I'm fundamentally an old folk music guy, but there isn't a lot of folk music on the radio any more, and for some reason I'm reluctant to get involved with carrying cassette tapes around in the car, particularly the irreplaceable ones. I was born in 1955 and grew up in the era of rock and roll. Even for the folkies among us, rock was so pervasive that it was the background music and emblem of many life events in that period. Another thing is that I am, essentially, allergic to radio commercials. I have noticed that the same stations that promise 20 songs in a row also deliver 20 commercials in a row. I know that's how they pay their bills, but I don't care. I don't have to sit through them. In recent years, my intolerance for commercials has also affected my attitude toward talk of any kind on the car radio, including news, NPR, station breaks, contests, etc. Unless it is incredibly interesting, I don't want to hear it. What I do want on the car radio is *music*. And given those constraints, I change stations a lot. I use the scan button to seek the next clear station when the one that's on has degenerated into deejay happy talk. The effect of all this is that I wander all over the dial, far beyond the constraints of the comfortable classic rock stations that are targeted to people in my age group. And to my surprise, I have discovered other music -- interesting, well put together, listenable popular music. Music at least as good as what the classic rock stations play. What we now call classic rock had a long period of dominance. In some ways it seemed a strange thing that music recorded in 1968 was still being listened and danced to by teenagers in 1988, when the teens of 1968 had not the slightest interest or knowledge of the popular music of 1948. My theory at the time was (1) the Boomers were a big generation, with therefore a larger segment of talented people, (2) the 1960s and 1970s were an optimistic time that encouraged the creation of music, when every other college age guy was carrying around a guitar, and bands practiced in about every third garage, (3) the generations that followed were smaller, with correspondingly fewer of the talented, and (4) the 1980s were a dour and pessimistic time for young people, expression of creativity was less approved of. In other words, the music of 1965-1975, I reasoned, continued to be popular for years after that, even among young people, because no comparable body of work was being created. If all that was ever true, it isn't now. Popular music, as presented on the radio waves, has split. A lot of classic rock stations seem to be defining themselves by what they DON'T play. In Cincinnati, I found a station that was committed to playing ONLY "music of the 1970s". That's not a musical style, it's an age cohort. The intent is to give people in their 40s the music they grew up with, and it works. The slogans may SAY "It doesn't have to be old to be a classic," but the only new music they play is from old artists. In the meantime, on other stations pitched to a younger audience, very different things are happening. A whole new crop of groups and singers are generating a lot of very interesting music -- songs which are original, melodic, emotionally complex, and very listenable, even for a grizzled old Boomer like me. I'm talking about, just for example, Semisonic, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Merchant, Lucinda Williams, Barenaked Ladies, Counting Crows, Cowboy Junkies, Verve Pipe, R.E.M., U2, and others. Not all of these are technically "new", but they are pretty much new to me in the past couple of years. The defining figure among all those is Alanis Morissette. The classic rock stations never play her. The other rock stations play her *constantly*. If you've never heard of her, it means you're probably over 40. (Asking my age peers, I am amazed at how few have even heard her name.) Alanis might be described as a cross between Madonna and the young Joni Mitchell -- all that defiant sexiness and self-pity, redeemed by brilliant expression. She resembles Grace Slick in the sense that detesting her personally only deepens your appreciation for her music. A recent song of hers, "Unsent", is a series of eloquent lines from letters-that-might-have-been to past boyfriends. "Dear Jonathan, I liked you too much ... you were plenty self-destructive for my tastes at the time." There are quite a few others who are also producing music which makes a lot of the overplayed stuff from the 1960s sound embarrassingly naive and simplistic, not to mention drenched in the drug culture. So, why is this happening? All of the following is half-baked speculation. Some time in the late 1980s, the term "alternative" emerged as the commercial category of rock-music-that-was-not-classic-rock. Indeed, the makers and listeners of the "alternative" music of that time defined themselves to a large extent as not being inside the big-tent of classic rock, but defiantly outside it. I think of Kurt Cobain as being prominently identified with this movement, which was deeply pessimistic and very resentful of the Baby Boomers, who were blamed for everything from environmental destruction to taking all the good jobs. Those (probably apocryphal) healthy young people in the hot tub, who so annoyed Mike Royko by saying their lives were so hopeless and their future so bleak that they might as well give up now, were part of this trend. But Cobain is gone, dead by his own hand, and so too are the economic grievances against the Baby Boomers, washed away in a rising tide of prosperity. There was no longer such a need for defiance and exclusion in the music of the current generation of young people, or heavily encoded lyrics designed to repel uncomprehending elders. Moreover, the good economy helped free up resources again for creativity and of course music. In sum, if all you hear on the radio is the pop music of 25 years ago, you're missing out.41 responses total.
