Airwaves

by Brian Goslow

For the past 14 years, Marcel Raymond, who moved to Worcester 30 years ago from Maine (where he lived after a 15-year stay in Canada), has been hosting L'Heure française on WCUW (91.3 FM) every Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. He hopes the upcoming "Franco Worcester '98" festival bring Franco-Americans and their neighbors together to celebrate north-of-the-border culture. On his June 20 program, he'll present a special program in conjunction with the event, which is being held to coincide with the city's ongoing 150th-anniversary celebration.

In promotional literature for "Franco Worcester '98," Raymond draws attention to past Worcester First Night performers Lucie Therrier, Lilianne Labbé, and Don Hinkley, regional Cajun favorites the Boogaloo Swamis, Boston Haitian combo Volo Volo, and contemporary Quebec folk musicians Chanterelle and vocalist Josée Vachon (who performs at the event's opening ceremony this Sunday at the Italian American Cultural Center), as examples of how French-rooted music has contributed to the region's way of life. He also mentions frequent Worcester visitors Michael Doucet avec Beausoleil and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. Listeners to his program can expect to hear a mixture of all the above, along with Michel Legrand, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Philippe Entremont, and Nana Mouskouri.

VOCALIST KATRINA LANDON will visit the WCUW studios this Tuesday (June 16) at 7:30 a.m. during Rich Fox's New Traditions program. The singer, who first performed at a Virginia Howard Johnson's, where she sat in with Bruce Hornsby, recently released River Voice (Encrypted Records), a multi-textured disc that runs the gamut from acoustic ("The Lucky Ones") to neo-classical ("This Moment") to rock and roll ("Quiet Desperation").

Philadelphian Susan Piper will visit Fox on June 23, the same day she's slated to perform at Johnny D's, in Somerville. On her latest CD, New on the Planet (Sliced Bread), she's assisted coffeehouse favorites Richard Shindell, Catie Curtis, Jennifer Kimball, and Lucy Kaplansky. Another Pennsylvanian, Ben Kaplan, drops by on June 30 to play selections from Deeper Down (Ton of Mun), an esoteric mix of rock, country, blues, and island sounds. If listeners are lucky, he'll give them an advance listen to the debut CD from his "other" group, Crash Simpleton's Laugh Riot, who are waiting to release Do the Hurky Jurky Albuquerque. When he's not playing music, Kaplan is a member of the Truckstop Prostitute traveling circus. This is certainly not a normal nine-to-five guy, so don't expect a normal early- morning kind of interview.

WE HAVEN'T HAD THE CHANCE to check in with the Adult Children's Dysfunction Room for some time now, but rest assured Laura Kiritsy still presents 90 minutes of untamed radio every Wednesday from 9 to 10:30 p.m. A recent show featured "Projecting" from Trona's new CD, Red River (Cherry Disc), and a couple of tracks ("A Little Bird Flew over You" and "Fairy Tales on My Brain") from Ratsy's latest, the subway songstress years, which also includes "The Trilogy of Stupid Boy Songs: "The Boy Who Loved Me," "Big Dudes in Polyester Suits," and "Willy." She also spun the Needs' "Pony for Honey" (Chainsaw), the Palidromes' "Wedding Day" and "Someone To Talk to," and went techno with BT's "Blaming June." Don't think she's becoming a full convert however. She got sick of the drone and ended the track abruptly. Some things never change!