Music Notes

Music Notes

The big news this week is the initiation of a new local radio station. WIQB-FM, formerly known in these partsvas WNRZ, due on the air March 1st. It 's too early to tell exactly what kind of station W-103 Quadrock,"as it is being hyped, will be. On the one hand the station is promising community news and involvement. on the other, the actual on-air presentation will probably be severely restricted and over-formatted musically . Bu its own admission, W-103 is out to create a commercial fm "progressive rock" station that lies somewhere "in between WRIF and WWWW-FM." Certainly the station needs to be "commercial" in the sense that the owners should earn back their investment or the station will not survive. But Ann Arbor does not need another Top 40 or Top 100 radio station, and is capable of supporting a more creative approach. There's already enough RIF's and W4's to go around on the dial.

The station has announced its on-air staff, who it turns out have primarily Top 100 "play the hits" backgrounds. They are Mark Allen, formerly of WHNN-Flint and WLAV in Grand Rapids, John Goodloe, Sim Shepherd (the only woman with just one show a week) from WRIF, Jim Seitz from WCBN, Don Burns from W$, and Bill Champoin from WAAM. Additionally, and happily, WNRZ veteran Jim Dulzo has been hired to do the all-night show, which will probably be more varied and original than the regular programming. Two other WNRZ people turned down offers to work at the station because they felt the restrictive format would not be able to make it in this town. As always, stay tuned to the SUN for further developments...

Also in radio news, WCBN-FM is moving back to its very own 89.5 on the FM dial on March 10. It's been operating temporarily at 88.3 megahurtz...WABX has been going through some intense personnel changes lately, some good and some disappointing. For more on the radio situation, see the next SUN, which will be a special Music Recording issue with interviews with Herbie Hancock and Gil Scott-Heron, 4 pages of record reviews, a look at local bands, and a review of two new books on the music business. On the streets March 14...

Sky King, Ann Arbor's own, has just released their first album on Columbia, Secret Sauce.. Gladys Knight is suing Motown records.. .The new Arista jazz release is out with Ips by Gato Barbieri, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Marion Brown and other greats...Earth, Wind and Fire have a new lp out; they play Crisler Arena on March 13th with John Mayall...John Lennon's latest record is straight old rock and roll... Warner Bros. will issue a previously unreleased Jimi Hendrix session shortly. But Allan Douglas remixed it with current studio musicians under Jimi's original tracks.

Country music stations are banning 'The Pill" as too hard to swallow. "The Pill" is Loretta Lynn's latest hit - a song about a woman saddled with an unfaithful spouse and a growing brood of children. In the lyrics she discovers that birth control pills mean that two can play the same run a round game.