Late 20th century FM/AM radio is simply better than its modern equivalent, satellite radio. There was some pre-selection involved. You didn’t get bluegrass songs on the heavy metal station. You didn’t get lengthy hellfire sermons on pop music stations. What you did get, however, was some degree of variety, a slight sense of spontaneity and, most importantly, a feeling of community. They had call-in shows, they took requests, they gave out concert tickets and local stations even occasionally made community announcements. “The bake sale has been moved to Tuesday.” “Mrs. Jenkins is back at it again, yelling at postmen in her yard, dressed in her now-familiar floral muumuu.”
That wacky Mrs. Jenkins.
None of that is true in the satellite world. It’s all hyper-niche, back-patting, this is who we are and we shall revel in it. And that’s fine, I guess, but it’s also highly predictable and further subdivides an already subdivided world.
This feels like a pretty good metaphor for our overarching reality these days. The number and variety of everything feels like its shrinking. Two superstores where once ten smaller, locally-run stores existed. Two rigid, and rigidly terrible, political parties. Even the high school personality archetypes seem to be shrinking. What happened to the goth kids? I liked that black eye-liner thing. Only our weirdo chubby Nazi vice-president seems to wear eyeliner these days.
I like old-school radio. It does still exist, and some of it does still thrive in local settings. My first job was as a radio dj. For real. I was fourteen and my mother and guidance counselor ganged up on the guy who ran the local AM station and procured a job for me that I never should’ve held. I was the Saturday morning dj…and I was horrible at it. Getting fired after eight months or so was a blessing. The sheer amount of dead air I created was enough to channel ghosts or provide a clear opening for Russian spies to communicate with each other freely. (It was the 80’s.)
So I have an enduring love for radio. Any lingering getting-fired bitterness has faded quite a bit in the last 36 years, especially since I completely and totally deserved it. It should’ve been a clue that I had to get a special work permit from the state, since employment at age 14 is technically child labor.
Radio is variety. Radio is surprise. Commercial radio is a buffet for the whole community, a little bit of this for those people, a smattering of that for those other people. Satellite radio, like far too many other areas of 21st century American life, is preaching to the ever-shrinking choir. The rock station becomes The Eagles’ station. And sure, the Eagles had a lot of good songs, but doesn’t that get old after a while? Don’t people want variety anymore? What is it they say about variety? The spice of something? What is it? Oh yeah, life. The spice of life. So I guess we’re living blander, unspiced lives.
And it’s only getting worse.
But we can end this particular tiny-tyranny very simply. Turn on the radio. Embrace variety. Spice up that mundane shell of an existence you call life. It’s a hell of a lot tastier and comes with a more expansive background musical catalogue.