End.
I'm a few weeks late posting this, but:
If you haven't been listening to The End lately, you should give them another try.
I still remember how much I enjoyed The End back when they first started. They were full of life and fun. I still have a T-shirt, from back in those days, bearing their original logo. It's nearly worn out.
Somewhere along the line, that verve dwindled away, and they started playing corporate, computerized playlists full of indistinguishable grrr-arrgh Linkin BizKorN stuff. Ehh. I still listened to it, sometimes, when I couldn't find anything better on the radio, but my heart wasn't in it because their heart wasn't in it.
The only thing that was any good any more was their lunchtime all-request show, where they played a lot of excellent older stuff, and I kept wondering why, if that's what their listeners were requesting, they didn't get a clue and just start playing that kind of stuff the rest of the day.
They finally did. Not long before Christmas -- The Stranger had an article about all the whys and wherefores, but I can't find it on their website -- The End changed their format.
I've been hearing The Cure, REM, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Postal Service -- all kinds of good stuff from all over the map.
I couldn't be more happy with it. I actually get excited now, when I get in my truck, to hear what's going to be on the radio next. I haven't felt like that about radio in years.
The DJs are clearly into it, too. They're thrilled. It shows in how they talk about the music they're playing.
Which brings me, finally, to this week's installment of, that's right, Tunes for Tuesday.
---
DJ Harms played this one night a couple weeks back. Something he was clearly personally enthusiastic about. It was then that I finally keyed in that now, finally, the music I was hearing wasn't just some committee-approved pablum -- there was a real person on the other end of the radio who was sitting around playing records he thought we might like. I was overwhelmed at that realization, seriously almost near tears over it, and then I heard this:
The Polyphonic Spree - Light and Day.mp3
Turn your speakers up for this one. The Polyphonic Spree are a band with about thirty members at any given time, including a ten-person chorus, and a bunch of other people playing damn near every instrument you could think of. They pack themselves onto stage wearing white robes, and -- Well, yeah, they're clearly quite mad. And wonderful. This song is the purest distillation of joy I've heard since The Beatles. Check it out and let me know what you think.
If you haven't been listening to The End lately, you should give them another try.
I still remember how much I enjoyed The End back when they first started. They were full of life and fun. I still have a T-shirt, from back in those days, bearing their original logo. It's nearly worn out.
Somewhere along the line, that verve dwindled away, and they started playing corporate, computerized playlists full of indistinguishable grrr-arrgh Linkin BizKorN stuff. Ehh. I still listened to it, sometimes, when I couldn't find anything better on the radio, but my heart wasn't in it because their heart wasn't in it.
The only thing that was any good any more was their lunchtime all-request show, where they played a lot of excellent older stuff, and I kept wondering why, if that's what their listeners were requesting, they didn't get a clue and just start playing that kind of stuff the rest of the day.
They finally did. Not long before Christmas -- The Stranger had an article about all the whys and wherefores, but I can't find it on their website -- The End changed their format.
I've been hearing The Cure, REM, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Postal Service -- all kinds of good stuff from all over the map.
I couldn't be more happy with it. I actually get excited now, when I get in my truck, to hear what's going to be on the radio next. I haven't felt like that about radio in years.
The DJs are clearly into it, too. They're thrilled. It shows in how they talk about the music they're playing.
Which brings me, finally, to this week's installment of, that's right, Tunes for Tuesday.
---
DJ Harms played this one night a couple weeks back. Something he was clearly personally enthusiastic about. It was then that I finally keyed in that now, finally, the music I was hearing wasn't just some committee-approved pablum -- there was a real person on the other end of the radio who was sitting around playing records he thought we might like. I was overwhelmed at that realization, seriously almost near tears over it, and then I heard this:
The Polyphonic Spree - Light and Day.mp3
Turn your speakers up for this one. The Polyphonic Spree are a band with about thirty members at any given time, including a ten-person chorus, and a bunch of other people playing damn near every instrument you could think of. They pack themselves onto stage wearing white robes, and -- Well, yeah, they're clearly quite mad. And wonderful. This song is the purest distillation of joy I've heard since The Beatles. Check it out and let me know what you think.