My senior year of high school I had a sticker on my notebook that read I'm So Bored With Detroit Rock Radio. Not that I was hip enough to know where that came from or what the maker had in mind as an alternative . . . I just couldn't stand one more Seger tune.
Not that there's anything wrong with Rockin' Robert.
The disco backlash in Detroit was much more of an anti-intellectual, redneck movement than a statement of aesthetic belief. I actually found a bulletin board post where some idiot claims that he is still proudly a member of D.R.E.A.D- Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco. And like any fascist regime, there came a tyranny of narrow consensus that many willingly followed. This meant that New Wave and Punk pretty much got swept away as well. Instead, we got too much R.E.O. Speedwagon, sides from mediocre albums, and more Zeppelin than you could stand. This from the city that proudly led the way in FM free form broadcasting with the old WABX Air Aces of the late 60's/early 70's.
Public Radio and college radio, a huge force everywhere else, was almost non-existent in Detroit unless you were a big fan of classical or free jazz. In my early twenties, I wasn't. So, when I moved to SF I thought I was in radio heaven. Live 105 played songs from alternative bands, Jazz In Flight was an amazing show of new/old jazz, and KPOO was just frickin' weird and wonderful with its neighborhood requests mixing blues/hip hop/r&b and what not.
Live 105 went metal within a year after I got here, Jazz in Flight got canceled and exists now as a great nonprofit but that ain't easy to listen to, and after a while you get tired of the three hour spontaneous Coltrane spotlights on KPOO.
And then I discovered NPR's local KQED (and Terri Gross) and it was all over.
Commercial radio really isn't worth mentioning except to point out that there is a huge number of people here way too self-satisfied with crap. Exhibit A: KFOG
KFOG is really a classic rock station with delusions of eclectivity. The ads brag about blues (3 songs at 5pm every day called The 5:01 Blues), reggae (Bob Marley and that Smoke Two Joints song that they play every Friday), acoustic (same artists unplugged on Sunday mornings) and 5 decades of rock. All this they sum up as "World Class Rock."
Prophetess LJR has been telling me that when back in the homeland she only listens to WDET, a public station that used to lack direction in my day. For a while I thought it was self-defense against the commercial stations which are uniformly awful (kind of the same as out here, but without the sense of irony when playing a SuperTramp song). On my last two trips I have played almost nothing else in the cars but DET and it has been almost too good to be true.
I have always loved the variety of radio. Back at the end of the top 40 days, CKLW could have a country song, an Motown tune, and a hard rock song one after the other and I loved that. Niche marketing, of course, killed that. And I've never been one to really listen to whole albums but once in a while- unlike KFOG, I don't think I have eclectic tastes, it's a short attention span for me.
As a kid I used to watch TV game shows with envy as Wink Martindale gave some lucky soul a jukebox. Damn, that would be great to have all your favorite songs whenever you wanted or just mix them up . . . which is how I came to invent the iPod.
Since getting back I've been streaming DET almost non-stop. Let's do a comparison, shall we?
10 Song Set from WDET's Liz Copeland
Ry Cooder- Muy Fifi
Neil Young- The Painter
Turin Brakes- Fishing For a Dream
Wynton Marsalis- Green Chimneys
Slicker- God Bless This Mess, This Test We Pass
Stooges- Down on the Street (original album)
Stooges- Fun House (take 3)
Brian Eno- How Many Worlds?
Cowboy Junkies- One
Terence Blanchard- The Source
And now from KFOG-
Rob Thomas- Streetcorner Symphony
Melissa Etheridge- Refugee
The Beatles- Revolution
Mike Doughty- Looking at the World
Wallflowers- Beautiful Side of Rebel, Sweetheart
Chris Isaak- Somebody's Crying
Led Zeppelin- Kashmir
DJ Harry- All My Life
Queen- Under Pressure
Doobie Brothers- Listen to the Music
Now, I'm not knocking the KFOG lineup (especially not the Queen song, I love that: dum-dum-dum-da-da-dum-dum SNAP!) I'm just saying that it I will take a pass because this is all too familiar.
Just to put things in balance, here's a photo of LJR and The Boon standing next to the sign telling us the Detroit Institute of Arts is closed for repair.
Go in Peace