I'll agree with your conclusion that if all you hear on the radio is the music of 25 years ago you're missing out but I'd go you one better and say that if all you hear is the music they play on the radio you're being cheated out of the majority of the best music being made. However, I'll save my radio diatribe for another time and place.. Setting aside for the moment my disagreement with you about the role of Kurt Cobain, I'd still have to say that your conclusion that "the good economy helped free up resources again for creativity and music.." doesn't jibe with my recollection of the past six or seven years of the music industry *at all*
Granted, easily, that all kinds of excellent music is not heard on the radio. You don't have to convince a Tom Waits fan of that. But given that I still feel much too poor to sacrifice cassette tapes on the car, and given that I still spend a lot of time driving, the radio is the only way to get music. All of the stuff about Cobain and so on is just speculation. All I know is that his music was ugly and inaccessible to me, presumably by design. That cannot be said of the more recent pop music. By the way, when I mention "resources" being freed up for creativity, I am talking about *personal* resources. I imagine, say, musicaly inclined people putting money on buying their own instruments and amps and spending evenings trying out music rather than desperately working a third job to make ends meet. This sort of thing affects the nationwide scene only indirectly, of course, but I tend to think that creative things happen when people invest their own time in them and develop them. It's a lot harder to do at work when you have to remember to ask if they want fries with that. One slightly more sinister theory that I neglected to bring up is that all this has something to do with the growing concentration in the music industry. Anything heavily in-group-encoded like Cobain is likely to be junked in favor of things with at least potentially broader appeal. So maybe I should feel guilty for finding the new stuff listenable?
Larry, what do you think of Leonard Cohen?
What surprises me is looking at the Top 40 list in the paper, and seeing all different kinds of music represented. There's rap, and "alternative" rock, and country music, all together on the list. It didn't used to be that way. Through the 1980's, the Top 40 was pretty homogenous.
Actually, it did used to be that way. Through the 50s and into the 60s, "race" music was totally separate from the rest of the industry. Things get fractured, amalgamated and fractured again.
Re 3. I like Leonard Cohen.
I'm curions. When I listen to the radio, I mostly listen to W-DET (101.9 FM). They play a broader range of music than most public radio stations. In the Ann Arbor area, where would I tune if I wanted to hear a decent sampling of the kind of current music that you are talking about.
One of the things I like about WDET is that they announce the names of the songs and artists. Most stations don't do this, and I like knowing who I'm listening too. It helps me sort them out and figure out who I like and what avenues to persue to find more cool music.
Re cassette tapes in the car...I like to dub my CDs off to cassette and keep the cassettes in the car. I'd never buy a car CD player. This has a few advantages; first off, I never have to shuttle music between the house and the car. The tapes stay in the car, the CDs stay in the house. The expensive CDs are safe from sudden temperature changes and big-gulp spills. And if I get robbed, I'm only out $50 or so in blank tape, not a couple hundred bucks in CDs. When a tape wears out, I just re-dub it, though actually this hasn't happened yet except for one tape that snapped when it was rewound. I personally find the mellow techno-pop that seems to be popular today not to my liking. I can't stand nSync, and I hate Hanson. That and country music are often my only musical choices on the radio. Since I dislike the current pop and adult contemporary scene, I tend to listen to a lot of tapes. There are a few radio stations I like, mostly ones that play a mix of 70's and 80's rock. I realize most people will think I have no taste for saying this, but I'm a big fan of 70's riff rock and 80's arena rock. To each their own I guess. Progressive rock is cool, too, but rarely gets radio play...it tended not to be radio-friendly stuff.
