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Last week I wrote about "Will I Be Listening to metal when I'm 80" and was excited to see a few other people write their own replies to that query! It made me really nostalgic about the previous ways I was listening to music, and even some older bands and songs I was really into, but most fun for me was radio!
One of the things I use to do all the time growing up was listening to FM Radio. There is something about basically having 0 control over what I listen to is reassuring. Honestly, my biggest gripe with Spotify is the lack of "album shuffle". On my iPod all I would do is go to my saved albums and shuffle through them. Hell, even Discogs lets me shuffle which record I listen to. But I just have so many options of what to put on in the morning. So being able to just tune into a radio station that is really nice, even if I don't exactly like the music that is playing.
If I put on Spotify and I don't like the music I'll just change it? But I can't call the DJ to change the song. Sure I can look for another station but that is just so much more effort I guess? I feel like the exhaustion of finding a station that isn't a commercial, static, or as the years went on was probably the exact same song, or a christian radio station (here in the US)... Anyway I feel like when its curated it feels more accepting to just try and enjoy whats on.
I think the same thing is true for television. I would watch a crap movie on Comedy Central at 10pm just because it is on, where if I pulled up a movie on a streaming service I'd turn it off and find something else.
I turned to internet radio since I don't have an FM tuner in my house. I decided to check out one of my favorite independent freeform stations from my area: WFMU.
WFMU streams their radio shows live over the internet, and have for years. They actually have a pretty stripped down website for their actual programming and playlist/comments pages. Some raw basic HTML. Their landing page is snappy but modern, but no ads!
Their DJs all play different music so honestly tuning in randomly throughout the day is a gamble. I tuned in this weekend and the DJ was playing female fronted pop music. The first track I heard was swing. The next was Jpop. You get the idea. It felt cohesive, they did a great job weaving the tracks together to not feel jarring. And the DJ chimed in every 15 minutes or so (about 5 tracks) which is when I found out what the theme was. But I checked out their playlist page and was able to check out what was playing previously.
Something I would've killed for as a kid was being able to pull up the playlist and read the title and artist of the song I heard, even though I probably couldn't do anything with that information since I didn't have the cash for a CD.
I use to listen to this radio station on the way home from school, or whenever I was in the card and up high enough to get the signal clearly (It broadcasted south of where I live so if I wasn't in the area I wouldn't get the signal clearly). And it was always fun to hear a caller tell a crazy story about how they felt like they betrayed the Misfits by seeing them without Danzig once, or the DJ talking about Dope Jam records, a now closed record store in Brooklyn, New York. But sometimes you'll hear some wild or fun songs. Whenever we were going on a road trip we would tune to 90.1 and just enjoy whatever the DJ was spinning for us.
Recently, I found two jams that really stuck with me.
Something you're not expecting is just a brass jam full of life, fun, and just energy. You're driving along and suddenly you're just hit with such a smile and hype that the drive no longer feels like it's going to be a slog. Granted, I was just working, but it certainly felt like the rest of the day wasn't going to be so bad.
This track was a trip for me. Starts off with some piano 3/4 piano with sitar. So for a typical pop song you're throw off a bit. Then reverb washed vocals. The song builds and builds until it switches to 4/4 into a guitar solo that feels honestly modern for 1968 (feels a bit 70s rock) then the beautiful solo turns into an overlay of vocals and crash as the song descends into just chaos.
For a quick ~4minute song it was a mix of a lot of genres and styles.
This psychedelic 20 minute jam was actually playing while I wrote this. I had to wait before writing my section on Pretty Style, because it's live radio... I can't pause to switch tracks for a second and come back. Sure I have the link I can just pick it back up where I left off, but that ruins the spirit of the song, and the point of my gemlog here.
My girlfriend was chuckling because I was bobbing along pretty aggressively listening to this.
And WHIPLASH, next is a country song.
I know streaming services offer radio-like features. I actually use Spotify's Retrowave/Outrun playlist when I am facing indecision or racing in F1 2020. And honestly, I've talked about on here that Artist/Album radio was how I do a lot of my discovery. I feel I am a bad user for the service - doing a lot of manually clicking around the related pages and listening to songs. Doing manual work rather than letting the algorithms do the work for me.
Something I want to do more of is utilize the radio features to get back into discovery, and if I am in a rut, just click one of the daily mixes.
This wasn't really a coherent gemlog. Frankly, I felt guilty being absent from gemini space for so long. This was just something I was thinking about. I honestly have a few logs in the pipeline about some of the stuff talked about on irc/ben's gemcast recently that I want to spend some more time synthesizing. I am in the process of moving so I have been pretty focused on that during my off-hours.
Do you use and internet radio? Do you have a freeform or independent radio station that you listen to? Is FM very active in other countries still? I never had satellite radio... If you check out WFMU let me know. They're one of my favorite stations and I am very glad I was reminded to check them out again.
Thanks for indulging me on this ramble.
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