KZIONradio

Salt Lake City – For years, award-winning singer/songwriter, Julie de Azevedo has offered musical glimpses into life’s defining and often changing moments. Now in her seventh album, appropriately titled, Home, Julie offers that place where life rests and comfort resides.

With lyrics that speak hope infused realness, Home, in stores February 8, undoubtedly hits the mark [and the heart]. Piano driven and organically raw, Julie presents life as it is for her by drawing from recent experiences with a new baby, new opportunities and a new home. Her ability to artistically create images through music opens the door for the full emotional experience available in examining life.

“Life isn’t simple,” Julie says. “It’s complex. But for where I am right now, for the first time in a long time, I feel a newness all the way around – musically, personally, spiritually – at every level I am at home.”

In a release concert Friday, February 11, 2005, at Wheeler Farm at 6:30 p.m. Julie will present her latest, where media and special guests are invited to come “Home.” Tickets for the event have been sent with press kits.

A 10-day musical Revue including national and local music artists

WHAT: Exclusive performances and signings with favorite music artists. Deseret Book hosts a Mid-Winter Music Revue—noon performances from February 4th through the 14th. It is Salt Lake’s chance to get up close and personal with living legends and rising stars.

WHY: A way to beat the winter doldrums! The Revue kicks off with TV host and entertainer Donny Osmond, celebrating the release of his new album “What I Meant to Say.” It is his only scheduled appearance in Utah for 2005. Gladys Knight then wraps up the 10-day extravaganza, whose latest album One Voice debuted on the Billboard gospel charts … a Valentine’s Day performance and signing not to be missed!

WHEN: February 4 – 14 at 12 noon in the ZCMI Deseret Book store. (NOTE: Gladys Knight will perform at 12:30 p.m.) All performances are free and open to the public. The full schedule of performances follows.

Schedule:

Friday, February 4: Donny Osmond (www.donny.com)
Saturday, February 5: Mindy Gledhill (www.mindygledhill.com)
Monday, February 7: Jenny Phillips (www.jennyphillips.com)
Tuesday, February 8: Carmen Rasmusen (www.carmenrasmusen.com)
Wednesday, February 9: Julie de Azevedo (www.juliedeazevedo.com)
Thursday, February 10: Providence (www.providencethegroup.com)
Friday, February 11: Cherie Call (www.cheriecall.com)
Saturday, February 12: Alex Boye (www.alexboye.com)
Monday, February 14: Gladys Knight (www.SUVchoir.org)

The URL to the MP3 feed changed so be sure to in with KZION to get the new address if you use the MP3 stream.

You’ve seen the ads and emails floating around the Internet about referring a few friends and receiving a free Ipod. Well, it’s true. I know several people who have actually received their Ipods in the mail.

Basically this is a marketing program where freeipods.com gets paid by how many people they can get to complete offer requests from companies such as Citibank, BMG, Blockbuster, etc. Apparently getting six people to complete these offers pays more then it costs to purchase Ipods as incentives.

I have completed my offer and need a few more people to sign-up and complete offers to receive my free Ipod. Here’s what you do.

First, open up a new email account at one of the free web based email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo or even Google’s Gmail. I’ll even send you an invite. You’re going to use this email address for signing up with the Free Ipods site. Now if you get a bunch of spam it’s no big deal.

Now go here and sign-up. Complete one offer. I signed up for the Columbia House DVD offer. There are some really easy ones like completing a credit card application. Some of the offers will allow you to sign up for a trial offer for $1. You can then cancel before your trial period ends.

Now go and get five people to do the same thing. Within a few months you will receive your free Ipod.

I recently added the first LDS album, One Voice, by Gladys Knight and her new choir, The Saints Unified Voices. The Saints Unified Voices is a 100-member choir created and directed by Gladys Knight. Not your typical LDS Choir, the group performs a mix of multicultural gospel songs that celebrate the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and embrace the rich cultural diversity found within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 100 voices of the SUV Choir, as they affectionately call themselves, are men and women from many different backgrounds and cultures. All are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most live in the greater Las Vegas area, but a few commute from Utah and California. In addition, some of Gladys Knight’s professional crew from her show at the Flamingo Hotel volunteer their assistance in creating the music so unique to this choir. They join together to share their love for music and their faith in Jesus Christ.

Are you serious? Yes, I am. Are you ready for the next version of the KZION website? I am and I’ve begun the planning stages already.

For some reason my modem failed today knocking KZION offline. I disconnected the power to the modem for 30 seconds and then powered up again and everything seems to be working fine.

Sorry for the interruption.

St. George, Utah has been experiencing serious flooding over the past few days. This evening at 6:00 PM MT power went out at the KZION studio putting KZION off the air. Power and KZION came back online at approximately 11:30 this evening.

Expect additional outages over the next few days.

I’ve had the new Maren Ord album, Not Today, for a few months but I didn’t have the chance to get it added until today. The album is pretty edgy for KZION but there are a few tracks that I could add to the playlist.

Maren’s sophomore release is a step forward from her roots as a pop based singer songwriter. For this album she drew from her life experiences and and put them to a rock back beat with the help of her producer, rock legend Randy Bachman. It’s a release that was 4 years in the making but well worth the wait. Finely crafted songs that aren’t afraid to soar with Bachman influenced guitar licks and that trademark Maren Ord voice keeping it all together.

I added Hiding Place, Thank You For The Memories, and Where Are You Now. Members can hear the entire album in the Members Corner.

Nobody noticed that KZION has been stuck on Sunday programming all week long? I didn’t until someone wrote me saying that there seemed to be a lot more “opera” style music lately. I did a little digging and found out that Sunday programming has been running all week long.

My gosh!

December was a pretty good month for KZION. Usually November and December are slow months as a lot of people are busy with the holidays or taking vacations. This year it looks like KZION was more apart of the holidays than ever.

There were 11,647 tracks played during December with 1,734 of them unique. Average listeners were 117 with a peak of 249. The extra MP3 server has really come in handy although I still see a lot of people trying to get on one of the WMA servers even after they are full. As a reminder, if the WMA servers are full connect to the MP3 server. There were 1,894 automated requests processed.

Total performances reached an all-time high of 1,363,576 and Aggregated Tuning Hours (ATH) for the month of December was 85,259 hours. Again, last month the trend was not necessarily more simultaneous listeners but more listeners staying tuned longer. Evening hours are also becoming popular as it’s not uncommon to see over a hundred listeners at 10:00 at night.

Two hundred and sixteen new members registered with KZION in December bringing the total to 1,473. The website had 22,539 unique visitors and 926,371 page views. This is down slightly from October which had over 25,000 unique visitors and a million plus page views.

I’m not even sure how many albums were added during December. I’m sure it was over 20 with most of them being Christmas albums.

I feel like it was a pretty successful holiday season.