Let’s Rave On; The Heart Of Popular Culture

By K Sawyer Paul - September 3, 2006 | Email the author

Cassette Tapes From Crushed Lovers

And we’re back from a single week hiatus. Here’s the track listing for this week. Hope you enjoy it.

Summersong – The Decemberists
Let The Distance Keep Us Together – Spoon
Rent – Sara Noxx
White Unicorn – Wolfmother
Docomo – The Light Footwork
Hey Now Now – The Cloud Room
Barely Listening – Pilate
One Of These Days – Doves
Why Are You Looking Grave? – MEW
Lived In Bars – Cat Power
The Heart of Popular Culture

Stuff I’m Reading When I Should Be Getting Some Sleep After Last Night

Shawn is totally right about both the MTV Video Awards and his own abilities as a writer.

I’ve done the exact same thing Mathan has. It sucks to have to deal with idiots.

Eric made a good point to contrast my theory of permanence last week, but it wasn’t quite what I was aiming at. As I said, it’s at least halfway about image, and if an mp3 disappears then the image disappears as well. If a record is used past the point of listenability, at least the image of the record is still in place.

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Let’s Rave On

It’s becoming clearer and clearer lately that the essence of popular culture has to be studied beyond the rudimentary standards. It has to be quantified as to exactly what it’s doing to us, because it so very much is. To quote John Cusack from High Fidelity;
“Call me shallow. Books, movies, music, these things matter.” Fact is; they’re mattering to a point where we have to re-evaluate what’s important to us as a people.

For instance, the new Apple Mac Book, the replacement model for the ibook that I so cherish, advertises itself as a pop culture creator. The “Superfast, Blogging, Photocasting, do everything out of the box Mac Book” advertises itself with so many pop culture buzzwords, people who don’t spend half their lives on the internet might have little idea as to what it does. It’s “Superfast”, which is almost as quick as the Gen Y movement likes to go. It “Blogs” and “Photocasts,” which are two things done solely by people plugged into this culture. Finally, it does “everything out of the box” which doesn’t sound like a big deal at all until you’ve ever tried to unpack a full PC desktop, which makes it easy enough for an idiot (re; most of those devoted to pop culture) to understand. This is the world we now live in. We have radio to blame for this.

Radio was the first instance where there was another world outside our own that directly influenced the way we saw our reality. Before radio, everything was on the ground. Music was local, as was news and entertainment. There was just about no way to tell people in two different places the exact same thing at the exact same time. There isn’t any point in recounting the romantic visage of the effect radio had on all of us. We all have memories of waiting for the radio to play our favorite songs. Most of us remember coming home and tuning in to hear particular DJ’s, import sets, rare live acts and studio sessions that gave us an intimate glimpse of the music we loved. All of us know that this was better than TV. A concert heard on the radio had an esoteric construct that was never possible on broadcast television. In nobody’s mind was a TV program build solely for them. With radio, that illusion was inherent.

The pop culture media trifecta (Radio, TV, Internet) allows imagination only in the world given by Radio. This is why when radio stations die, it’s diehard listeners cry and mourn. This doesn’t happen with television. While people will lament the losses of certain programs, nobody really stops their watch when networks go under. It’s pretty impossible to love a network, but a radio station, well, that can become part of the family.

This week, I was hit with the blunt foreclosure of WOXY, an independent radio station that’s been under operation for more than twenty years. I’ve been an avid listener for the last four years. To me, WOXY was the pulse of music. I trusted the taste of their four DJ’s more than any other person or organization. They are, quite simply, wholly responsible for my current taste and attitude for music.

WOXY did three things that kept me listening. First, they were abrasively independent. After 97XÃ‚Â¬-the Cincinnati radio station that WOXY inhabited-was bought out by a syndicate, they went web-only so they wouldn’t have to buckle under corporate pressure. I have a t-shirt from WOXY that reads “Corporate Radio Sucks” and I wear it proudly. It was this attitude that gave me the crimson to write about music in the first place.

Secondly, they were constantly introducing me to something new. Listening to WOXY is akin to walking into an indie record shop and being curious about what’s on the speakers every single time. From Ryan Adams to The Ass Ponys to TV On The Radio to Tom Waits and The Jesus & Mary Chain, WOXY always had something interesting. Their add rate was ten times higher than any corporate station. While local stations add a half dozen songs a week to the roster, WOXY would add several dozen albums. You know how some stations will say “And here’s the brand new Red Hot Chili Peppers track”, even though the album came out six months ago? WOXY never does that. They’ll put out three or four songs off an album and play them all in the same week, so listeners never get sick of singles.

Lastly, I trusted the DJ’s. Mike, Shiv, Bryan and Barb are absolutely the most honest DJ’s I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. If they don’t like a song, they’ll say so. If they really dig something, they’ll sing its praises. Listening to WOXY feels like being given your older brother’s record collection with an appended map for the road. It’s raw, real, and oh yeah, commercial free, too.

Do yourself a favor and head on over to www.woxy.com right now and listen for a while. They will be shutting down for good on September 15th, so that two weeks will offer you a glimpse of what radio really can be like. Browse their studio acts, where you can stream essentially live and unplugged concerts from Editors, Forget Cassettes, Gomez, Murder By Death, Neko Case, The Crimea, Fiery Furnaces, The Kills, and a ton more. Browse their lists of top songs and records from years’ past. You simply won’t find a better collective taste in modern rock. Click on WOXY Vintage, a classic/retro station that won’t make you cringe for once, because they don’t play “Black Betty” every three hours.

Also, if you happen to have a few million dollars around, save them. You’ll be saving all of us, too. I don’t think people realize what will happen when consistently good independent radio finally dies. For your own good, listen to the final broadcast on September 15th and cry with the rest of us. At the very least, give yourself one evening to be joined with a great community by the one medium that can really get the job done.