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AmbiEntrance: Your bio page on the Starstreams site lists quite an academic/professional evolution... would you say you've culminated, or are
still evolving?
Forest: Evolving for sure... ALL life is about evolving the soul, which goes on forever and what a "long, strange trip it's been." Actually as Seth says and we quote in the One AD and Slumberland releases, "One Lifetime is but One Night in the Life of the Soul." So even though each lifetime may seem like an eternity, it's merely a blink of the eye in the eternity of the soul.
AmbiEntrance: I can see that your radio/communications background comes in handy; do your legal credentials ever come into play?
Forest: Having gone to law school and being licensed to practice law (but inactive) has definitely helped a lot with urban survival and contractual issues.
AmbiEntrance: Do you ever create music yourself these days? How does your early rock band experience tie into your world today?
Forest: I've picked up my guitar maybe once in the last eighteen months. I wish I had the time to play it regularly. I think that the band and decades of radio experience has given me a pretty good ear for music. I've always thought that I could give someone else the thousands of CDs I have in my library and the hundreds I get each month for either the radio show or the label, and if they didn't have the ear for the music they could pick all the wrong tracks and it just wouldn't sound the same as what I choose to offer.
AmbiEntrance: I was unaware that your Musical Starstreams show had been around so long, almost 20 years now! How did it all start, and did you expect it to grow as much as it has?
Forest: I started doing it in the San Francisco area in December of 1981 as a block
during the last two hours of my Sunday slot of my regular weekend air shift
of 2-6 every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. It was so well received we
started airing it Wednesday nights from 10-Midnight too. It was unique in
that it was commercial radio as opposed to public or noncommercial radio.
We called the station "the last free radio station" and we got to play and
grow to appreciate music from every genre.
The station sold and changed
formats (don't they all?) and I knew the new owner would axe me very
quickly, so in the in term period when he was waiting to take over, I sent
out some tapes of the two hour Musical Starstreams segment and got a
station in Oregon and Seattle interested. So actually the "misfortune" of
the station selling, locking up the record library in the basement and
cancelling my show, led to me syndicating it, beginning in 1983.
AmbiEntrance: How has the show changed over time? How has electronic music in general changed in that period?
Forest: In the beginning it was all analog, there were no CDs. I even played
cassette tapes on occasion! The first shows were what I would call pure
new age or spacemusic, though from the start we tended to simply label it
as "New Concepts in Sound." It was albums like the first Vollenweider and
George Winston, the defunct Unity label, Michael Stearns, Kitaro, Jarre,
Tangerine Dream, Eno, Constance Demby, Deuter. The pioneers.
Over the years it has evolved into what I now label as "exotic electronica." The
shift occurred in the early 90's when new age got way too syrupy and
stagnant and the neoambient things were coming here from the UK and Europe.
Now we even dabble in triphop, drum and bass and acid jazz and world beats,
but regardless of what we call it, our main thrust has been to remain mid
tempo and play stuff that is either evocative (touches or reaches the
listener in a special way) or is so unique it makes the listener say, "Wow,
that's different, but I like it!"
We have a slogan we use occasionally on the program, "Where the unusual, is enjoyable." I definitely want people age 12 to 80 to like it without either age group thinking that it is a sell out to the other. I don't always hit the mark but after nearly two decades
plus another ten years in regular rock radio, I have a definite feel for
what works for me and hopefully the listeners.
AmbiEntrance: Where do you see modern electronic/ambient music heading - at Starstreams, Waveform, and in general?
Forest: I don't think about it that much. Certainly there is a trend that I don't support of harder and faster as far as electronica is concerned. What I'm more concerned with is what to program on Musical Starstreams show and release on Waveform and again the goal there will remain leading edge, accessible, midtempo stuff -- our unique mix of "exotic electronica."
AmbiEntrance: How would you say the Internet incarnation of the show has been doing thus far?
Forest: A few years ago I was becoming increasingly discouraged with the state of
commercial radio. Although it has served me well, it seemed like the show
would probably just fade away as new station managers and programmers came
aboard without a clue, love or passion for the music or my show. Some of
my stations have had the show for over ten years, in major top ten markets,
so you can bet if we didn't get the absolute highest ratings they would
cancel us in a heartbeat and they have done so even when we DID get #1
ratings! Anyway, don't get me started! I digress. It has always been my
intention to do Musical Starstreams as long as at least one outlet still
wanted to air it and then bingo, the program was injected with new life
through technology -- the Internet.
Now I am on a mission to have maximum
exposure on the net. We are already hosted by the two biggest providers of
Internet audio -- broadcast.com and netradio.net and up and comers like
audiohighway.com, discjockey.com and daypub.com. The short answer is that
the Internet has saved Musical Starstreams and net listenership is
exploding -- especially as access and technical quality continually
improve. We are getting well over 500 user sessions per day on our site,
www.starstreams.com alone and thousands more are listening directly at
these other sites. I would estimate that our weekly listenership on the
Internet alone is well over 60,000 and growing. That doesn't even begin to
count all the listeners on our affiliate radio stations. And still to come
is direct satellite broadcasting in the next few years along with the
Internet in our cell phones and cars! The future looks bright indeed!
