Ponies on the Radio · 6:23pm Dec 23rd, 2016
Every Sunday afternoon:
I do this radio program here in southern California. It goes out "over the air" on KUCI, 88.9 FM, and streams live on the world wide web if you take the link to the radio station's site earlier in this sentence and click in the proper places on the page there.
Now, this Sunday is Christmas Day, but I was planning on doing my regular two hours from 4PM to 6PM Pacific Time anyway--most of my cantoring and guitaring takes place Christmas Eve with the choir handling all but the dawn mass on Christmas Day. Then the station manager asked me if I might be able to fill in for the show ahead of mine, and I said, "Sure!"
If you're interested in the entire schedule of events that afternoon, I'll direct you to this blog post here, but I did want to confirm to folks that the "Pony Kind of Christmas" special I've been planning will indeed take place at 4:30PM Pacific Time--that'll be 12:30AM on Boxing Day in Greenwich, England, so I'm afraid it might be past a few bedtimes. During the segment, I'll be summarizing the "Hearth's Warming Eve" and "Hearth's Warming Tail" episodes while playing the appropriate songs from the recently released "It's a Pony Kind of Christmas" CD.
There are at least three unfortunate aspects to this plan. The first is how late it'll be for anyone who isn't in the US or Canada: I'd already publicized the time to my listeners before the station manager offered me the earlier hours, so if I move the Pony program, my regular listeners--if such creatures truly exist--will miss it. The second is the way that the CD doesn't include the reprise of "Hearth's Warming Eve is Here Once Again" where Starlight sings the lesson she's learned: my current plan is the play the version that opens the episode at the conclusion of the summary to give the thing the jaunty ending it needs. And the third is the strict policy at KUCI where we aren't allowed to record our programs and post them to any web site anywhere: the station is licensed to stream music over the web but not to archive it in any way, shape, or form.
So it's live or nothing, I guess. 
Mike
You're doing this, awesome!
I'll be sending it to Equestria Daily right now!
What if someone, who is not associated with KUCI and who has the capabilities, records it and uploads it himself somehow?
I mean, it could happen.....
And here I thought for sure that even you would take a break on Christmas... I guess I should've known better!
I don't know if I'll be able to catch this, but I'll try to tune in at least for a little bit. Would hate to miss out on ponies on KUCI!
The hasty grim ending is the one complaint I have about "It's a Pony Kind of Christmas" beyond, y'know, the central conceit of inserting a non-in-universe holiday and having the characters sing about it. But if you accept the fact of the album it's not bad, but for that downer ending. I've got a YouTube rip of the final song's audio that I've set up as the last "track" of that album on my MP3 player, but the quality takes a dip of course.
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If someone were to record the program:
I would be shocked--shocked!--to learn of it!
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If the CD had just been the actors singing Christmas carols in character, I've gotta say, I wouldn't've bought it. But as soon as I heard that it would have the songs from "Hearth's Warming Tail" on it, I realized I'd be able to do a program like the one I'm planning.
I just wish they'd included the the last verse and chorus from the episode, but, well, it's like the way the soundtrack album to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" ends without the reprise of the main title piece that actually ends the movie. When I play the album on the show, I have to play side 1, flip it over to play side 2, then flip it over again and play the first track of side 1 again to get the proper effect. And yes, I play the original vinyl version: when I started in radio, CDs hadn't been invented yet, so I spent several years learning the art of flipping a record over live on the air...
Mike Again
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You are a man of many talents, sir.
That's beautiful.
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I have only listened to the original album, not the new one. They gave it a grim ending? What'd they do, leave the little match stick girl out in the cold?
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/5/15/1154913__safe_screencap_animated_starlight+glimmer_discovery+family+logo_a+hearth%27s+warming+tail_spoiler-colon-s06e08_hearth%27s+warming+eve_snowfall+frost_the+little+match+girl.gif
Clearly I need to finish my Christmas story, which definitely doesn't involve the destruction of an entire civilization.
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It's vitally important:
To turn the volume down before beginning the process. After that, the rest is, like, totally easy...
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I'm constantly surprised:
That I didn't use "Hyniof," the acronym for "Hey, Your Nose is on Fire," as my pen name around here. I use it so many other places...
As for the CD of the Pony Christmas album, they put the songs from "A Hearth's Warming Tail" after the songs from the original digital release, but then they didn't include the reprise of "Hearth's Warming Eve is Here Once Again." So the whole album ends with Luna's doom and gloom number from the episode.
Mike Again
You hafta wait but you can hear it onna...
Wait, you sing?
*sigh* And there goes the chance of getting a recording.
The show was wonderful and I would have loved to record it so much, but the program I'm usually using for this failed me. Gave me a weird, non-sensical error message, then the created file was just rubbish.....
I really hope someone else has recorded it.
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This one's:
More my speed. Or maybe:
At least those're two songs I've played on my show in the past...
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I actually sang and played guitar at four Catholic masses and a carol service between 4PM Saturday and 9AM Sunday. So I'm a little croaky right now...
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Oh, well:
Maybe I'll post the text here, and folks can recreate the show themselves in the comfort and convenience of their own homes!
Mike
From the EqD announcement: "...on the 26th, starting at 04:30 PM Pacific Time." I'm listening right now and not hearing anything relating to ponies. Did I miss it?
And if so, would you please do it again next week? I'm so sad to have missed it, and I'm sure I can't be the only one if others went off of the EqD post as well.
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Eeep!
I didn't notice the announcement on EqD or I would've told them I did the show on the 25th!
I've already got next week's New Year's Day show planned out, and the Pony Christmas took about half-an-hour so I can't really squeeze it in. Maybe I can record it with my own equipment and put it up on my website--that'll get around the station's "no posting music shows" policy...
I'll let you know if I do!
Mike
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OK:
I cobbled together some time and some equipment and recorded the "Pony Kind of Christmas" program I did live last Sunday. The microphone had a bit of a buzz to it that I couldn't track down, and the recorded version is somehow about three minutes shorter than the live version was--I always get more nervous, oddly enough, recording stuff than I do in a live situation--but folks can listen to it by taking this link. If someone getting this notification can reply and let me know if the MP3 comes through in an audible fashion, then I'll do a larger blog post so other folks can listen if they wanna.
Thanks!
Mike
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OH, SHIT.....
I think that goes on my account. I sent it in and apparently, I was so excited that I mixed up the date in my head and wrote "26th" instead of "25th", which I could just confirm by checking the mail I sent, and Calpain unfortunately does not check back with the source links and just copies the text you send per mail as the announcement text for the Roundup. 
And even my recording program failed me, so I can't even offer a recording of it now.....
I'm so happy that AugieDog could re-record it, otherwise, I would sink in shame into the ground for all time now.
I'm going to make up for this by uploading it to YouTube, as fancy as I can, and send it to EQD then.
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Thank you for doing this, you're a lifesaver, in more ways than one now!
I will put it on my YouTube account, then let EQD know about it!
I didn't listen to the whole thing now, but from the sampling I did, you said the exact same things like during the live broadcast.
Or have you written a script before the show?
How do you memorize all of this?
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Oh, yeah:
The whole thing's written out. That's the nice thing about doing stuff audio only: you don't have to worry about the visuals of shuffling pages around.
Mike Again
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Came through here just fine. Nice job on the stealthy track reordering.
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Thanks!
That was the trickiest part of the whole program: reading the section after Luna's song while at the same time turning the dial on the CD player to cue up track 11. The second trickiest was pausing the player in the middle of Applejack's song to give the narration before letting her and Starlight finish up. Fortunately, though, I live for adventure.
Mike