Talk:Orange Lounge Radio

I was asked by DT to leave the story of how OLR got it's name on the wiki, here you go... it's been a while though :)

Jamie and I were on the BART train coming back from downtown San Francisco. I don't recall if this was the first time we'd had the idea to start an online radio station, I want to say it was something that had been floated around for a while because we had a great DDR community here in sacramento. It was a "spin-off" idea of sorts from Under Sedation Live, which Jamie was a very frequent guest of and I was co-hosting at the time with Travis Donovan and Iguanagrrl of DDRFreak... who, ironically (TANGENT ALERT), had started DDRFreak radio almost around the *exact* same time OLR started... I want to say they beat us to launch by mere weeks. Iguanagrrl and I were having a lot of strains on our personal friendship at the time and weren't speaking outside of USL shows, so neither of us knew what the other was doing it's really ironic how that worked out. I want to say we put more emphasis on the Dancemania tracks when I found out what was happening, to better seperate ourselves and not look like copycats (originally it was just going to be other dancemania songs from established DDR artists) For the record, Iguanagrrl and I worked out our personal problems hence a later syndication of OLR episodes on DDRFreak radio years later, as well as OLR helping to produce a new years day special for DDRFreak Radio in 2005(?). Realizing two stations with similar yet not identical content can co-exist and even beneift each other sort of lays the groundwork for our future partnership with Allgames.

OKAY so back to BART... it was me and Jamie and the person I was seeing at the time in April of 2002. The subject of the radio station came up and that was the point we were like "Yes, we're going to do this, It's really going to happen, we're committing sunday nights, etc." I don't remember who said "Orange Lounge" first, but that was the name that stuck. It was chosen for 3 reasons-- A) The station was supposed to be bemani and music game focused, and naming it after a popular bemani icon was a similar concept to how a Beatles tribute band might be named "Yellow Submarine". B) The "Lounge" idea invoked the image of us "lounging" around talking about video games and if you've ever heard the earliest shows, that's really what the show was-- people were hanging out playing IIDX in the living room while we sat around and talked about what was new in the community. C) "Orange Lounge Radio" just kinda sounds good... nothing rhymes with orange but somehow it just kind of works.

Wish I could tell you some of the other names we considered but honestly it's been so long... pretty much all our favorite IIDX references were probably thrown out there. I am sure Jamie had suggested something related to TaQ, hee hee. I want to say "The Safari" was a contender, maybe even "Bemani Safari" but that invokes way too much imagry of AFRIKA... (ha)

Glen (the third person on that trip... OLD SCHOOL USL fans remember him as "lolo") was studying advertising at the time and agreed the name was good and designed the original website we had, which was probably the fanciest website we ever had (although a complete pain to update hence why we scrapped it). He's the one that came up with that orange "logo" that you see on lots of OLR art. On that same trip he suggested that brands should have successful logos... a la Nike.

Random factlet... I suggested the name of the show be changed when we officially declared ourselves "Video games first, Bemani second" a couple years ago. I was talked out of it by the others and rightfully so, I'm really glad we stuck by our old name. It's been difficult to market OLR as a gaming show because most people go "What in the hell does an Orange Lounge have to do with gaming" but... when you can trancend that and people begin to associate Orange Lounge and even the color Orange with video gaming simply because of the show you've done for years, that has a powerful and resonating impact.

This was REALLY long winded for wiki, lol but you can't say you don't have the whole story! :) <3 Jamie might have a better memory than I do but I want to say I got story pretty good probably more than you wanted lol Robroberts 18:46, 21 April 2008 (UTC)