((Winter Agora #123 linked (yesterday) as Music #178))
Re 7,8. The station I find myself listening to the most these days is "The River" 93.9, from Windsor, Ontario. It's the most eclectic pop music station in the area. And they do mention the names of songs, though not consistently. Re 9. "Mellow techno-pop"? Is that what it's called? But I don't know anything at all about nSync or Hanson. Those might be examples of something else entirely.
Also re 7-8. I have always had trouble getting WDET, even when I lived in Detroit almost within sight of the transmitter. In that apartment (in a very solidly built building), I could not get WDET even slightly when the radio was in my room. I could only get it if I dragged the radio out to the kitchen and perched it on the stove. On our home stereo, in Ann Arbor, we can get WKAR-FM from East Lansing easily, but WDET is pretty faint, drowning in static. It does come in on the car radio (of this car, not the last one), but during the times when I am driving, WDET is talking, and as mentioned in #0, I don't care for radio talk when I'm driving. (In-person talk is just fine.)
all alt. muzac is derivative of link wray.
oops...charlie parker, dock boggs, and robert johnson.
Yeah, WDET mostly talks during normal commute times. Early afternoon on weekdays and most of the day on Saturdays are my favorites, but I don't mind some talk. I've heard lots of people can't get it, but I've never had problems in any of the 6 places I've lived in Ann Arbor, and my car can get it anywhere nearer Detroit than Chelsea. I count myself blessed. I'll look for 93.9.
Heh. I was a fan of Alanis before she got big. I'm not as much of a fan now. It's interesting to see. I'm in an interesting position to analyze radio, since in my situation (a bloody jammed tape deck, combined with over 7000 miles of driving, mostly 3 hour trips to Columbus, since November) I listen to it an awful lot. It's interesting. In the earlier 90's, alternative was big. Everybody tried to be alternative, to the point that the mainstream *was* the alternative. When alternative ran out of steam, radio attempted to kickstart a new craze. It didn't work. Techno is now just another one of the myriad of special music tastes that's running around. In limbo, rock radio began to move toward the center, focusing on more "pop-ish" songs. This got tired, so stations split into two groups. There is now the "easy listening" rock, such as the Planet 96.3, which plays things like Alanis and Matchbox 20. And there is "Extreme" rock, with stations like 101.1. These stations tend to play Howard Stern in the mornings and then metal type songs during the day, stuff like Creed and Monster Magnet. Both types of stations used to have nearly identical playlists. Now their music is almost mutually exclusive. I should point out that I find the Planet extremely distasteful, and I find Howard Stern and all other morning talk shows extremely distasteful. I'm a forlorn guy when I drive to Columbus in the mornings.
I like WDET's late night programming. During the day I find their mostly-jazz programming uninteresting.. I'm finally breaking down and buying a CD player for the car. My solution to the problem of lost, stolen, or damaged CDs is to make backups of the irreplacable ones on my CD-R.
I bought a car CD player somewhat more than a year ago (and then the insurance company bought me a new one, along with several new door and dashboard parts, a few months later). I tend to listen to music almost exclusively in the car, so most of my CDs just live there. Incidentally, if you buy a car cd player, get one of the removable faceplate ones, and then remember to remove it every time you park the car. With my first car CD player, I thought removing the faceplate every time I parked was too much trouble, but with the second one I've decided that's much less trouble than it was to not have the car usable for a couple of weeks while the door and dashboard were getting put back together. I've had the second one for a year with no problems, while the first one I had for only six weeks.
I have a great many things to say in this item, as you can probably imagine. Unfortunately I have wasted my entire week arguing on M-net. I hope to remedy this shortly. Larry, how come we never have any cd spinning parties? I'm gonna make you some driving tapes, I've been feeling evangelical.
Anyone remember when 89X was a late-night show?
