn­the­sis­ers and nat­ur­al instru­ments. A lit­tle more live­ly than “space music” in most cas­es, the music is by and large tune­ful, melod­ic and relaxing.

These radio sta­tions and their com­pa­tri­ots in oth­er mar­kets grad­u­al­ly shift­ed towards “smooth jazz”, “New Adult Con­tem­po­rary” and beyond, and thus lost some of the atmos­phere that the sta­tions orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed. We hope the show will bring back some mem­o­ries if you were there at the time, and present some har­mo­nious musi­cal vis­tas if the music is new to you.