Radio Radio

Quotation of the day ~ Fred Allen: Radio is called a medium because it is rare that anything is well done.

I really need to stop listening to commercial radio. It's just the same old crap over and over -- the result of exhaustive research into the audience, no doubt.

Today's my day off. As is my wont, i started the day listening to my friend Tommy T. on KSHE (from St Louis) -- he has a fabulous feature called "The Rock Magazine" every weekday morning from 4:00 'til 5:00 and either spotlights a particular performer and plays music of theirs that's rarely heard elsewhere, or has a "theme" feature -- he did "Women In Rock" just before Mother's Day, for example -- and it was all music that's rarely heard and it was fabulous. But ... apart from "The Rock Magazine" he plays, no doubt under orders, the same old crap: Z.Z.Top, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, etc., every friggin' hour.

When i'm working, i generally stick with him until it's time for me to leave for the sweatshop, but today (my day off, remember) i switched to K-ROCK (Kingston, Ontario), where my (Facebook) friend Wendy Boomer is co-host of the morning show (along with Big Kris). She's great, and the morning show is great, and they're very funny. But guess what: it's Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin and (this being a Canadian station) Rush every friggin' hour.

When the Big Kris & Boomer show ends, i generally stay with the station and listen to Courtney Murphy, who has an atrociously raw Canadian accent and a smirk in her voice that drives me nuts, but she plays some great music -- but again, it's all the same schtuff i hear every day. Not her fault, i know, and she seems a nice person, but i could quite happily live my entire life without ever hearing "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Stairway To Heaven" ever again.

When Courtney's program ended today, i switched to KZQZ (also St Louis) -- an oldies station that was recommended to me by some friends in Belleville, Illinois. Erm -- they play music from the fifties and sixties and that theme doesn't really work for me. Basically, the fifties ended, and the sixties began, in 1963, with The Beatles' "She Loves You." which i love, of course. But The Beatles were interspersed with Bobby Vee (?) and Lesley Gore (??). Love the sixties schtuff, but a lot of the fifties music is like having nails driven into my eardrums.

So now i've switched again, this time to KOCI, http://www.kociradio.com/ a listener-supported station from Newport Beach, California. In the past half hour i have heard Bob Dylan, Marcia Ball, The Allman Brothers, The Beatles, Bonnie Raitt, Ten Years After, Cat Stevens and it's all been abfab. This could well be my new favourite radio station! (And a shout-out to my friend George Golde, who lives in L.A., city of angels, for telling me about it.) If i have one complaint about KOCI, it's that i haven't found a link on their website that will tell me what's playing. They play some pretty obscure schtuff, and i'd love to know what it is sometimes. They played, for example, a song that i'd never heard before and i could have sworn it was by Rory Gallagher (my favourite guitarist), but i couldn't find the info anywhere. I even emailed them to ask what it was, but they didn't respond.

The playlist:

Pink Floyd -- Live At Pompeii
Renaissance -- Scheherezade And Other Stories
Renaissance -- Novella
Quintessence -- In Blissful Company
Peter Hammill -- Patience
George Harrison -- Wonderwall Music
Be+Bop Deluxe -- Modern Music
Sky -- Sky 2
Be+Bop Deluxe -- Electrical Language