Audio Habits and Great Music

We all have our morning routines. My morning routine is more than just habit, it is something I have found starts my day well and frames my mood in preparation for a great rest of the day. One part which I have come to appreciate very much is my audio habits for weekday mornings.


CBC Morning with Radio 1
As my regular followers will know, I listen to CBC radio a lot. At 5:45 each weekday morning, I wake to the sound of CBC Radio 1. At that time the station is switching over from its night time international content, CBC Radio Overnight, to its local programming. Overnight features public broadcasters around the world – and in this early morning timeslot I have heard Australia, sometime Romania but very recently its Deutsche Welle. There is a schedule published on the website showing the times for various country’s public radio and I guess if I had insomnia at 3:00 a.m. I could take a listen to “Channel Africa”.

I get about 10 minutes of the foreign programming when Andy Barrie gives the preview of Metro Morning Show’s content and then World News comes on. While I ready myself and go through my daily absolutions I listen to the happy banter of the Andy and the 3-4 other on air personalities who do the various regular stuff like, news, weather and sports etc. I listen intently at 6:40 when we get a short comment regarding something in the world of economy and finance. There is one song in each half hour and there are absolutely no commercials – it is almost entirely talk radio. It sets my mind in gear as they bring up various bits and pieces, many of which I bring to this blog in the internet tradition of popular items “going viral”.

This morning there were several gems one of which I will repeat after I finish my monolog about my morning audio routine.

CBC Morning with Radio 2
I listen to Radio 1 until I walk the dog, at which point I don my MP3 Player and start listening to Radio 2 Morning’s Tom Allen and programming which is almost entirely music. It is music suitable to start the day. Up beat, not to loud and not too slow either. Not mainstream but good enough to be. As the promo material on the CBC website says: the show features a cross-genre look at the best of our nation's music.

There are two nice things about the music. As the blog of yesterday mentioned, Toronto is a diverse city – and so is Canada. It makes sense that our musicians play diverse styles of music. So we have a rich set of Canadian artists who play all sorts of music and I am always pleasantly surprised to hear the musicians they feature. The other nice thing about the music is that it meets my need for up tempo, happy and optimistic music as the final part of my morning routine. As I walk Bella and then walk to work, sometimes I almost end up skipping to the beat of the songs they play.

After my morning routine, I end up at work – mind enlightened and awake and mood elevated and optimistic. The perfect way to start the day!

So back to my gem of this morning.

Bernard Lachance and his “do it yourself” Concert

If you had a chance to catch Oprah on Tues May 5th you would have caught the segment that featured this guy. He is a Quebecois native and a French Canadian contemporary singer who has a great voice and he has self produced 3 albums. That is probably not unique, however what is unique is his concerts. He has had quite a few sold out shows – the last one was at Massey Hall in Toronto and his next one is June 6th – in Chicago. Check out his web site here.

He does everything himself – including selling the tickets! He stands outside the theatre for weeks in advance of the show and convinces people (by offering up free samples of his singing) to come see his concert. When he sells a ticket he has the person mark the seat off on his t-shirt which has the theatre seating plan printed upon it. How inventive!

Neither does he do anything in halves. It is not just a one man show he is putting on. He is singing with 10 musicians and a huge choir at The Chicago Theatre. It should be great! I wish I could go and see the show!

The latest from this excellent marketer was a pitch to Oprah, via You Tube, to come to see his show at in Chicago. She couldn’t see his show, so she invited him to be on her show! How splendid is that!

Watch Bernard’s appeal to Oprah:




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