Category Archives: Programming

Music of the Gilded Age

August 26, 2023   Programming

The Gild­ed Age, La Belle Époque… both terms, one from the Unit­ed States, the oth­er from Europe, refer to essen­tial­ly the same peri­od, cor­re­spond­ing to the late Vic­to­ri­an and the Edwar­dian peri­ods in the UK.

The peri­od is bound­ed by the First World War at the end, and some­where around the mid-1870s for the start.

The term “Gild­ed Age” (alleged­ly coined by Mark Twain) is actu­al­ly slight­ly pejo­ra­tive. Gild­ing is a light cov­er­ing of gold and it’s also osten­ta­tious – but a “gild­ed age” is not a “gold­en age”. And the term La Belle Époque was coined after the peri­od – look­ing back at the peace­ful, pros­per­ous past from the dark days of the Great War.

Today we’ll hear music of the Gild­ed Age from both sides of the Atlantic, includ­ing bal­lads (we’ve includ­ed some of Stephen Fos­ter’s won­der­ful songs, which were well known dur­ing the peri­od – and indeed still are today), dance music and some light clas­si­cal pieces includ­ing items from Gottschalk in the US and Satie in France; and you’ll hear the first-ever film score, com­posed by Saint-Saëns.

Some orig­i­nal peri­od record­ings may con­tain neg­a­tive stereo­types or lan­guage now regard­ed as offen­sive. Such mate­ri­als should be seen in the con­text of the time peri­od and as a reflec­tion of atti­tudes of the time. The record­ings are part of the his­tor­i­cal record, and do not rep­re­sent the views of Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio.

Image: The Cup of Tea, Mary Cas­satt (c. 1879)

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Where Have You Been?: Ciampi and Porto Nuovo

August 23, 2023   Programming

The lat­est episode of our orig­i­nal series, “Where Have You Been?” which sug­gests things to do and places to vis­it around the Sec­ond Life Grid, this time explores the Ital­ianate vil­lage of Ciampi and its har­bor, Por­to Nuo­vo, which are spread across over half a dozen abut­ting main­land regions. They were envi­sioned and cre­at­ed by Viggen Petofi who began over six years ago with the parcels on Bhi­ma and a few more, and has built it out as land became avail­able and he could pur­chase it. This show airs on August 23, 26, 30 and Sept 2 at 12 noon and 4pm SLT/Pacific.

To lis­ten to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, tune to http://main.vcradio.org or “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio” on your smart speak­er. Oth­er options for tun­ing in can be found here.

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The Magic of The Musical: Celebrating Summer

August 19, 2023   Programming

THE MAGIC OF THE MUSICAL — Sat­ur­day, August 19th @2pm Pacific/slt. This Month: “CELEBRATING SUMMER”!

This show is now avail­able on Mix­cloud — click here to listen.

August’s episode will be LIVE from the Gar­dens at beau­ti­ful Angel Manor, and on-the-air: join the audi­ence in-world!

Also on the air today: tune in at 12 noon or 4pm for the lat­est edi­tion of “Where Have You Been?” where we Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of Sec­ond Life. Plus “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every four hours from 4am. Fea­tured Music today will, of course, be “On Broadway!”.

TUNE IN  at main.vcradio.org, or “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio” on your smart speaker*!
(*If this does­n’t work first time, say “Enable Skill” and when asked what skill to enable, say “Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio”)

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Jack Flanders in The Eye of Van Gogh

August 18, 2023   Programming

Tune in on Fri­day for the next episode of anoth­er excit­ing radio ser­i­al from our friends at ZBS Foun­da­tion: “The Eye of Van Gogh” - fea­tur­ing that sea­soned eso­teric tourist, Jack Flanders.

This adven­ture con­sists  of four half-hour episodes, broad­cast at noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT on Fri­days. Now read on dot, dot, dot…

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60s Hits — and The History of Offshore Radio

August 16, 2023   Programming

August 14th — today some­times referred to as “Pirate Radio Day” — is remem­bered as the day, in 1967, when the major­i­ty of Britain’s off­shore pop pirate radio sta­tions went off the air in the face of the gov­ern­men­t’s Marine &c Offences Act becom­ing law at mid­night on the 15th. Only Radio Car­o­line* con­tin­ued broadcasting.

In mem­o­ry of the immense changes and ben­e­fits the off­shore sta­tions brought to music radio and to lis­ten­ers in search of pop­u­lar music on the air around the coasts of Britain and Europe, we are com­mem­o­rat­ing the event today (yes, two days late but there we are), with a spe­cial pro­gramme of music from the 1960s, as you might have heard on the off­shore sta­tions, plus a spe­cial broad­cast of a 1970 radio doc­u­men­tary by Paul Har­ris, “The His­to­ry of Off­shore Radio” . The doc­u­men­tary cov­ers the peri­od 1958 to 1970 and includes the ear­li­est Scan­di­na­vian sta­tions such as Radio Mer­cur and Radio Nord, as well as more famil­iar sta­tions like Radio Lon­don, Radio Car­o­line and Radio Veron­i­ca. The peri­od is illus­trat­ed by many airchecks from the major­i­ty of the sta­tions oper­at­ing in this peri­od in addi­tion to a com­men­tary which tells the sto­ry, from ear­ly begin­nings, to years of suc­cess and some­times dark deeds. The pro­gramme is par­tic­u­lar­ly notable in that it was made in 1970 — soon after the events it depicts occurred,

Tune in for this spe­cial pro­gramme at 1pm or 5pm Pacific/SLT, 9pm or 1am in the UK.

