I just heard this morning that XM and Sirius are merging. I have no opinion on the subject. Yeah, right, as if there were any subject I don’t have an opinion on. But anyway, I suppose it didn’t live up to all the hype. If it did, they wouldn’t be merging; there would be more emerging. Who wants to listen to canned radio anyway? Good radio is LIVE, even though I don’t particularly care to listen to some failed-actor egomaniac blessed or cursed with the ‘gift’ of gab. I just want some spontaneity. Though most stations have some sort of play list, there’s always at least some flexibility in the frequency or pattern of rotation. The only advantage I could see in satellite radio is the consistency to be had in long-distance driving. If you find something you like you can follow it from all the way down I-10, from Santa Monica to Savannah. Is there any coincidence in the timing of this current consolidation with the rise of gas prices? Accordingly the only time I’ve availed myself of satellite radio is while driving rental cars. Apparently it’s becoming standard. Unfortunately I had Sirius, and could find no decent world music. XM has world music, though I haven’t heard it yet. The term ‘world music’ can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Still, it’s canned. If you listen long enough, it’ll repeat. That ain’t radio. That’s a tape loop.
Los Angelenos have got it nice, lots of good radio stations. Residents of any big city or college town have it similar, music geared to eclectic tastes. There’s nothing wrong with mainstream country or rap, hip-hop or pop. It’s just a matter of proportion, that and some true diversity. Public radio helped a lot, starting way back in the 70’s and spreading quickly wherever anyone had long hair and liked good music. Some of the best music I ever heard was driving through the outback of Colorado while gazing upon glaciers. But big cities generally have the best offerings. In LA of course there’s the public KCRW, which prides itself on its ‘eclecticism’, has the standard PR in-depth news coverage, even promotes shows with the type of ‘indie’-style music that it features, and has some world music second to none, though not every day. Just as good almost is Indie 103.1, which has a bit punkier rockier feel to it generally, though with the great Americana-genre ‘Watusi Rodeo’ on Sunday mornings and an international rock selection on Saturday morning, not to be confused with ‘world music.’ They even have ex-Sex Pistol Steve ‘Jonesy’ Jones syndicated live from London every day and a show they variously refer to as ‘deep alternative,’ ‘shoe-gaze,’ etc. that I’ve been meaning to check out, but it comes on late, not too late, but the same time as Seinfeld re-runs. That’s sacred time. Don’t interfere. There might be one I haven’t seen.
Growing up in a big city or progressive college town, you get spoiled. You could almost forget that the vast majority of the country’s outback is aware of the same trends, but just has a hard time accessing it. But access it they do, and always have done. As a thirteen-year-old in Mississippi in 1967 I curled up with my little transistor radio after going to bed at night, because that’s when they’d play the good shit, like ‘Day in the Life.’ I knew it was important. No one had to explain that to me. As things picked up steam in the late sixties, there was a late-night border blaster operating out of Little Rock that we listened to. Everybody knew about it, something like ‘Bleeker Street,’ though I may be confusing it with the famous street and cinema in New York. It was the same deal ten years later if you wanted to listen to New Wave and Punk, though by then cassettes were replacing eight-tracks and ‘turning friends on’ to things took on new meaning. As late as the Nineties you could’ve died waiting for Grunge to come to Flagstaff, AZ. Now it’s easier. When you hear about something interesting, you go check out their MySpace site and have a listen. Any act that’s not there probably doesn’t count for much anyway. Listening was always free, as it should be. You pay to possess. Musicians used to pay to play. Everything’s different now.
Let’s change the subject. How old is pop music- by broad definition- anyway? Arguably the recording industry started at the turn of last century, though it suffered later with the birth of radio before somebody thought about combining the two. Anyway things picked up steam after WWII with the birth of 33rpm LP’s (sp. elepe’) and 45 rpm flip-side singles. More importantly for our purposes, 1946 is the year when Billboard started keeping records, of singles at first, then albums a decade later. Guess who topped the Top 100 in 1946? Well, there was Bob Wills atop the country charts with ‘New Spanish Two-Step (and also #4 with ‘Roly-Poly’), Lionel Hampton atop R&B with ‘Hey-ba-ba-re-bop’, and Perry Como #1 in the Top 100 itself (general overall category), the Ink Spots being in the Top 5 in both of the last two. When albums were first tracked in 1956 Harry Belafonte was #1 overall, with Elvis Presley #5, and the soundtracks to My Fair Lady, The King and I, and The Eddie Durchin Story (who?) were number’s 2, 3, and 4. We’ve come a long way since then, past the rock ‘n roll invasion, folk music, the British invasion, soul, psychedelia, blues rock, country rock, disco, metal, grunge, into the modern era of hip-hop and techno, with assorted mainstream pop and rock and assorted teen idols interspersed along the way. But those are the evolutions of genre and style, faces and places. The medium was always the same- radio singles and record albums- until now. Enter iPods and podcasts, YouTube and MySpace. Everything’s different now.
Myspace is more than a social network, which I care little about myself, not being a teenager anymore. It is simply the single largest central database of music that anyone is likely to ever have access to and growing every day. I’m listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson now for the first time. Sure I could’ve hung out on Farish Street back home as a teen and maybe found something, or maybe hung out at Arhoolie later, but that’s easier said than done. I’m sitting on my bed in my underwear right now. They won’t let you do that at Arhoolie. I know; I’ve asked. Thus it plays the same role as the Internet as a whole plays, one single massive database. This is a revelation and a revolution. The record companies are the first to go, hopefully down-sized into usefulness. Publishing is next. Newspapers are being decimated and the book publishers won’t be far behind. It’s already happening, with novels and short stories and poetry being blogged and flogged increasingly each day. Will it ever reach the film industry? TV of course is hardly any different from You Tube already, dumbing itself down with heavy doses of reality, but action movies take a lot of money to make. I bet more than a few members of SAG and AFTRA have stopped worrying about a piece of ‘new media’ action and started wondering whether there will even be anything to have a piece of. The ‘star system’ has collapsed before. Everything’s different now.
