Radio Free America
Poor Fish: A Frank Gehry sculpture near the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, Minn.
Download this mp3: Sometimes the Sun, The Lashes.
There was a great piece in The Atlantic Monthly a couple of years ago, written by a truck driver. I don't remember his name or the title of the story, but in it he described days of driving across the American countryside, and how franchises and strip malls and gas stations had "homogenized the hell out of it."
The same thing has happened, only more drastically, to American airwaves. Clear Channel has bought practically the whole kit and kaboodle, and station after station is the same, same, same. That's one reason I dropped out of pop music in the '90s: I gave up on it.
But there's some hope: L.A. radio, for example, is alive and well. Besides Indie 103.1 (which introduced me to The Arcade Fire) there's 88.9 KXLU, broadcast from Loyola Marymount University (where I first heard Juana Molina). And of course there's KCRW, the Santa Monica stalwart and NPR affiliate fueled, at least in part, by professional, music-starved Westsiders like myself. (I'm especially a big fan of the Night Song program, and Michael Silverblatt's Bookworm).
Just Ask Mike:Mike in Las Vegas, 2004
And thanks to a tip-off from my old compatriot, Mike, I know that Minnesota Public Radio has resurrected independent radio in the Twin Cities, in the form of 89.3 The Current.
Both Indie 103.1 and The Current are available on the Internet, streaming live.
Listen Live to Indie 103.1 (Los Angeles)
Listen Live to 89.3 The Current (Twin Cities)