Radio

I suppose that, like most people, I only ever listen to the radio in the mornings. (I don’t listen to it in the car for the very simple reason that I don’t have a car.)

I want to hear the overnight news and the weather report and that’s about all, apart from the music, but in the afternoon / evening, I play the music I want to hear on the CD / mp3 player, not what some corporate non-entity wants me to hear.

Anyway. My point being.

Where I live, and without cable, there are very few stations my terrestrial radio can receive. For a long time I was a loyal listener to Kool-FM (“today’s hits, yesterdays classics” is their motto), from Waterloo, Ontario (www.koolfm.com). But in mid-November of last year, something happened. They had a “Kool Yule Tune Weekend” – a weekend of nothing but Christmas music, and … so much of it was absolutely ghastly! (“I Farted In Santa’s Lap” by The Little Stinkers? OMG, effing horrid!)

And so I changed stations, I couldn’t stand it. It was truly nauseating. I switched to FM96 out of London (“London’s best rock”) (www.fm96.com) and it was okay, too: they played more Led Zeppelin and no Avril Lavigne (good) but no Chantal Kreviazuk or Bruce Springsteen (bad). They played more AC/DC (good) but had Guns ‘n’ Roses “Chinese Democracy” on heavy rotation and that is VERY bad. But the worst thing about FM96 was its morning DJs, a couple of cases of arrested development named Tucker and Taz – I detested their sophomoric senses of humour.

So now I’ve been floundering a bit, and listening to radio online. A couple of Toronto stations: mostly www.therock.fm and www.q107.com but also a station I really like from Adelaide http://www.mix1023.com.au/ -- not that I can get the local weather from any of them (especially not from the Australian one LOL – but Toronto and Stratford weather are usually quite different too, even though we’re a mere 100 kms apart).