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AV:
When was it that "exotic electronica" as you
lovingly call it on Musical Starstreams, made enough of an impression
on you that you personally began to listen to this type of music? Who
were some of the first artists to find their way into your own
collection of electronic music?
Forest:
Well the first program was broadcast back in Dec of 1981 and
I still have the playlist from it and we have it
posted on the Starstreams site. From then until the
mid 90's it was more European electronic pioneers like
Eno, Schulze, Jarre and Japan's Kitaro, along with the
more new agey type titles from Windham Hill and people
like Deuter with Celestial Harmonies. Later as
things evolved Private Music came around with Patrick
O'Hearn and others and then finally in the early 90's
the program began to become primarily electronica artists
from the UK and Europe like Banco de Gaia, the early
laid back things from Moby from the USA and some of
the UK's Beyond label artists. Ambient, spacemusic,
dub, downtempo, trip hop, acid jazz...artists
from all these categories. After taking a closer look
at what we were playing then, the "exotic electronica"
tag seemed to be pretty descriptive. And of course we
were getting our Waveform label off the ground in late
93 as well.
AV:
In the early days of electronic/ambient/new age music, when did it
become apparent that enough of a demand existed to support a radio
show like Starstreams? Were there any milestones that let perceptive
people know that a new trend in music was being born?
Forest:
From even before our first airing seeing the success that
others were having we knew it would be well received.
From the first program MANY people would call the station
on the phone and say, "what IS that???!"
"I've never heard any music like this before! I
Love it." It was definitely touching people in
a unique, evocative way. the issue then became how to
translate that incredible interest into a career that
could pay the bills.
AV:
You've had quite an academic career as well as your career in radio,
where did the change take place that you decided music was the path
that you were going to follow instead of law, even after obtaining a degree?
Forest:
(laughs) Well music was always there, the change took place
when I was forced to make money when my love for music
wasn't covering expenses! It always seemed that
I would come back to music and actually passing
the bar never really brought in any money or benefited
me until I used it with my music endeavors. so
the question might better be what motivated you to try
something like law instead of music.
AV:
Tell me about the beginnings of you and radio. What formats did you
work with and was radio everything that you had hoped that it would be?
Forest:
Well I first started in college radio and without blatantly
advertising just how long I've been doing this, I will
say that one of the scandals when I started was
how long the Bob Dylan single "Like A Rolling Stone"
was! Up until then all the songs were 2 or 3 minutes,
then Dylan releases this nearly 7 minute song and radio
was aghast! It was great to see that and the whole underground
FM radio thing starting to bloom in San Francisco and
back east. Generally I've always had a love hate relationship
with radio.
Remember that other than college, my background has
always been with commercial radio rather than public
radio and I love that it's supported me and helped
me to get the exposure that this music deserves but
at the same time I've hated the conservative nature
of it and how stagnant and bottom line oriented it has
become.
I have a theory that now that digital satellite
radio is taking off with its hundreds of channels available
in our cars as well as everywhere else and with the
Internet soon to follow in our cars and already in our
cell phones, then commercial radio will be forced
to reinvent itself to survive and hopefully get good
again. We are already seeing it with the move
to cutback on advertising and a push to get online by
terrestrial commercial broadcasters.
AV:
When was it that you first began experimenting with the concept of
what would become Musical Starstreams?
Forest:
A few months before the first program aired. In the fall of 1981.
AV:
What kind of music pool did you have to choose songs from in those
early days? In other words what was the state of
electronic/ambient/new age at the time you conceived of Starstreams?
Forest:
Besides my own collection, the station I was working
for had a fairly eclectic library so amazingly enough
we actually had the early Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Tomita,
Budd and Eno LPs in house! Everything was on vinyl or
cassette! things were spacey, and thankfully new age
had not yet become syrupy and redundant. the electronic
scene then was definitely the pioneers like Jarre, Klaus
Schulze, Kraftwerk and T Dream. Then a few years later
new ownership came in and locked all of this incredible
collection in the basement and the station became an
"adult contemporary" drivel outlet!
AV:
In your radio career leading up to Starstreams you held quite a few
positions inside the industry, how did seeing all these aspects of
how a station runs help you to understand what you wanted to do with
Starstreams and how to go about doing it?
Forest:
Well I understood that working for one commercial radio
station could be very frustrating. it's a career that
is unlike any other in that you can work your rear off
for a station and STILL lose your job! All it takes
is new ownership or a new format (like satellite country)
and you could be shown the door. Understanding that
was the case, I decided to syndicate and offer
my program to MANY stations, that way when one went
down I could still survive. And it took me out
of the every day politics that are a part of all stations.
AV:
When Starstreams was ready to go solo how did you market it to those
original stations that gave the show a foothold to work with? How did
most of the radio stations you approached view your efforts to
program this instrumental music to a mainstream audience?
