Love, Hate and Hope For Radio
The state of the airwaves (and your place in it).
When my big yellow rental truck pulls into Chicago sometime on November 23, my first priority will be to turn the dial to 92.7 FM. WCBR's free-form format will be a pleasant change from the 600 miles of musical mediocrity that fills the airwaves between Washington, D.C. and the Windy City. But to say I never gobbled up mass-produced "modern rock" and other pre-packaged musical marketing strategies would be a lie. I'll be the first to admit that Pearl Jam's Ten probably did more to make me an indie-rock fan than anything else and frankly, I think that's okay. As a college kid starved for more material from these rookie rockers, I found myself digging through record bins for Green River and Mother Love Bone albums. The harder they were to find, the more I wanted them, and the more satisfying it was when I finally tracked them down.
But it was radio that really fed my love of music, even though I'm sure that in reality, WCBR is nowhere near as good as it sounded to a wide-eyed kid still unfamiliar with the left of the dial. When I get depressed by D.C.'s radio vacuum, I think back to a sweet summer afternoon when 'CBR played Sonic Youth and Lyle Lovett back-to-back, then topped it off with a string of obscure indie acts -- each so good that I dropped whatever it was I was doing and waited, pen and paper poised, to make sure I didn't miss the IDs at the end. Afternoons like that were how I first started to learn about music. They were what made me realize there was something else out there, and that I needed to find out what it was.
Sadly, there's less and less music on WCBR these days. More local sports. More small business programming on Saturday mornings. For the first time, drive-time talk. That's the price you pay for music that listeners don't immediately recognize, for songs that advertisers can't find on the Billboard charts. Variety is expensive, and everyone knows who has the money.
All this leads to a rather unfortunate dilemma: indie labels have all the ideas, and majors have all the cash. What you have resembles professional baseball more than anything else: a series of farm teams with rabid followings but no money, inadequate facilities and a lot of second-rate talent dragging down the real stars. Capitol and Sony, meanwhile, get to pick the cream of the crop, send their huddled masses back down to the minors for a tune-up, and cash in on the toils of those labels that bothered to take a risk.
But without major labels and modern rock radio, sometimes I wonder where more adventurous music would be. It's kind of like what they tell you about cigarettes. Puff on a few Camels, next thing you know you'll be drinking beer, then whiskey, then smoking pot . . . you get the picture. Maybe the music biz can learn something from drug addiction for a change. Get someone hooked with the brand that's easiest to swallow, then let them ease into the gutsier stuff. Once you've got someone drinking, it's that much easier to persuade them to take a risk.
Like with most things, everyone must share at least part of the blame for slicing the music world into the haves and the have-nots. Why can't greedy FM program directors lighten up the heavy rotation and instead piggyback similar, but more adventurous tracks with the radio-ready wallet-stuffers that are guaranteed to make a buck? Team a steady seller like Cracker with more adventurously countrified rock-n-roll like Blue Mountain, for example, or follow a Green Day track with Archers of Loaf. Big labels can do their part by not getting in the way, and realizing that if listeners fall in love with a whole new genre, everyone will sell more records in the end. And those of us who have already made the plunge -- well, we're to blame, too. What good does it do to make a No Doubt fan feel like dirt? Instead, lend them a copy of your favorite ska album and see if maybe, just maybe, you can open a few doors for them. Not everyone has a radio station that will do it for them.
by Chris Schwartz
schwartz@outersound.com
