Radio worth listening to?!

Mornings have been grey and meta lately. I half-choose to sleep through them usually, except Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, I procrastinate the inevitable and avoid all but strictly minimum hygiene requirements: adorn clothes, brush teeth, insert contacts, pee. Little more than a week ago, I went about these in reverse. Until the oddly heavy plomp.

And so it was that my cellular device, folded over the top of cotton, blue ski men-covered pj pants at the small of my back just prior, took a dive into the toilet. While inconvenient in general, this loss meant resorting to an actual alarm clock that Tuesday morning. Instead of the digital harshness of "Lazy Lover" by Brazilian Girls or the rough rumble of vibration, something like Bach glided from the radio. How enchanting, but what was it?

Only a school station, of course, would play the unpopular antics of dead classical musicians and creative cats from across the jazz genre. Thank you, academia, for preserving public access to sounds that deviate from the mean--a crude hiphop cacophony of ill-used bass injected with anesthesia to numb ear drums into bored submission.

Later that day, wrastled with seek buttons--back foward back FORward BACK forw--til they ceded to 103.3 WPRB, the Princeton-based, non-prof, student-run station. (No wonder the host earlier that morning had been monotone & awkward; she was probably a nineteen yr old Ivy nerd with no idea which eating club to join) Hotrod Scott & the Professor--gruff, arid old man voices--were just starting the Roots Rockabilly Roadhouse show with the Buzzards and lotsa names I do not recognize.

Check out this list, cos from what I can gauge the kids at Hogwarts just might dish up some decent sounds. Today, I think I heard a Deerhoof song! And, sure, the nerds are unsurprisingly into Arcade Fire, but at least WPRB's "least" isn't the same formulaic rigormarole most stations jerk off to in this area. At least, it doesn't seem to be. I'm hoping to catch this guy on Sunday to wrap up a blase birthday weekend.

Meanwhile, we have a yr of satellite radio free for whatever reason, and I happily found someone bot playing Billie Holiday and all the cozy, b&w tunes my grandparents grew up with. So maybe radio isn't utterly fucked, not just yet.

Autoplay for automatons

My first vague memories of music are all associated with my dad. Occassionally I could talk him into singing "My Girl" "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" or "This Diamond Ring" before I went to bed; if I was really persistent he sang all three. Recalling those moments in the room with blue carpet, a twin bed, and rocking chair has a sweet, daddy's little girl feeling to it. What really stayed with me, though, primed my mind, was sitting in the back of his grey Crown Victoria listening to classic rock on 102.9 WMGK.

Fast forward two decades or so. Long have I scorned radio airwaves. For a brief spell in middle school, attracted by the glittering pop & a sudden awareness of this youth culture, I zombied along to the medocrity of 90s hits on the radio. I sought safety in the marginally better alternative rock station, Y100, no longer in existence. I spent all my money on shitty CDs. The phase had its value. Third Eye Blind has an irrational hold on my heart. But the day illegal downloading began was the day my soul was saved.

After that, I never looked back. Until now. On the whole, I don't regret much. My bookshelves bear the weight of philosophy, Keynes, Thompson, Kerouac, poetry, classic literature, and other iconoclast authors. In undergrad, I met an unhip ragamuffin group of kids who became awesome friends, some of the main characters in a four yr saga of booze, angst, records, dancing, learning so much more of the music I had been missing all along, and chronic unease about our generation. Then I graduated into the so-called Great Recession and into unemployment.

That means I am back in my parents' suburban house waiting to start work in a matter of days, sharing cars with my two brothers who are in high school. That means trusting the local crap stations to distract my frustration from oblivious egomaniacs behind several thousand pounds of would-be shards and stakes and stinky rubber.

The task was assuaged when I found 94.1 WYSP monickered "The Rock You Grew Up With." It's grungy/rock seventies through nineties stuff. Once in a while they mix it up, but they play way too much Pearl Jam. That can ruin any good thing. So my only alternative is the aforementioned 102.9 WMGK, which is lovely but restricted militantly to the most popular songs from an album. Does that mean djs can't stray to a other tracks? Because otherwise it blows my mind.

Why is it that my radio options are two formula rock stations and a handful of gross, tacky hiphop stations--All of which refuse to play anything but hit songs from an artist? (I'm too young to be old&intolerant, aren't I? The stuff is just bad, isn't it?) I hate iShit! I can't afford satellite radio! Why is standard radio so limited in its universal playlist? Why do only gruff dudes call the djs at WYSP?

When I sat down to write this brief diatribe against the Philly/tri-state area airwaves, it was eleven p.m. on Sunday night. My dad (bless him) told me about "Little Steven's Underground Garage," which had started at ten. Why do I have to wait until ten to hear an actual playlist worth hearing? Pimply teens everywhere are still enchanted by mixed tapes! Good radio cares about the finesse of transitions and the detailed choices of a playlist! Is satellite radio any different? Will old school radio be obselete soon? If so, what's to save satellite radio from the same banal fate? The unfortunate masses who resort to isolated earbuds cannot deny the sensation of shared music, the experience of that simultaneous hearing.

So what, who cares? Well, I do. But also this systematic neutralization is spreading. The only unexpected part of a night out is the details of predictably drunk antics. The booze will be the same, the characters & their clothes will look the same, and the dj will play the same set of songs he played last week. All right, it isn't happening everywhere, but enough places to say diversity is dying.

The clock also struck midnight awhile ago now. Like Cinderella's carriage turned back to a pumpkin at midnight, so Little Steven has gone and WMGK has returned to top hit autoplay. And so ends my futile post.

So Many Choices