Ever since our weekend getaway to Bodega Ridge on Galiano Island, I’ve been listening to a lot more of CBC Radio 2. It was all we could get on the island and Z seemed to enjoy the eclectic mix of music.

Zacharie also loves opera and classical music. He claps with the audience in live recordings and opens his mouth wide to lip synch the opera while conducting the orchestral pieces. It’s fun to watch, so I flip on the Ceeb on weekends.

This weekend after hiking Rice Lake I caught 20 minutes of In The Key of Charles. Wow. What a show. It was like listening to a keynote speech on music woven with recordings. Gregory Charles sits at a piano playing some pieces relating to the week’s theme “Taking the Bad with the Good” while thumbing through his music collection for other songs and accompanying each selction with anecdotes.

He was telling stories about songs that featured Good and Bad in the title or the lyrics, and for 3 songs in a row I had to whip out Shazam on my iPhone to sample the songs to remember to download later. It’s been quite a while since I heard 3 different, unique songs in a row that I absolutely loved.

The first was Brook Benton and Dinah Washington doing Rockin’ Good Way.

The second came from Jack Johnson’s surfing buddy Donavon Frankenreiter cranking out That’s Too Bad.

The final song is the one I’m loving the most. Darrelle London’s Bad. I bought it on iTunes, I listen to it looped on her website, I’ve suggested it to the music and program directors here at Virgin Radio to add to the playlist. It’s so cute, and perfect. (and there’ no video or audio link anywhere for me to embed, so go to Darrelle’s website, follow her on Twitter, or MySpace page and listen to Bad.

What a great diverse and magical 15 minutes of radio I discovered. Thanks for the gift, Charles.

The sad news, In The Key of Charles has been cancelled from the CBC Radio 2 schedule in the latest round of budget cuts.

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Tags: music