I recently started doing a show on the radio station News98 (98.1) in Taipei, Taiwan. The show is to be broadcast every other Saturday from 3 to 5 pm. I expect to mainly focus on Taiwanese popular music, but I haven’t got it planned out in much detail. Since I collect a pretty wide variety of music, I imagine I’ll end up playing music from all over. I am particularly interested unusual or obscure recordings, I want to try to play as many of these as I can, since listeners are less likely to hear many of them elsewhere. On the other hand, I don’t want to overdo it, especially since at this point I’m not sure how much the people likely to tune in are likely to already know. The trick will be to make sure the audience has some connection to most stuff I play, whether because they’ve actually heard it before (or some version of it), or because they are familiar with the artist, though of course there are also a lot of really good songs that I think most people will like even if they know nothing about them at all. Also I want to have a lot of variety in the themes of my shows, without the contrast being so great from show to show that people find it too much to take. In any case, while I may want to set up a separate blog dedicated especially to this show, for the time being I’ll occasionally post about it here.
For my first show, which was broadcast on November 14, I decided to play a wide variety of songs as sort of a preview of some of the types of music I expect to play on future shows. I framed it to roughly reflect my own journeys in learning about the popular music of Taiwan and nearby places in Asia. Thus I started with one of the songs that was popular at the time I first came to Taiwan, and continued with songs by some of the first singer-songwriters I was introduced to when I started listening seriously to Taiwanese pop. Then I followed my explorations further and further back into the past and into the pop music of the smaller ethnic groups in the country as I started to learn more about Taiwanese popular music history. I then played a few Taiwanese rock songs and rock songs from Hong Kong and Thailand, before concluding with a song by one of my favorite recent Taiwanese aboriginal groups. I hope this selection gave listeners a good idea of the music that can expect to hear on my show in the future.
情網〈詞：劉虞瑞 曲：伍思凱〉 張學友 (1993)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
戀曲1990〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1988)
無聲的所在〈詞：陳世杰 曲：吳俊霖〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1995)
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
走在雨中〈詞曲：李泰祥〉 齊豫 (1979)
迴旋曲〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
你說過〈詞：吳文良 曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1972/07)
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
秋風夜雨〈詞：周添旺 曲：楊三郎〉 陳芬蘭 (1965)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
有空來玩〈詞：陳明仁 曲：卑南歌謠〉 北原山貓 (1997)
我不能出嫁〈詞曲：阿美歌謠〉 盧靜子 (1968)
Heaven on Fire〈詞曲：孫寰東〉 Metal Kids (1988)
長城〈詞：劉卓輝/詹德茂 曲：黃家駒〉 Beyond (1992)
Made In Thailand (W/M: Yuenyong Ophakul) Carabao (1984)
困惑 (fast) 〈詞：查馬克、阿新、Suming 曲：Suming、阿新〉 圖騰樂團 (2006)
