But I was going to focus on music, and music on the radio in particular. Since Live105 went from playing decent music to utter and complete crap a few years ago, there's been precious little decent music on the major radio stations. The other stations seem content to play 80's music, which is fine, but rather dull after a while. So I've turned to two sources for new and interesting music: College radio stations and the Internet. Now, I've listened to college radio stations since high school. Both the music and the DJs have always ranged from excellent to utterly miserable, usually leaning towards the latter. But I can excuse amateur DJs, since even the professional DJs tend to be goofs.
But the Bay Area has a bunch of colleges, and during my commute I can flip between three or four different college stations. Unfortunately, I can't get Berkeley's KALX, which I would listen to out of a sense of alumnic duty, but realistically, they're all about the same. KSCU, for instance, has a great Power Pop program on Wednesday mornings. Sure, a lot of the stuff isn't new, but it's different.
The Internet eliminates the DJs, but does mean that I have to do a lot of hunting around. I spent a fair amount of time scouring the lists of bands at iuma and ended up with a few cds. There are a lot of people who should stick to their day jobs. But finding a band like Enda has made it worthwhile. Ok, mostly. Enda is just great, but there's a ton of bad music out there. Sure, that's just my opinion, but this is my column, and I get to decide what's bad and good. And if a band includes the term "Folk" in their description, stay the hell away. Unless you like folk music. Freak.
So what's my point? Just that I have to do more work to find good music, I guess. Or that I have tools that make it easier to find music that I like, so I have to do less work than I would without them, or that there's a lot of bad music around, either way. I'm not sure, really. Maybe I'll think of something profound later.