Hi,
Radio had its place, time and life.
And it is now gone. Long live the drunk ... wait ... king!
When I got into music, it was already about the "revolution", in the late 60's and the stuff I had, was the stuff that some folks, in Madison, WI were making fun off ... like playing the small version of "Light My Fire" and then make sure they played some pop'y nothing right behind it so people would not think that the station supported the hippies.
But it was Madison, and its 50k plus students ruled, and radio in there, if it followed just the top ten from Variety, would not be on the air very long ... there are more students in the university than there are teeny-weeny girls being picked up by the radio station DJ's for some fun after hours of impression about the new CD, LP, or ... heaven forbid ... the Kiss Leather Belt ... that had over 200 girls offering anything that you could think of and then some!
Music has changed since then, and I think that its massive changes started around 1973 or 1974 when a couple of bands were given many millions of dollars for distribution rights, and those music companies immediately dumped hundreds of groups and acts from their arsenal, including the Coffee House Band! (... sorry ... time-warped but it sounded good!)
It was at that time, that I heard something that was ear/eye opening. A friend of the Firesign Theater, according to my roommate, was trying to convince them NOT to sign again with their record company -- Columbia I think it was -- but to create their own company and control all of their work. It did not take me long to realize that if the bands that showed up every where in the very early 70's that colored the early days of FM radio, which in itself was an ANTI-RADIO thing in those days (against the small cut and fast voiced bs!), all of a sudden got dismantled and pretty much disappeared.
Those that were already strong, and solid "within", made it ... the rest, is just obscure stuff that I play now and then, that Bapu, Beagle, Spacey, Craig, Jon, Strummy and a few others, have also heard over the last 30 years, and are now able to comment on it. In one way or another they also heard it.
In those days, we had to drive to Moby Disk in Van Nuys, or the Tower on the Strip, or the Warehouse in Westwood, to get a lot of these things, and it was by around 1981, just before I moved away to the Pacific NW that we dropped Tower from our list ... their list of imports were now all the Beatles and Rolling Stones albums -- because they were all superior recordings to the American copy versions that were not full sounding like the others were -- which became the "re-mastered" versions that showed up in the 90's!
Since then, many of the "progressive", "experimental" and other bands, have become their own identity, and they did not need radio to make it ... and you can even look at something like Dream Theater, which had no radio play, and sold really well, to know that radio was dead.
I've wanted to go back to a radio styled thing. But I would not use playlists, and would spend more time on each artist and his/her work, something that American culture does not do, and is not capable of doing ... things here in America are rarely about the art itself, but always about the numbers ... and it all goes back to my days in the Philosophy class and Plato ... about might makes right ... and the American society is so hardcore-ly tied to that, that many folks simply have to idea, concept or understanding, of something that might not come from that place, time, or space! And it is always wrong! Sound familiar?
I remember telling Gong in 1995 on their first tour ... you gotta have your own ... I can not tell you how efficient, or helpful, the GAS website has been since then, but I can tell you that you know what is going on, and it is recognized, and all of their work keeps on coming, and everyone knows where to get things. I also remember a year or two later a story about another band, that had started a website, and they were broke, and said that they could not afford to go into the studio for their next album. You got it ... their fans started sending in donations, and the band got to the studio (is that honorable or what?) and the band named the album after those folks and treated them to a concert and more!
If you pay attention to news and the economy, you will have heard one thing ... "world economy", or "global economy" ... and if so, you will know that you can't take your play there, or radio there, but you can sell a couple of disks easily enough, and this is what it means ... you might not sell as many here in this town, but you sold how many all over elsewhere? ... 20k sales? ... you will have many folks knocking at your door the next morning ... get ready for them, and some of them will not only clean your carpet, they will do your dishes, kiss your bum, and promise you any ... whatever ... sorry to let the thought run amuck! ... but sometimes it is like that.
Radio was important in the 20th century, until the day that TV went live and we saw a kid getting his head blown in full color, and got to see some far out concert ... and oh my gawd ... bombs? and the next Apocalypse was NOW and HERE!
At the end of the century, it was TV, and the 21st century will be Internet for its first 50 years, until something else comes along. Phone I guess.
A lot of the "Nielsen" and other BS, are old styled things that do not measure things right anymore ... you and I, or anyone here, have never heard, or seen anyone, associated with it, or that they were getting paid to do a survey ... though we know that in Santa Barbara the ratings and the feds had a nice junket going to ensure that old ladies that never heard 4 letter words, had their ears tuned at the right time to hear Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd and immediately report "money" to the FCC ... and that was not, then, or now, the folks that "represented" you and I! PERIOD
If you have to "believe", or "fall" for that kind of stuff, you are looking at the past and thinking that it will repeat itself, and that you have to get to radio. Well, let me tell you that ALL radio is owned and operated by the same companies that give you American BS and American Idle, and BS has talent! ... and they make a serious point of making sure their favorites and "stars" are there for you to kiss and like, and sukkiaki their ... music!
It also tells me, that you are looking at the old world ... no one today, except a very serious minority, will EVER get that kind of attention, and in many cases, with folks that were a part of that circus, many tell you that they would not want to go through that again ... and neither would I.
Sirius, and XM, had the chance 20 years ago, to do what FM radio did in the late 60's and early 70's ... with one problem ... Sirius was owned by folks that had owned radio stations before and they were already another FM station, that simply tried to be hipper than your local BS station on the radio dial. While better in many aspects when you consider the no commercial thing, in the end, Sirius and its sister, have failed ... they still do not know "art" from a star, and having Tom Petty there for an hour, is not as important to them as having Edgar Froese there for an hour or two, or Vangelis, or Mike Oldfield ... or the Coffee House Band ... and until the day they do, they do not represent me, and are not worthy of the mention.
I, unlike those idiots, will, at least ... play the CHB. Those MF'rs never will! And to me ... that is much more the spirit of what "radio" was ever designed to be, or TV for that matter, than the ugly, sick and tired behemoth that can't even get a manicure any more, and its stink, is worse than you and I at 90 in a bed and we can't move! How pretty it can be for a Genet fan, but how ugly it is for another generation ... to know that you are better off dead! Instead of making money ... supposedly ... which most stations, tv or radio ... these days are NOT making because of the corporatization of that world. It was the first to go corporate, and it was also the first to start to manipulate the public into knowing nothing, caring about nothing, except making money for someone else!