Bongolia! (The Sam Pellman – WHCL mix)

So here’s the story.

Sam Pellman was a beloved professor at Hamilton College. He taught music – electronic music, to be precise – and his studio had one of the early Moog synthesizers ever available. That’s right, we got to play on a Moog synthesizer.

Also around that time, I was production director at the college radio station, WHCL. Our production studio consisted of a couple of turntables, a mixing board, and a reel-to-reel tape deck. We could record commercials, public service announcements, and put them on little cartridge machines (“carts”) that were played between songs and DJ patter.

And on occasion, I would noodle around with some musical concept – maybe something I learned in Professor Pellman’s class, maybe something I figured out with the WHCL production studio.

Fast forward to 2021. And I had an idea for something for my radio show.

I could take snippets of various songs, and blend them together into a cohesive medley.

Okay, yeah, Stars on 45 did that 40 years ago, Chuck, think of something original.

But Stars on 45 didn’t have the Audacity computer program. Or a bit of time to use it.

So, using the inspiration from Professor Pellman, and some digital twists and turns, I took an instrumental from the 1970’s instrumental group Incredible Bongo Band (no, not “Apache” – I chose “Bongolia!” instead), and layered it with snippets and stingers and lyrics from various 1970’s pop songs. Some are distinctive, some are obscure, some are cheezy, some are head-scratching, but all of them are tracks you would find in your various AM radio station during that time period.

And this Friday night, I’m giving this sonic collage the broadcast premiere on my radio show. You know, essentially I’m doing my own Girl Talk or DeadMau5 interpretation.

Want to hear it ahead of time?

Click the button down below. This is the Bongolia Mix – Samuel Pellman Version.

What do you think? Has it got a great beat and you can dance to it? 😀

Again, it’ll premiere this Friday night, during the 7:00 hour of the Nightowl Radio Show, on 88.7, WHCL-FM, Clinton, New York.