Sometime during the pandemic, I got sick. No, not with that disease, but something else. Story of my life.
For a week, I couldn't get out of bed. And I lived alone because I'm a loser, and UberEats decided not to work so I subsisted on cans of soup my mother gifted me because, again, I'm a loser. And my Ikea bed broke. Do I have to say it 3 times?
What kept me sane?
The steady stream of music coming in from our community radio station. Shunning advertising and corporate "underwriting" to exist on donations from fans - how very socialist!
They kept me alive.
I've always had a thing for college and similar non-profit radio stations. It feels quaint these days - in an era where every single movie, album, and TV show ever made is uploaded and ready to be streamed into your head at the snap of your fingers, radio feels like an antique technology.
But radio is evolving. Every radio station in existence has a internet stream, so the snowy static of a station that's too far away is, mostly, a thing of the past. You can go to their site and listen to the show they do at 3AM when normal people are asleep. You can collate their streams via apps like Radio Garden and TuneIn to play on your phone - and, by proxy, your car. So OK, they are getting into the streaming revolution a bit.
I mean, people still watch TV via an antenna. Typewriters are still a thing. So are laserdiscs.
Nerds for antique technology exist, and have the money to keep their obsessions alive.
But radio broadcast dishes are super expensive. Even in a culture where everyone seems to shit money, there seems to be a tight budget for upgrading on-air broadcast equipment.
And, as usual, corporations ruin everything. They descend on small communities, buy all the little local radio stations, fire everyone who did all the work, and turn it into an antenna for their own market-based, professionally produced drivel. Which doesn't help. Why bother when YouTube also has the mass-produced drivel that - admit it - you really want?
Well, think of the station DJ as a musical sommelier or gourmet - someone who knows what's great and how to best assemble and present it to you in a way that you'll love. In that sense, playlists (or, for people of a certain age, mixtapes) are an opportunity for anyone and everyone to be someone's personal DJ. For the rest of us, there's a great radio show.
Of course, it's a calling. And as usual, anyone who's not a corporate executive essentially is taking a vow of poverty by pursuing this calling.
But it's an essential service. Someone out there is depending on music to keep them sane, to keep them alive.
We can't let them down.
