# CKUA Radio



## WCGill (Mar 27, 2009)

Is anyone on this forum a regular listener to CKUA radio? This is a life-sustaining daily habit of mine for many years, great new music (and old), intelligent and entertaining hosts, more than diversity. Many, myself included would argue this is the BEST radio station on the planet. For all you unfortunates not in Alberta, you can get it on the web, CKUA.com, give it a try. Once you've heard Baba, your life will not be the same.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

One of my main introductions to the blues was thanks to CKUA-especially Holger Petersen's program Natch'l Blues.

Through that show I discovered many blues artists and Alligator Records as well.

It's been many years, so I'm not sure of which blues artists I found through that show or from other sources--but I do know I found Otis Rush, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, and many others through that show.

There are other good programs too--for a variety of music styles.
Here's the website-CKUA

I keep having things come up on Saturdays these days and I miss Natch'l Blues too often--not every week, but too often.


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

WCGill said:


> Is anyone on this forum a regular listener to CKUA radio? This is a life-sustaining daily habit of mine for many years, great new music (and old), intelligent and entertaining hosts, more than diversity. Many, myself included would argue this is the BEST radio station on the planet. For all you unfortunates not in Alberta, you can get it on the web, CKUA.com, give it a try. Once you've heard Baba, your life will not be the same.


YES!!! I have been a listener and supporter since moving here in 1990. My daily commute woundn't be the same without it. There are very few radio stations like this any more. Reminds me of the old days of FM/college radio when you were constantly hearing someting new and interesting. I love Saturdays.... Baba is one of the coolest programmers they have now, but then there is Holger, and TDM always plays good tunes, and then there's Lionel and Kevin and Monica and Peter and Tony....

I really miss Bill Coull's jazz show which is what really got me hooked on CKUA back then.


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## 4345567 (Jun 26, 2008)

__________


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I used to write a musical technology column for their program guide in the early 80's, and was able to meet a number of musical luminaries in the process of interviewing people for them: James Brown, Leonard Feather, Lary fast, and Loudon Wainright.

Sadly, my experience being on-air was rather awkward. I had written an op-ed piece for the guide about what I felt was encroaching racial segregation on mainstream radio. In an attempt to castigate programmers on the major stations, I tried to depict their sentiments in an imagined conversation and used the N-word in the process. For reasons that were never clear to me, somehow, what I wrote went through 7 or 8 sets of hands, and none of us caught the absence of quotations marks that might have made clear that these were not OUR views, but rather what we thought OTHERS in the radio industry might be thinking. When the piece showed up in print, fecal matter and fan collided and the phones lit up with cries for me head. I had to write not one but two retractions/apologies in print, and also appear on a popular Saturday funk show and apologize to the African-Canadian community. The irony was that I was living in married student housing, surrounded by the rather substantial African graduate student representation there. And at the same time, Alberta was embroiled in the Keegstra controversy. It was a very crappy time and place for someone as devoutly anti-racist as myself to make such a faux pas.


....but all that aside, it was and is a great station.:smile:


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## WCGill (Mar 27, 2009)

Ah, the road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions. Sorry to hear about your messy situation Mark. I'm not familiar with you as a CKUA personage but rather as an astute and intelligent member of the online amp community-tube power, not ***********!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Well thank you!:smile:

My unfortunate episode was during the big hair days of rock, when Loverboy and Motley Crue would come to Edmonton regularly. Compared to the radio era I grew up on, where you could hear Miriam Makeba, Otis Redding, Millie Small, Peter Paul and Mary, Henry Mancini, Kyu Sakomoto, and the Seeds within the same hour, without anyone thinking twice about it, 1982 radio was starting to feel like some music was relegated to "the back of the bus". If you wanted ska, blues, soul, funk, or jazz, you had to start looking around for other stations, because mainstream was NOT going to play it. It did not make me a happy camper. Happily, campus radio (including CKUA) has always been above that.


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