The Blogg

I’ve written before about the radio stations available in my listening area, 95.1 WZZO, 99.9 WODE, and 102.9 WMGK. Now there is a new entrant in the field, 107.1 WWYY “The Bone”, which I am aware of only because of a short blurb in the morning paper a few weeks ago. I had high hopes for WWYY being more attuned to my listening preferences, but it seems to be coming up short. They are trying very hard to differentiate themselves from WZZO, but I can’t say I see much difference. Of the things I dislike about WZZO: Wasting inordinate amounts of airtime on self-promotion? Check. Creepy announcer voice? Check. Playing Top-40ish modern rock dreck? Check (and in spades!). At least they don’t (I think) spend their Sunday afternoon airtime on NASCAR coverage.

The funniest part of their ad campaign is a series of announcements where they play a snippet of a song that “ZZO thinks rocks” — I’ve heard Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, Styx’s Come Sail Away, and Steve Miller Band’s Swingtown. At first glance, this looks like a reasonable marketing strategy. The songs they are denigrating WZZO for playing are all great, but to say that they “rock”, in the sense of loud, aggressive guitars would be disingenuous. The problem is, WWYY plays other songs that I would describe precisely the same way. Most humorously, I heard one of these ads directly after they played 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins. Now don’t get me wrong, the Pumpkins are listenable once you get past Corgan’s voice, but I can’t imagine anyone saying that 1979 “rocks” in the sense described above.

You know what I would really like out of a radio station? About 45% of their material should be in the genre I would call “classic hard rock”, as exemplified by the music of AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult, Van Halen, and the like. Another 25% should be what I call “classic heavy metal”, such as the work of Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Ozzy Osbourne. Modern Electric Blues, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd should get about 5% of airtime. The remaining 25% should be the harder side of music commonly called “classic rock”, from Aqualung to Whole Lotta Love. I don’t mean to say that nothing written after 1985 should be played, just that the music should be similar to the style that was popular then. I know of at least two “new” bands, Velvet Revolver and Wolfmother who are writing new material in 2007 that fits nicely in this framework. I am sure there are many others of whom I am unaware. Additionally, many of the bands that defined the loose genre descriptions above are still recording, but radio stations seem only to play the music of their prime. What is new-ish but not in an appropriate style? Grunge, nu-metal, and alt-modern rock like Hinder and Breaking Benjamin.

Beyond this genre shift, I have one more important requirement for a good radio station: they must reach deep into the back catalogs of great music, and not just play the “hits”. In all the time I’ve listened to radio, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Blue Oyster Cult song other than (Don’t Fear) The Reaper and Burnin’ For You. Maybe Cities On Flame, but I don’t think so. They’ve released 14 albums of original material, most of which would be suitable. Thin Lizzy has a similarly large and excellent body of work, but you won’t hear much other than The Boys Are Back In Town and, if you are lucky, Jailbreak. There is really no reason I should hear the same song on the radio more than once in a week.

Of course that isn’t the only kind of radio station I would like; just the most likely to happen. I’d also love to have a classic rock station that doesn’t just play singles. Whatever happened to Album-Oriented Rock anyway? And a good jazz station. ( That’s spelled J-A-Z-Z, not “smooth jazz” or “easy listening” or “new age” or any other nonsense destined for “Charlie Parker’s personal hell”. ) And a ska/punk station. And a funk and soul station. Etc.

I suppose the perfect radio station is a pipe dream; I shall have to continue to do most of my listening from my own library, even if it does not provide an opportunity to hear new talent, and from customizable Internet radio streams. At least for when I am driving, I now have a significantly better chance of finding at least one station not in commercial break at any given moment.