Jazz By The Bay

One show that is my personal favorite in Bay FM is heard every Sunday from around 9-12 pm. This is where we get to hear the coolest jazz music courtesy of Jake Mills (aka the Jazzmaster). Jazz By The Bay is actually a special favor I asked from our PD (who is in his 30s and probably hasn't really heard of Chuck Mangione). I met Jake Mills through a recommendation and it was certainly fate that led this guy to Bay FM. He was the perfect jock for the show. Apart from his love of jazz, he was amenable at going on board every Sunday nights.

The show plays non-stop muzak from some of our jazz greats - David Benoit, Spyro Gyra, Noel Pointer, Grover Washington, Jr., Lee Ritenour, Hiroshima, George Benson et.al. - artists whose music I grew up with, as well as music from some of our contemporary jazz artists.

It was through this show that I sort of renewed my love for jazz and learned some stuff about the newer jazz artists. It was actually TommyG who told me that Wayman Tisdale was an ex-NBA player. Really? Tisdale retired from pro-basketball in 1997 and focused instead on his musical career as a jazz bass guitarist (interesting stats of his 12 season career: Tisdale played for the Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns, the latter being his best stint when he averaged 22.3 points and 7.5 rebounds in 1989-1990, his best season). That blew my mind.

Check out some of my favorite jazz tracks featured on Jazz By The Bay (including several from Tisdale) right here, right now. Enjoy!

The MP3 files: The Subic Bay Hour & Morning Brew

As promised, here are a couple of produced stingers from the Subic Bay Hour featuring airchecks from Bay FM's first four SBMA guests.

Of course, we have SBMA Administrator Arreza who did the first episode of the program. He was followed by DA for Tourism, Raul Marcelo who talked about (what else?) tourism projects in the Freeport. Next was Atty. Ferdie Hernandez, Senior Deputy Administrator for Operations, who talked about Subic being a maritime hub, and finally SBMA Labor Department Manager Atty. Severo Pastor who talked about jobs in the Freeport.

Check it out...



I sort of accidentally found out that we actually have airchecks of the Morning Brew, Bay FM's morning program hosted by the tandem of Happy Luey & well, moi. Jeez, I remember how our airshifts sometimes lasted more than 10 minutes as if we forgot that we were supposed to be a less talk-more music FM station. Find out how I tried so hard to be a talk jock, hoarse voice and all (haha!) and how I found out that Happy Luey actually made sense.

It was one crazy show. Check it out right here and have a laugh! Enjoy Happy Luey :)

Less Talk, More Music

Ever since this blog started, I have been writing about some of Bay FM's travails (mostly the station manager's, really) as a fledgeling community station of the Subic Bay Freeport. This time, I'm gonna spare anyone reading my blog from further depression lest they think running a radio station is cumbersome, because it definitely isn't (maybe I just enjoy worrying too much haha!).

Let's talk about music now. Yes, Music. Bay FM is actually a music station. We play all kinds of music 24/7 from sun-up 'til sundown (well, except during Subic Bay Hour, though). This I think is the reason why Bay FM has some kind of cult following here in this part of the country. Our listeners are guaranteed with no-clutter programming, meaning, we do not populate our airwaves with long strings of commercials or irritating breakers.

"Less Talk, More Music," that's one of the bylines we go by, and Bay FM could keep it that way. Thanks to automation and BernieMac, programming runs virtually hands-free most of the time, just like podcasting. It proves to be effective for a small station like Bay FM that is operated by just a small band of radio geeks and volunteer jocks.

Bay FM's typical weekday playlist is mostly composed of all-genre top forty music, spanning from the 90s to present, while during weekends, we go adult contemporary (AC) with music mostly from the 70's to the 90s. Bay FM also has specialized programs in the weekends like Jazz By The Bay (Don't fret Jake, I'll talk about jazz soon :)).

One interesting program we have hosted by our volunteer DJ Jack Ryan (a hulk of a guy who has a day job in SBMA) is Retroactive. He features hits of a particular year in the 70s and the 80s. When Jack Ryan goes on (which is getting quite rare these past few weeks due to his extremely tight dayjob schedule), we get request call-ins from 50-60somethings, especially from the guys at American Legion (an association of veteran U.S. Navy officers who opted to retire in Olongapo City, I think). I once sat through his show and I really had a blast listening to music from artists like the Isley Brothers, Guess Who, BTO & Grand Funk.

During the weekdays, we have TommyG to rely on for the freshest chart-topping hits. He usually does the Billboard top 12 countdown which keeps our music library updated.

From Rock, R&B, HipHop, Urban, to AC and Jazz covering the 70s to the now - I think you'll surely enjoy listening to Bay FM...just be here in Subic Bay Freeport, though.

Hey by the way, check out Bay FM's mini playlist way down this blog (c/o dizzler). It has been there for ages!

Part 2s

Being somewhere in that age when certain brain cells seem to go haywire, it's kind of difficult to keep track about things that I should've made followthroughs. Thus, this entry.

Some days back, I did Subic Bay Hour part 1 and I was meaning to do part two of it, but I didn't actually have any idea when part 2 will commence. Being that the show is a weekly thing, I figured I shouldn't really write about it in parts unless I wanted it to have this long line of sequels just like the Rocky movie. So I guess from now on, I should refrain from writing blogs in parts.

Anyway, the show is starting to kick butt. After Administrator Arreza, we brought in SBMA Deputy Administrator Raul Marcelo for our second edition. We talked about how Subic Bay is faring as a tourist destination. The cool-talking, jock potential tourism honcho talked about details such as the return of the casinos in the Freeport (which is good actually since SBMA is targetting the foreign tourist and retiree markets), and plans of turning Subic into some sort of a movie location hub (have you seen the Marianne Rivera clip in youtube? Shot right here in Subic...bad-ass gurl, right?). Though it was a bit premature, "Sir Raul" also mentioned the return of the Ad Congress in Subic (with hopes of winning the bid again). Since Happy Louie was happily finishing up some chores before he leaves, BerniMac debuted as one of the show's anchors for Bay FM.

The following Saturday, we had as our resource person Ferdinand Hernandez, SBMA's "crush ng bayan" Senior Deputy Administrator for Operations. Sadly, I was operating over at Radyo ng Bayan so I wasn't able to join the fray at Bay FM. I could just imagine Atty. Hernandez' face grimace when the first salvo was a question about the recent drug bust here in Subic. Jeez. But being the cool and brilliant dude that he is, he answered it right on the dot. (Just so you know, it was the SBMA Law Enforcement Department that first cracked the op, not PASG...so there).

Last Saturday, we had our Labor Department Manager Severo Pastor talk about employment in Subic Bay. Again, with the station manager traipsing somewhere (hey, I needed the rest), BerniMac again anchored the show for Bay FM (Congrats! You are beginning to sound like an AM commentator already!), of course, with DJ Tommy in a supporting role.

I will soon upload excerpts from these editions soon.

And since I'm still into followthroughs, I might as well do now the long overdue part two of "A Dummy's Guide to Radio Lingo" which I wrote ages ago.

You know, I admit it but hey, I'm at that age right? So to save on time and energy, I will be referring you, interested radio geek, to an already published Radio Glossary by Corey Deitz in About.com.

For "A Dummy's Guide to Radio Lingo Part II," check it out here

I'm done!