You mean the old Radios in Motion show?!?! That was great!
RE #20 That was in the late 1980's or early 1990's, I do believe.
I did a CD spinning party at AlCon. Called it a listening
party. Encouraged other to bring their own to show off, or pick from
mine, what they haven't heard. It did manage to stay focused on the
listening.
I would be interested in attending a CD listening party, I
have a few to bring.
Way back when, probably before 1948, it seemed all music
came from one place, New York or better put, Tin Pan Alley. But
basicly the music in 1948 was written bby someone, then pedaled to
anyother (maybe by another person), where a performer got a pre-
packaged tune.
In the musical 60's (after the Kennedy assasination), spurred
by the writer-performers, as found in The Beatles, a number of Motown
artists, Bob Dylan, surviving bands of the British Invasion, seemed
to have changed the music. I find the larger amount of singer-songwritters
to be one of the reasons why the music of 1968 was more welcom in 1988 than
the music of 1948 was welcome in 1968. Another reason was the many sources
of tunes. In the rock era we seen distinct stlyes of rock coming out of
New York, Philidelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Texas, California and other
places. Large possibilites from large diversification. Third, I would
have to say is the technological differnce. Less incremental difference
in the fidelity improvement from 1968 to 1998 than from 1948 to 1968.
While with the new technology of the LP records, some music from pre-LP
days was re-issued, with CD technology it see a much larger amount of
music re-issued on CD from pre-CD era.
My car radio dial has 5 buttons. STrike a button again to
get to the second pre-set "behind" the first one. My line up:
1) 93.9 / can't recal
2) 94.7 95.5
3) 101.1 101.9
4) 102.9 can't recall
5) 104.3 107.1
Not much listening to 102.9fm these days. They used to have me for
a minimum 3 hours on Sunday night for 'Blues DeLux" and "Dr. Demento".
Now, I don't know why they are on my buttons.
I wish the home stereo had the Push Once, Push Twice type of
logic instead of select memory bank, select button logic.
If I drove more in the afternoon, I would probably have a button
for Dr. Don on Young County at 99.5.
I used to use Alcon to clean my lenses.
I should add that my recommendation of 93.9 doesn't mean I like everything they do. Far from it. I am the most fickle of radio listeners, and just go elsewhere when a commercial or a song I don't like comes along.
I only have six presets, which is really a pain considering all the stations I listen to. I might as well mention the stations. My presets are, in a sequential but irrelevant order, 88.7, 97.1, 101.1, 102.9, 99.7, 105.1 89X: all the time anywhere between battle creek and marion, ohio. By far the most prevalent and consistent (that is, there's always music, and some of it doesn't suck) station I can listen to. 97.1 has moved almost exclusively to talk during the week, which pisses me off. I plays good stuff on weekends. 101.1 talks in the morning and occasionally plays tired stuff, but they have a lot of good stuff. 102.9 also now has talk in the morning. The music they play is quite good. 99.7 is a Columbus station that I can start picking up southeast of Findlay. It plays Howard Stern in the mornings, but is otherwise a terrific station. They even tell you some of the songs you'll be hearing in the next hour. 105.1 plays more music than most and plays it good too. 96.3 occasionally plays a tolerable song. 106.1 does too, but it plays a completely different type of music. I've taken to 104.7, which is only two clicks from a preset and plays a good mix of old and modern stuff (sometimes I'm in a mood for Jimi and Led Zepplin). 106.6/97.3 is similar to 101.1 but for Toledo. 105.7 in Columbus is a strange station which plays a wider variety. Uhhh I occasionally listen to 101.1 in Columbus, too, but only when I have no other choice. Low coverage.
Re #18: I know of someone who had all of the radio except for the faceplate stolen. The faceplate was hidden somewhere in the vehicle, and the faceplate was not stolen. A bunch of CDs apparently were stolen at the same time.
I'm still upset that 105.1 is no longer the excellent classical station that it used to be. Grr. I don't suppose anyone knows a full-time classical station in the Ann Arbor area, does anyone?
