"It's the greatest rhythm and blues festival that never happened" and it's this Friday from 7 to 11 pm on WKMS. The Fireworks Rhythm & Blues Revue! is a virtual concert featuring legendary performers like Muddy Waters, Etta James, Solomon Burke, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Ray Charles, James Brown and many others. Dr. Bob Lochte produced this unique experience and speaks with Tracy Ross on Sounds Good about the concept, how he chose the music and reuniting former WKMS hosts John Griffin and Jim Carpenter.
The four hour Fireworks Rhythm & Blues Revue is this Friday at 7 p.m. on WKMS. Dr. Bob says this is a virtual concert featuring many musical greats who are no longer with us, "broadcasting" from the fictional Murray State University Southwest Campus, featuring the "Roger Reichmuth Amphitheatre" - a Hollywood Bowl-type revolving stage. So don't go driving around Friday night looking for the concert. It can only be heard on WKMS.
Dr. Bob says many years ago while working in commercial radio he came across a syndicated show that sounded like a 24-hour country music concert designed to be run over a holiday weekend. It was staged as a live concert featuring numerous artists with crowd ambience, weather sounds, a sound system failure, etc. He said it'd be fun to do a show like that. The trick was finding artists that have done good quality live recordings where the ambient sound can be mixed in to sound seamless. The further back in time you go the more difficult it is to find the material. "And it's a unique opportunity to hear so many great performers, many of them now deceased, play and react to a live audience," he said in the press release.
