KFAI (
K Fresh
Air,
Inc.--the nonprofit organization that owns the station) is a community broadcaster from Minneapolis, Minnesota which is staffed mostly by volunteers. They employ a block formatted schedule with a wide variety of eclectic programming.
My favorite show on KFAI by far is
Crap From the Past which can be heard Friday nights at 10:30 local time. Hosted by Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber, CFTP is "a pop music radio show for people who already know plenty about pop music." As taken from the introduction to each show, this would include such things as "funk, rock, Peter Gabriel singing in German, soul, old-school rap, ABBA singing in Spanish, glam, hair metal, Milli Vanilli singing in English, and, of course, disco." Themed shows have included
songs with especially good bridges,
songs that spent exactly one week on the Billboard Top 40 and
songs that involve telephones (a two-parter!) It's weird, wonderful stuff and the best part is that
every show has been archived all the way back to 1999 (with some internet-only and pre-KFAI shows dating back to 1992.) As a child of the eighties who used to listen to Casey Kasem religiously but was far more interested in the songs that barely flirted with the charts, this show is right in my wheelhouse. Gerber and I both lived in western New York around the same time and had a healthy appreciation for CFNY and Toronto record stores so maybe there's some kind of cosmic musical connection....all I know is I LOVE THIS SHOW! It's a graduate level course in pop music. Start earning your degree
now!
EDIT: In the late summer of 2020 I received a radio ratings diary. I don't know what Nielsen does, if anything, when people record out-of-town stations but it's certainly not helping Dayton radio when I list a Minneapolis station. I also wonder what they do with the comments. Are they given to stations as part of the benefits of subscribing? KFAI is non-commercial so I doubt that they were informed of my comment about one of their shows.
"A Prairie Home Companion" is a backstage look at the last performance of a long-running radio variety show. It stars Garrison Keillor as himself along with a large ensemble cast including Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen and Tommy Lee Jones. The fictional APHC has run on WLT radio (With Lettuce and Tomato) for 30 years but an oily businessman has bought the theatre with plans on shutting down the show. The security guard narrates the story and becomes attracted to a mysterious woman in a white trench coat. There’s also music—lots and lots of music--all of it fitting into the standard APHC repertoire of folk, bluegrass, standards, country and gospel. Harrelson and Reilly play singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty while Streep and Tomlin play the duo the Johnson Sisters. All the actors sang their own songs and played their own instruments. I’m not a huge fan of this type of music but the characters and Keillor’s charm and impeccable voice made it worth watching….once. This was the last film directed by Robert Altman who died about 5 months after it was released.
The actual A Prairie Home Companion radio show first aired on Minnesota Public Radio in 1974. It still broadcasts live Saturday nights from the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul on almost 600 public radio stations.