Forest:
Originally I was so broke that I actually got a
few stations to agree to share any revenue that the
show brought in with me! That is, if the program attracted
a LOCAL sponsor to the station that they didn't already
have, they agreed to give me a percent of that additional
new revenue! This was unheard of and only a few stations
agreed, but I actually did get some money that
way. Later it became all barter...they get the show
free in exchange for airing any NATIONAL sponsors that
I include in the show and then I keep all
the national ad revenue (of course my ad agency and
middlemen take their cuts). This is how it still works
today. Some of the bigger syndicators actually PAY the
stations to take their shows, because they can get more
ad revenue if they are on all the big market stations.
It's a really tough and competitive business.
Most of the stations were skeptical and rejected
the program from the beginning and that's still the
case more than ever today, but over the years we have
been heard on nearly 200 commercial stations and most
have been pleasantly surprised with the results and
ratings. Some have had us on continually for over 16
years in major markets, so you can bet if the following
wasn't there they would have dumped us long ago.
AV:
So now that you have been with Musical Starstreams
for over 20 years what is different about the markets
that you currently work in as compared to the markets
of 1981 where it all began? Is it easier to sell Starstreams
in this market than what existed 20 years ago?
Forest: Well radio has gone through
the evolution of tighter playlists, consolidated ownership,
limited formatics. a general downward spiral. However
as I've said previously this will eventually force terrestrial
radio to get better as competition from satellite and
Internet radio becomes more of a factor for them. clear
channel just instituted their less is more advertising
policy, cutting back on the number of ads you hear on
commercial radio. That's just one small example. I have
always been amazed how radio has continually buried
its collective head in the sand and ignored the competition
and state of the industry, even in the face steady of
audience shrinkage. So the simple answer is no, it is
not easier today. it is more difficult.
AV:
I found Starstreams when I began to stream it
on the Internet fighting upstream on a dial up account
but I enjoyed the music so much that I put up with the
rebuffering that happened every few minutes because
my connection was so slow. Tell me about the impact
that the Internet has had on spreading the Starstreams
word and how has broadband affected how a lot of folks
tune in to your program? (you might want to mention
all of the outlets that folks can currently find your
show)
Forest: I've said before that
technology helped to save the program when radio became
less receptive and we thankfully began to have the Internet
as an alternative. I have three streaming channels
linked from our site on the listen page at www.starstreams.com.
they are hosted from live365.com so they can be accessed
in the ambient, dub and electronic categories there
and the current biggest audience online is my full time
station at www.radioioAMBIENT.com
. Of course my seven day a week 4-6pm eastern XM77 satellite
radio broadcasts are a great place to listen and hold
much promise, because it is the first time I've ever
been available in drive time. I continue with around
twenty affiliate stations as well - all of which are
listed on the Starstreams site.
AV:
What are your views on the satellite radio networks
like XM or Sirius? Does your program get a lot of exposure
via that medium yet and will that be a growing medium
in the coming years?
Forest: We have talked to XM
about programming a full time channel for them since
before they went live, so the fact that it hasn't happened
YET is frustrating. As I mentioned above, to be
heard in afternoon drivetime seven days a week is huge
step in the right direction on XM and their audioVisions
channel 77. If their projected audiences of ten million
listeners in the next few years are reached then this
will indeed be an even bigger deal! Sirius has been
more of a challenge but I continue to work on them
as well.
AV:
I want to talk about Waveform in a minute but
I would like to know just how you manage to find all
of the tracks that you play on any given Starstreams
program. How difficult is it to sort through all of
the submissions that you must get from all over the
world and come up with just the right songs from each
CD for the show? Do you ever get a little jaded after
hearing so much material day in and day out?
Forest: I sort through new submissions
and pull from a library of over 5000 cds. I have
to say that the most gratifying part of a tremendously
over burdened work week is when I can actually
program the sets for each show. On the other hand it
is also the most challenging in that a lot of earlier
library material no longer fits and a lot of submissions
are just no longer suited (the syrupy new age things
come to mind). So finding material for each program
can be a chore in that I want fresh things that
I haven't played to death in the past and sometimes
they are hard to find in my walls of cds. If only I could
spend a few months in some European music stores!
AV:
What does the future hold for Starstreams? Where
do you see the program going in the coming years? Are
you going to continue to host or might you turn it over
to someone else like you did for awhile not so long
ago?
Forest: It's been a lot of years,
a lot of cheers and more than a few tears along the
way but I want to continue for as long as it makes
sense. Maybe it's my ego but I feel that I have
a gift in finding and presenting music to people that
they say makes a difference in their lives. Just a few
days ago I got an email from a radioioAMBIENT listener
asking if I placed some kind of subliminal tones
or soundwaves into my sets because he often felt mesmerized
or hypnotized while he was listening. This is very gratifying
to me, because I believe what sets apart my programming
from a typically programmed chill channel at a big Internet
portal, which is usually a jukebox of randomly selected
tricky, Portishead, Massive Attack and Zero 7 cuts is
the EVOCATIVE quality of the sets I program. I want
music to create a mood and touch the listener. You can
be new and hip but are you ALSO evocative? that's the
key for me!
