C’ville Podcasting on Progress March

The Charlottesville Podcasting Network has a story today about Paul Richards’ “Daily Progress” march, which debuted at the Charlottesville Municipal Band‘s Spring Concert at PVCC last night. The audio story is available as an MP3, complete with excerpts from the performance. It’s a good-sounding song, too, FWIW.

Fridays After 5 Lineup Announced

Fridays After 5, in its latest incarnation, has announced both the location and the lineup for the first half of the season, WINA reports. It’ll be held at the corner of First Street and Garrett Street, behind the Pink Warehouse, its location until the amphitheater exists again. The bands in the May-June chunk of the season include Indecision, Alligator, the Chickenhead Blues Band, and the Hackensaw Boys.

Those who don’t follow these things closely may appreciate knowing that the city sold the rights to the public amphitheater to developer Coran Capshaw last year, he promised to maintain some incarnation of Fridays after 5, and the Charlottesville Downtown Foundation closed shop in January, since without Fridays, they’ve got no revenue stream.

Update: John Yellig has the story in today’s Progress.

UVa Posts 5,000 Hours of WH Tapes

Aerial writes: “The Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia has made available almost 5,000 hours of tapes recorded by six U.S. presidents from 1940 to 1973. They can be listened to for free at Whitehousetapes.org.”

Kind of off-topic, but cool enough to mention here. :) News.com has the story.

The Daily Progress March

Paul Richards, of Nellyford, has composed a march entitled “The Daily Progress” — it is, in fact, an ode to that very newspaper. Richards is a trumpet player in the Charlottesville Municipal Band, and the piece will get its first performance on Tuesday night at the band’s Spring Concert at PVCC.

Believe it or not, this is an old tradition. In the newspaper that is the object of Richards’ affection, John Yellig writes:

With Richards’ composition, The Daily Progress takes its place alongside other newspapers with their own marches, such as the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, which had its ditty penned by the legendary composer John Philip Sousa.

The tradition of dedicating marches to newspapers originated in the 19th century, when bandleaders hoping for prominent billing sought to flatter editors by dedicating compositions to their publications. Oftentimes, the song in question had been recycled several times over at previous stops along the tour.

“The Daily Progress,” Richards said, is an original.

The promotion seems to be particularly good for the Progress, who has received a write up in Editor & Publisher as a result of the original work.

This One Guy Doesn’t Like Our Decals

This just in from WINA: Some guy from Greene County thinks that Charlottesville’s car decals are “too fancy.” Thanks for that, Howard Huffman of Ruckersville. We’ll get right on that. And thanks, WINA, for the hard-hitting journalism.

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