Program #37, January 18 2001: Unthemed.

I had several competing scenarios (mostly of the From Cats to Dogs variety) in mind for this program, but none of them seemed willing to jell into place. Finally, at about half an hour before air time, I decided to do something I'd thought about doing for sometime: write down the names of a bunch of pieces I'd been thinking about, along with a few outliers just to keep me honest, and compose the entire show's playlist by drawing pieces randomly out of my hat. I started off the program with a small John Cage piece, which gave me a bit of license to do a quick standard rap on the role of chance in the arts, but from there on out it was all random. It didn't work half bad, actually, with some juxtapositions between pieces working much better than the effects I'd been trying to craft by, well, trying. I don't know if I'll do it again soon, but I was pleased with the results this time, and have found that in the interim many of my thoughts about some of those pieces (and how I might fit them together) have definitely de-logjammed, so you can look forward to hearing some of them again in less aleatoric contexts in the relatively near future.