We’ll also be broad­cast­ing the lat­est episode of “Where Have You Been?”  at the usu­al time of 12 noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, 8pm and mid­night in the UK.

*Radio Car­o­line is now a licensed com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion based in SE Eng­land. You can vis­it them here.

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Where Have You Been?: Journey to the Centre of Second Life

August 9, 2023   Programming

The lat­est episode of our orig­i­nal series, “Where Have You Been?” which sug­gests things to do and places to vis­it around the Sec­ond Life Grid, this time explores the mys­te­ri­ous Cen­tre of Sec­ond Life where the hand­print of Sec­ond Life is on the very ter­rain! In addi­tion, we dis­cuss Drax­tor Despres’s 47-minute machin­i­ma, “Made in SL: The Movie”, com­mis­sioned by Lin­den Lab for the 20th anniver­sary of the launch of Sec­ond Life. It’s well worth a watch — and it can be found on the Lin­den Lab YouTube Chan­nel — or the link below. And we’ll tell you about the region of Omid­yar where you can see the Sec­ond Life Logo Region for your­self. And take a deep breath and wan­der the heights and val­leys of the For­est of Karuhv­el to dis­cov­er what’s there to be found by the brave and persistent.

Learn more by tun­ing in at 12 noon or 4pm SLT/Pacific on these Sat­ur­days and Wednes­days: August 9, 12, 16, 19.

To lis­ten to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, tune to http://main.vcradio.org or “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio” on your smart speaker.

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The Early Music Show

August 5, 2023   Programming

Today, Sat­ur­day 5th August,  tune in to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio via the link — or sim­ply “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio” on your smart speak­er — for a pro­gramme of Ear­ly Music.

We’re fea­tur­ing music of the High Renais­sance, with con­tri­bu­tions from France, Spain, Eng­land and Ger­many. There are also some mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions thrown in for good measure.

“Where Have You Been?”, our orig­i­nal series on things to do and places to vis­it around the Sec­ond Life Grid,  vis­its The QT Gallery at noon and 4pm SLT/Pacific Time — and don’t miss Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity every 4 hours from 4am Pacific.

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Hits In Hi-Fi

July 29, 2023   Programming

Today — Sat­ur­day 29th July — we’ll take a nos­tal­gic jour­ney back to the 1960s and beyond, when music was on vinyl and home stereo was new and excit­ing­ly futur­is­tic… with Hits In Hi-Fi.

In the ear­ly days of stereo, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of albums were released that were designed espe­cial­ly to show off the won­ders of this new way of pre­sent­ing musi­cal enter­tain­ment. Sounds “ping-ponged” across the stereo sound­stage; instru­ments appeared hard on one side and then hard on the oth­er… and there were a lot of space ref­er­ences, bloops and bleeps start­ing and end­ing the pieces — and once the Moog Syn­the­sis­er became avail­able, that was includ­ed in the mix too.

A selec­tion of these albums forms the core of our music today. Often the tracks con­sist of instru­men­tal arrange­ments of pop­u­lar songs, but there are also plen­ty of orig­i­nal tunes too.

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Where Have You Been: QT Gallery

July 22, 2023   Programming

The lat­est episode of our orig­i­nal series, “Where Have You Been?” which sug­gests things to do and places to vis­it around the Sec­ond Life Grid, this time vis­its the QT Gallery on the Sev­ery region.

It’s the home gallery of long-time Sec­ond Life res­i­dent and artist quadrapop, whose vir­tu­al art­work includes every­thing from two dimen­sion­al wall pan­els, to more tra­di­tion­al 3‑D sculp­tures, to incred­i­ble three dimen­sion­al works full of col­or and motion.

Learn more by tun­ing in at 12 noon or 4pm SLT/Pacific on these Sat­ur­days and Wednes­days: July 22, 26 and 29, and August 2 and 5.

To lis­ten to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, tune to http://main.vcradio.org or “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio” on your smart speaker.

S03E09 — The QT Gallery
Own­er — Gallery Owner/Artist, quadrapop

SLURLS/URLS:
Sev­ery — General

Ground Lev­el Gallery
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Severy/174/237/2891

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The Space Programme: Apollo 11

July 22, 2023   Programming

Today we present some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent… Space Music and a space documentary.

On this day, July 22, 1969, 54 years ago, the Apol­lo 11 space­craft’s Com­mand Mod­ule sep­a­rat­ed from the Lunar Excur­sion Mod­ule and began its return to Earth after the first human being had stepped out of the LEM and set foot upon the Moon ear­ly the pre­vi­ous day. Today, in pro­gram­ming we’ve broad­cast annu­al­ly from the start of the sta­tion (and beyond), we cel­e­brate the mis­sion’s achieve­ment in music, and in a spe­cial music- and actu­al­i­ty-based documentary.

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