Back to School Special
For the last three years, I’ve been the owner of a satellite radio. Early adopters, we both installed them in our cars because of the access it gave us to non-American news services and genre-based music channels. (I was immediately sold on the idea of a 24/7 death metal station.) Given what poor reception the radio received in my twenty year-old Volvo, and how long my commute to work was (an hour and fifteen minutes either way) for the first few months, my new radio was an enormously refreshing change of pace.
Unfortunately, Sirius‘ allure ran out rather quickly. Each one of its channels – even when they weren’t run by the host company, such as the BBC’s World Service – sounded far too disciplined. Everything came across as being so thoroughly programmed that if an announcer so much as made a pronunciation error, you’d fear for their careers. (The word ‘cautious’ always came to mind.) The lack of ads was great, but the absence of spontaneity was even more noticeable.
Perhaps the worst aspect of our Sirius experience was the alternative music station, Left of Center. At times sounding like it was programmed by the editors of London music tabloid NME, the endless repetition of throwaway British bands like Starsailor seemed like a very curious choice given how ill-fitting such groups sound in domestic indie context. What about a band like Spoon? Totally beige, but less obvious. Equally awkward was the fratboy-friendly vibe of Sirius’ reggae station.
Driving our new, satellite radio-free car home today (we couldn’t afford the option), I turned on KUSF and heard an absolutely iconographic, mixed-genre set of electronica, post-punk and hip-hop. Sometimes the DJ spoke too softly. Sometimes he segued a little too quickly. Nevertheless, it sounded like manna had descended from radio heaven. Moving from the great new Zeph and Azeem record to the Slits’ classic New Town, listening to our local college station was like running into a cherished old friend you’d mistakenly assumed dead or disappeared.