AV:
Waveform. A great label that puts out great music.
I would venture to say that every release that I have
every heard from Waveform has been a wonderful CD. I
can't say that about a lot of labels that I have listened
to over the years but I certainly can say that about
Waveform. Tell me the thinking behind forming Waveform
records in the first place. Was this something that
you always planned on or did it evolve from the Starstreams
show?
Forest: Well as I've told the
story before in the past, in the early 90's right after
the change in direction music was taking with the success
of the first enigma cd, I was really enjoying the
ambient dub and chill out music coming from the UK and
was incorporating as much of it into the program as
I could. I eventually made contact with Mike
Barnett who started his beyond record label from Birmingham,
just to try and get more of the music for my program
and after some communication he said he had bigger ideas
and came all the way to Sedona to visit me. within a
few minutes of talking it was clear we both wanted to
spread the music over here and having a label to do
so (as well as the program) just made sense. we settled
on the Waveform name after we found out the beyond name
was already being used by a label in NY at the time.
I also saw it as a chance to get my hands on more of
this style of music from the UK and Europe so I was
excited at the prospects for both our new label and
my radio program content.
AV:
How is it that you find/found the talent that
ended up on Waveform? Is there something in particular
that you look for in the artists that you sign that
says this is a Waveform artist?
Forest: Things are sent to me,
or I shake the branches until something falls to
the ground. It's really my personal taste and what I hope
will do well in the unpredictable marketplace. In the
beginning we started off like gangbusters but for many
reasons it's still more a labor of love now. I don't
bring out many releases but I am staunchly proud
of everything on the label which at this writing is
up to 36 total releases over the past eleven years,
35 of which are still currently in the catalog. Coming
from a radio background has helped too I think
because I have always been keen on offering the
consumer an album with more than just one or two good
tracks (of course it's all subjective). maybe a better
way to put it is that I've always tried to offer releases
where every track is good from my perspective and taste.
AV:
Tell me about your relationship with Waveform.
What role does Forest play in the operation of the label
and do you have others that work with you in the day
to day operation of Waveform?
Forest: I pretty much do it all.
I have two graphic artists that I work with
for the label artwork and I bring promotional people
on board to work radio, the press or retail where appropriate.
my distributors also help a with new titles.
AV:
I know that you have a limited release schedule
is that because you like to make each release a memorable
one at just the right time with just the right artist
or is it more of an economic choice to release only
a few titles per year?
Forest: It's mostly because of
time constraints. If someone reading this wants to join
me as an investor or partner up in that way I would
be open to discussing it. For example, I could
bring out six very good titles this year but because
of the time requirements of the radio show, Internet,
satellite and music programming in general, it will
probably be more like three. I will say that if
I won the lotto for example, I would first
hire the absolute BEST people to team up with to carry
the vision of the label and radio program to the next
level - to make Starstreams and Waveform household words,
worldwide. It's exciting to think of how I could
make a difference in the world with music if the money
was there to help facilitate it!
AV:
To finish this interview off I just wanted to
ask your opinion of how electronica as a genre will
fare in the coming years. Do you see it as a growing
sub culture or just holding its own?
Forest: It's hard to predict.
If my radio audiences continue to grow on the Internet
and with satellite and maybe even terrestrial radio,
then it can't help but boost awareness for my vision
of "exotic electronica," ambient and chill
music and hopefully that translates into sales for the
artists I expose both on my label and on the hundreds
of other labels I pick from. generally I think
positively and feel that the best days are yet to come.
I just hope I'm still able to function when they
finally get here! (laughs)
AV:
Any final thoughts you'd like to share with your
listeners and with our readers?
Forest: Thanks for the support
over the last 24 years of the radio program and 11 years
of the label. I wouldn't still be doing this if
I didn't feel it was making an impact in the world.
Music really does touch people's lives and I am
humble and proud to help be part of that process. Please
think of me as a sound painter and my pallet is all
this wonderful music. I am here in my studio mixing
together sets for the radio and Internet programming
and picking the tracks and artists for the label - of
music that hopefully touches you within or at the very
least clues you in to something you didn't already know
about. It's different but you like it. If I can
accomplish that then we all get some satisfaction out
of the process. Enjoy!
AV:
Forest thanks for taking the time to talk to me
and even though this chat has been a long time in the
making I am glad that we were finally able to get it
finished. I'll be one of those people out here listening
to the material that you put out on Waveform and
on your Starstreams radio show as well. Keep up the
good work.
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