Welcome

Hi everyone and welcome to the blog post for the show Brass Monkeys.

As the blog description states, Brass Monkeys is a two hour radio show heard on Sunday nights on our local radio station in the Kinglake Ranges, 94.5 KRR FM. The transmission reach of the show is across most of Melbourne, though meaning that we have a potential audience of a couple of million. In addition, we can be heard online through the radio station's website found at kinglakerangesradio.org. I know I've had a few listeners online since the show started back in January 2012.

Brass Monkeys seeks to find and play brass music in all its forms. This will include jazz, blues, swing, classical, movie scores, brass bands, funk, contemporary and pretty much any other genre you can mention.

I structure each show along a different theme. That theme may be based on a genre, or a composer or artist, or based on timelines, events or subject themes. A good example of this is for the first 5 shows I played this year:

Show 45: Howard Shore - Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit
Show46: Peter Graham - Brass band music composer
Show 47: Australiana theme - to coincide with Australia Day
Show 48: an introduction to the Euphonium
Show 49: Jazz legend James Morrison - his early albums

The music all comes from my own personal music collection that has been developed over the last 30 years or so. My love of brass comes from my hobby as an amateur trombone player in brass bands since the mid-eighties. I am not a professional musician/musicologist/DJ (I am an accountant by profession) so expect the odd slip, made up "fact" or incorrect inclusions or omissions along the way.

Why the blog? Well I have had a social network presence since the start on both Facebook and Twitter, but I wanted to have somewhere to place on record the music that I am playing, together with my observations and comments about that music. It's taken me a while to get this up and running (my 60th show is on this weekend), but better late than never.

Feel free to leave comments on this blog, though don't be too harsh if I get stuff wrong. I will correct stuff, along the way. Just feel free to share your enjoyment of the music that I play on the show every Sunday night.