AmbiEntrance: Are the 'Netcasts exactly the same as the radio broadcasts, commercials and all?
Forest: For the most part. Some of the commercials might be cut or others might be added. It depends on who is hosting it.
AmbiEntrance: What led to the birth of Waveform in 1993?
Forest: I started airing some titles from Mike Barnett's Beyond record label out of Birmingham in the UK. I was completely drawn to the music. It seemed
really fresh and invigorating and as I mentioned before the new age stuff
was becoming syrupy and stagnant. With James Asher's help I finally got
Mike to phone me back and he proposed to visit me in Sedona. When he
arrived, about twenty minutes later (no exaggeration), the label was born.
We tell the story at the label web site at www.waveformhq.com. We
originally were going to just make it the USA branch of Beyond but we found the Beyond name was taken here and after thinking about it we decided to
simply start up something new -- Waveform, so that Mike could keep Beyond to himself. It was good we did it that way because Mike eventually burned out and retired and Waveform became all mine. We remain good friends and still talk about doing things together in the future.
AmbiEntrance: I believe the A.D. comps were quite influential in really opening up the marriage between beats and ambient electronics; what would you say about this concept?
Forest: Oh yea. Mike Barnett coined the phrase "Ambient Dub" long before Bill Laswell started using it. Beyond's Ambient Dub compilations gave rise to the Waveform AD series, though at the end of our collaboration period it was starting to be just the opposite, the AD series was giving rise to Beyond's Ambient Dub albums. Again, at that point in time, to my ears, it was a very refreshing new musical style. It was different in that its source was more from a dance and club DJ vibe rather than new agey and
spiritual, yet the evocative effect could be very similar. Of course since
then the music scene has evolved in almost infinite stylistic directions.
AmbiEntrance: "Whatever happened to" the flagship acts from the A.D. series? (A Positive Life, Sounds from the Ground, Pentatonik, Higher intelligence
Agency, Coldcut, etc...)
Forest: They are all still around, some more active than others. Since most of them are based in the UK, you don't hear that much about them. Since they were more connected with my former partner Mike Barnett who also lives over there, they may or may not do other things with Waveform in the future. We've always stressed product over performer.
AmbiEntrance: How did the whole Ancient Alien video release with Sony come to be? Whose idea was it to include Waveform's early/mid '90s sounds?
Forest: Odyssey Productions who did most of the Mind's Eye videos, approached us with the idea. They basically had the visuals and wanted our music to accompany them. They picked the tracks that they thought would work best from our entire catalog and ended up choosing mostly earlier things. It's surprising how the album was perceived as being something new and fresh by a lot of people though.
AmbiEntrance: Where did the idea for the Earthjuice comp originate? Where were the artists located and how were they chosen for this specific project?
Forest: Earthjuice along with Slumberland are my two favorite albums in the entire Waveform catalog. I had wanted to do a more pure but comtemporary dub album since the beginning and then all these tracks started surfacing, so it all fell into place. All the artists are from either the UK or Germany. I spent months choosing the tracks and sequencing them and taking things off and putting things on. I think the amount of work we put into Earthjuice shows in the quality of the album. I like everything about it.
AmbiEntrance: I have a lot of fun with Earthjuice, and understand that it's caught on pretty well with others. What are folks saying about it?
Forest: Earthjuice was named a Top Ten album of 1998 at Amazon.com, and it's up for nominations at AFIM and NAV. We've gotten a lot of positive comments about the artwork and a number of encouraging reviews. Based on all that, I think that it has been well received but from my perspective of really liking it, I think it should be doing even better. The music business can be very frustrating.
AmbiEntrance: I'm looking forward to the soon-to-be-released Urchin CD. What can you tell us about that?
Forest: Urchin was offered to us by way of Chris Bangs and our connections with the Frosty compilation. Urchin is a duo -- Jez Coode and DJ Nic One from the UK who have put together an interesting mix of trip hop flavors, blissed out, down tempo beats and pumped up bass lines. It's one of those albums that the more you listen, the more you get into it. It's gotten a lot of good press in the UK.
AmbiEntrance: How do you "discover" Waveform's new acts?
Forest: Things get sent to me or I rustle the bushes until something scurries out.
AmbiEntrance: What other releases can we expect in 1999?
Forest: I am working on as many as five other things. A second dreamy episode of Slumberland, another electromagnetic Dub album from one of the artists who has a track on Earthjuice, something very unique from a new, more mainstream act called Liquid Zen (think electronic Pink Floyd, the Doors, T Rex) and sooner or later another Earthjuice volume and perhaps another Open Canvas. Hopefully, most of these will be out this year.
AmbiEntrance: Are Waveformand Musical Starsteams Y2K ready? What are your (personal and/or business) plans for the next millennium?
Forest: (Laughs) We're not stockpiling brown rice and beans. We just want to continue on our unhurried but deliberate path of offering intelligent and interesting music with the hopes that sooner or later it will break through to the masses. We plan to be heavily involved with Direct Digital Satellite Broadcasting and we're very excited about the continued growth of our web sites (come visit!), Internet exposure in general and developing delivery systems like mp3. Technology is advancing so rapidly now, things should get real interesting over the next few years.
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