Fresh Listen: NYTheSpirit.Com

You either appreciate the art of the segue or you don’t.

The segue isn’t just the records that were chosen to play next to each other, but the way they were put together. It’s a detail of radio craftsmanship that is easily derided now as not-so-important-to-the-listener, but if you still regard the segue as part of making great radio, then let’s be friends. And next we can discuss what should happen at the top of the hour.

If you schedule music for a living, your job is to engage in overthink, then hope that the person executing the segue on the air delivers what you imagined. Or, these days, to hope that a song’s end tones aren’t in the wrong place, and/or that a voice-track is properly aligned, rather than sloppily inserted and stopping the music’s flow for no reason at all.

Your best chance of appreciating the segue is if you worked in the early progressive era of rock radio.

David Marsden clearly appreciates the segue.

Marsden is the former PD of CFNY Toronto, the station immortalized by Rush as “The Spirit of Radio.” Like KROQ Los Angeles, CFNY was an Alternative radio pioneer that remained successful through the ‘80s, even as the brief format boom spurred by KROQ was upstaged elsewhere by CHR and MTV. In the years before the ‘90s “New Rock Revolution,” CFNY was one of the few Alternatives that was a major player in its market, not a niche station.

In September, Marsden’s current project, NYTheSpirit.com will celebrate its sixth anniversary. NYTheSpirit is a subscription-only internet radio stream. Marsden hosts Saturday and Sunday nights. Other jocks, including CFNY veterans Ivar Hamilton and the just-announced Live Earl Jive make “pop-up” appearances throughout the week.

Much of the music on NYTheSpirit hearkens back to ‘80s era CFNY, but AOR’s progressive era is the driving spiritual presence, especially in the assembly of the station. The library is 25,000 songs. Nothing repeats in a 48-hour period. And the segue matters a lot.

Marsden’s mix is also fluid from hour to hour. The first hour is typically more rocking. When I tuned in around 10:45 p.m., he was mashing up Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” with Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” and Supertramp’s “The Logical Song.” But the 11 p.m. hour was chilled out, atmospheric, traveling from Van Morrison and Leon Russell to Martha & the Muffins to Troye Sivan. During that hour, Marsden mixed R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” together with David Bowie’s “Heroes” and dedicated it to the late U.S. Representative John Lewis.

No hour of NYTheSpirit should be taken as typical, except in its sensibilities.  Here’s the station just before 3 p.m. on Monday, July 20:

• Richard Ashcroft, “Out Of My Body”
• Greg Kihn Band, “The Breakup Song”
• Real Life, “Send Me An Angel ‘89”
• Feargal Sharkey, “A Good Heart”
• Hidden Cameras, “The Day I Left Home”
• Payola$ f/Carole Pope, “Never Said I Loved You”
• Gotye, “State of the Art”
• Simply Red, “Jericho”
• Kirsty MacColl, “Walking Down Madison”
• Billy Idol, “White Wedding (Long Version)”
• Yo La Tengo, “Friday I’m In Love”
• It’s Immaterial, “Driving Away From Home”
• Haircut One Hundred, “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)”
• Elliott Murphy, “Not Enough Time”
• The Jam, “Smithers-Jones”
• Alan Parsons Project, “Eye In The Sky”

And here’s a more chilled-out hour of Marsden starting around 10:45 p.m. on Saturday night, July 18:

• Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy,” mashed up with Rockwell, “Somebody’s Watching Me” and Supertramp, “The Logical Song”
• Frankie Goes To Hollywood, “Welcome To The Pleasuredome”
• Michael Andrews & Gary Jules, “Mad World”
• Peter Gabriel f/Kate Bush, “Don’t Give Up”
• Van Morrison, “The Great Description”
• Thermodynamics, “Future Noise”
• R.E.M., “Everybody Hurts,” mashed up with David Bowie, “Heroes” and dedicated to John Lewis
• Moody Blues, “Are You Sitting Comfortably?”
• Slave To The Square Wave, “Worlds Away” (cover of the Canadian hit by Strange Advance; the band’s Rob Stewart is one of the station’s DJs)
• Sinead O’Connor, “Nothing Compares 2 U”
• Elliott Murphy f/Bruce Springsteen, “Everything I Do (Leads Me Back To You)”
• Leon Russell, “Me And Baby Jane”
• Martha & the Muffins, “Echo Beach (Acoustic),” a 30^th anniversary chillout remake of the Blondie-like 1980 classic
• Troye Sivan, “Take Yourself Home”
• Dee Long, “Good Night Universe” (Marsden’s show closer)

More information about NYTheSpirit.com can be found here. You can also check out the station’s YouTube channel.