The program Seasons Of Change has (for now) completed it's run on PBA-FM 89.7, Adelaide's Northern Voice.
I (David) would like to thank all of you who have, over the years, tuned in at 8pm on a Saturday night.
Special thanks to you if you made contact through social media, and especially if you rang through to PBA-FM at any time while the program was going to air, whether you gave feedback or just said Hi.
Most presenters you hear on Australian community radio are volunteering their time to keep their local station on the air; they prepare and present programs consistent with their stations licence, the requirements of the assigned shift (day and time) and the overall principles under which community radio operates here in Australia. This is not necessarily a small task. It is a pleasure indeed at any time to receive feedback and suggestions and I thank all of you who took the time to do this.
I would also like to thank PBA-FM who in February 2012 graciously assigned the shift of 8pm to 11pm to me for a potential program based around the music genre of "progressive rock". The "potential" program of course took on a life of it's own, and from the start adopted a specific aim to give airtime to Australian music past and present, focussing on the various styles and sub-genres of "progressive rock"...
For those of you who like statistics, here are just a few (I will probably add more later):
- The Total Number of weeks on air: 585
- The Total Number of songs: 10,293
- The Number of Australian artists featured: 287
- The % and total time of songs that were from Australian artists (understated due to rounding error): 27,948 hours. That is at least 33% of total program time
Please continue to support community radio in general and your local station PBA-FM in particular. If you have a look at the station website (pbafm.org.au), you will find a diverse range of listening on the schedule - including community access programs, multicultural programs and specialist music programs. As one of our station IDs used to say, there really is "something for everyone" on PBA-FM.
By the way I will intermittently keep updating the Gigs (Future and Past) page with details of upcoming gigs of interest here and interstate, the ones I know about anyway so please keep an eye on it. Gigs (Future and Past) was updated as recently as 14 Jan 2024.
Thank you again - David.
ANOTHER EDIT: "Behind the scenes", to assist with program planning each week, I kept an Excel file of all the music which went to air. The size of that Excel file of course ballooned quickly over 11 years... Taken from that file, here is a list of the 30 most frequently played artists over the entire run of Seasons Of Change - it should be no surprise that Australian music is highly represented and in particular artists from the state of South Australia; the support of Australian artists past and present is a key reason why community radio exists here in Australia.
And in closing...a special mention for Ben Rogers' Instrumental Asylum, "a power trio delivering twanging reverb-drenched surf-rock instrumentals" - Ben and his band are decidedly non-Prog but their blistering instrumental recording of the classic Aussie song "Seasons of change" was played almost 210 times at the end of most editions of the show (starting from the date that the length of the show was shortened from 3 hours to 2 hours). If you are in Melbourne, check out their FB page for gigs as they arise. From 2012, here it is again in it's full and complete glory with the trio joined by guest drummer Al Kash with a drum solo (Al also played on the original recording of that song by Blackfeather in 1970):