There's CBET (89.9) in Windsor. It's not classical full time, but it's pretty good when it is, and they seem to play a lot more classical stuff than the classical NPR stations do.
...CBET also plays more of a variety of classical music (pieces by obscure composers, or for ususual instruments, or pieces by big-name composers which don't get played as often, etc.)
(mostly anything they can get their hands on to meet their Canadian content quota...)
Yeah, but it's usually pretty good. I've taken to listening to Canadian broadcasting more than just about any other station on the radio (that is, voluntarily). Some shows to watch for are Yurgan Goff (I'm sure I spelled that wrong) on weekday afternoons and "The Vinal Cafe," on Saturday morning. The former is nuts, moreso than most canadian broadcasters, likely to play just about anything on a whim, and the latter is a show styled in the format of "A Prarie Home Companion," only a little more laid back. The host's ongoing stories about a little Canadian familly could give "Tales from Lake Wobegone," a run for it's money. <end plug>
I'm endlessly ammused by the lengths the announcers on CBET go to to explain the Canadian connections to some of the things they play. To paraphrase, "...and here's some music by Bob Smith, whose cousin once had his hair cut by a Canadian barber..." and they seem so proud of it. Ok, it's not quite to that extent, but it comes close sometimes. I also like the Canadian news broadcasts, since there was apparrently other stuff going on in the world while Clinton was being impeached, and they were willing to talk about those other things.
I've gotten familiar with the radio stations of south Washington state (in the West, Central, and Eastern areas). It's not incredibly diverse-- the big change is when you hit Seattle. Throughout most of Central and Eastern Washington, country dominates the airwaves, with about approximately 3-4 stations in any given area. I live in a cow town, and I think it's toward the higher end. The other formats in these two areas are Top 40/R&B/Dance, "classic" rock, 90's hard rock, soft rock, and 80's and 90's. Without a doubt, I would agree that radio takes a niche market for advertisers and plays music that will draw in the audience as customers. Community radio does exist, however. I can hear plenty of blues and folk rock on "The Johnny Amigo" show on the Yakima radio station when I'm in town in Yakima. (For those of you who don't know where Yakima is, is where those Washington apples you eat are from-- and the Tree Top plant is in nearby Selah.) There is a lone Christian station called "The Force" (98.7) that plays around the Toppenish/Wapato/Granger area. Don't worry about where isn't at-- this is basically beer and farm country. Seattle divvies up their music into jazz, light jazz, rap, hip-hop/R&B, and the usual rock categories. They also have a Christian station. So I suppose that it's not that much different out here. Alanis Morrisette annoys me. I don't find her talented, and I don't appreciate her whiny, complaining, life-is-so-bad songs. She doesn't even write her own songs still. I'll take another look at her if she can last 10 more years and she outgrows teen angst. Whatever happened to They Might Be Giants? I love their music, even though I haven't yet consulted the website to learn all the political references of their lyrics.
(I'm in Michigan. Why would I eat Washington apples? :) I have been in Yakima, though. IIRC, we ate at Denny's there. Nice area...
I can get Toledo's public radio station at 91.3 on my car radio, which plays classical music throughout the day, except morning/evening drive times when Morning Edition and All Things Considered are playing.
flem in resp:28 -- besides CBC from Windsor, the other classical choice in Ann Arbor is MSU's NPR station WKAR-FM, 90.5. WKAR runs the NPR news shows 6-8 am and 4-7 pm, and there are specialty shows on the weekends, but other than that they will generally be playing classical music. And I still have a book to write in response to this item.
resp:35 Glad you liked your stay in Yakima, John, even if it was a short one. I consider it a bright spot in Central Washington-- the rest is boring unless you live at the Gorge in George or something (the Gorge is a natural gorge used for music concerts).
They Might Be Giants are still around. I stopped paying attention to them after _Apollo 18_, but I know they released at least one album after that.
TMBG was in Columbus just a few weeks ago, I missed the concert unfortunately. They had a new song out rather recently "Dr. Worm".
Re 37. I'm looking forward to reading the "book".
You have several choices: