I Miss Radio

You know, real radio, without 10 minutes every half hour of amped commercials, chatter heads filling every nanosecond of non-vocal intro and fadeout with inanities, overgrown adolescents trying to be Howard Stern in the morning, or the new dentist's office soundtrack of "smooth jazz".

Help. I thought I was alone out here. With mp3 players and portable CD players, a whole generation watching videos never needed radio, it was that talking crap their parents listened to when dropping them off and picking them up at school, "EN-PEA-ARR" holy holy holy. Or the right-wing-nut AM guys shouting at each other about family values and football. Obsolete.

For years, I had this idea of resurrecting radio theater, with sound effects and background music, character voices and serial stories, 30 or 60 minutes each week of pure audio adventure and movie in your mind. People gave me weird looks and shook their heads. "How would that make any money?" they asked dismissively. I was thinking how it would be great fun to introduce middle schoolers to it, with the whole "studio" experience so there would be some unknown territory for them to be awed by and then learn to master, grow confident, and have some secret swagger to take to high school with them. "I know how to mike sound effects and shrill character voices," she said a bit smugly to her guidance counselor. Kind of like Steamboat Punk, leaning back onto older technology and see what it can do now, make it do new things now, revive it for a new generation.

This summer, I had this vision of "Old Fashioned Porch Nights", with some strings of icicle lights glowing, a bunch of neighbors sitting on a wide porch after sunset listening to some old radio show recordings (mp3 or CD) and old big-band music, and talking, sipping cold beer or wine, knitting, mending, reading the paper or even laptopping, no agenda, no plan, just folks and some low-key leisure. People I shared the idea with nodded and said they thought it was a great idea, kinda odd but weird in that Portland-kind of way, "You should do it!" they said. Remember the whole Utne Reader magazine "salon" thing from the 90's? Great idea, no legs.

The other day it hit me that having no real radio in my world has left a huge gaping hole in what I have always considered my foundation identity. Ye-gads, why has it taken me this long to realize it? I don't know really, having OPB and 89.9 and KBOO just wasn't exactly hitting it for me. For all the years working for the Big Book Store, we had new music coming out our ears, and played a revolving playlist every open moment and the really good stuff before and after hours. You got to hear music from co-workers you would have never found on your own, and the best of local heroes who play around town. I took it for granted, completely.

Now that I solved the puzzle, I took immediate action. Not willing to sell my soul and remaining self-employed dollars to iTunes, I started searching for the best of what had to be on Internet Radio, and I found one that has pleased me very much. The name implies its philosophy, and I'm not endorsing it for any reason other than it has served me nicely so far, and I hate to keep secrets about something this inalienable-rights-ish and easy to share: Slacker.com Rules!

No, they don't have old radio shows, I'm still on my own there (for now) but they do have a pretty broad assortment of music and the gadget to make your own list of stations and play any version of the Way-Back Machine you feel the need to indulge. And unlike playing a stack of your fave CDs or iPod playlists, you get to hear random songs by random artists so the whole tedious predictability of spinning your own tunes is blasted out of the water. WOW---the randomness of Real Radio, and no videos to distract you from what you're doing or supposed to be doing, leaving you free to work or whatever. The magnitude of that alone made me feel as if I had rediscovered electricity, and after a whole energized afternoon of productivity, I emailed my pal Jolie that it felt like a blood transfusion, "This is the missing element, why did it take me so long to figure it out??"

"That's what kids are good for, I get to hear it in the car everyday, happy you're back on it," she laughed, "I'm downloading the Slacker desktop player right now, thanks!"

So there's the feeling silly part, that it took me years to figure this out, but there it is. Fixed now. And no pesky commercials and robot DJs or idiot un-comedians. My productivity has quad-rupled, making the inner Boss Lady very very happy. "Back to work, slacker!"