What's up with corporate America telling me what I should listen to? OK, OK, not everyone is stuck listening to the same old songs over and over or the same old new songs over and over. I am stuck in a radio black hole, yes I am sure that there is worse out there, but you would think that a place such as Tulsa would have better radio. We have a great music scene and excellent venues, but radio is a vacuum. Are we really that dense that we can't tell when they have played the same song at lest four times in the last five hours?
How many times can you actually play Sweet Home Alabama? Skynyrd does have a deep catalog, but Tulsa radio seems to think there is only one song. Don't get me started on Pink Floyd's Money, or Led Zepplin's Stairway. Come on people Classic rock is classic and there are hundreds of thousands of tracks to choose from, but yet we get the same 20 songs a day. The so-called alternative rock station wouldn't play a track from Sonic Youth, The Pixies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, or The Cure if you stormed it and took it over gorilla style.
I could run a radio station and not play the same track in a week, and that is commercial free. I need a pirate radio a la Pump up the Volume. I'm not in the car enough to need satellite radio, but my guess is that it is not much better, and you actually have to pay. Stop the bleeding.
I grew up listening to college radio, Amarillo College 89.9 on the FM dial. That ruined me for life. Punk, Velvet, Rock, Electronic, Indie, you name it they played it, seriously you could call them up and request a song and if they had it, it would be on the air within the hour. My favorite was Alamosa community college's station. I actually was able to spin some CD's one night after snowboarding at Wolf Creek with the South Fork Crew.
I don't think that Video Killed the Radio Star, corporate America Killed the Radio. I would like to take Morrissey's advice and Hang the DJ, but it's not their fault, they are just doing what they have to, to keep a job. The only personality a DJ has is there on-air voice. No longer can we tell what music the DJ actually enjoys playing, it is a job and we killed the soul.
I hope if you are outside the listening area of the greater Tulsa area that you have real radio, the way radio should be, the way radio was.
Photo: Unknown, Seattle Weekly
Satellite radio is MUCH better and, in my opinion, worrth the money (even though I am not in the car that often). If you are at home, plenty of good options on the internet. Start with Pandora Radio if you not used it yet.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree Glenn. Gone are the days when you can listen to a station for 24 hours and never hear the same song twice. Heck, if a station goes a day without repeating a song, they have to give that day a special name, ala "No repeat Thursday" or something like that. And you are right about DJs... there are no more DJ's, there are only "radio personalities". I have become an obsessive station changer in my car thanks to the state of radio today.
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