Top 40 music

[XCashier]

I'm very fortunate to have moved to an area with excellent radio stations. KRVM is the best station I've heard in years. They play anything and everything: blues, world music, folk, rock, alternative, country (I usually switch to a different station when they're playing country! ), stuff I've never heard before and probably never will hear again. It's brilliant!

From what I've observed over the years, music seems to go in cycles, like the tides or phases of the moon. There'll be a few years of dumb, boring or just plain bad music, then there'll be a few years of smart, interesting, well done music. And right now, it seems to be in the "bad" part of the cycle.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

yeah, I never pay attention to what's 'popular' in any genre. I check them all out and pick out the ones with talent in every genre, or even just the ones that sound interesting to me. My friends are amazed that I am familiar with so much stuff in different genres but its because I check it all out, glossing over what sounds the same and picking out what I like.

Two outfits that are hot right now that I really like and find talent in their work are 1) The White Stripes---their guitar work is amazing, the riffs are unforgettable, the lyrics funny, and their songs are unusual and catchy---exactly how a good pop/rock band should sound. They seem to be the only good thing on the rock stations right now. And 2) Amy Winehouse---this woman is the modern Janis Joplin. Her battles over her addictions give her songs an incredible raw power, and endow her beautiful voice with pain and experience, just like Janis. I get chills listening to her.

[powerboy]

I rarely listen to the radio. It's the iPod or cd's for me. Why? Well, nearly all the stations play *exactly* the same tunes each day. Some days, you can hear the same song multiple times a day! It sucks!

It is like that, where I live. there seems to be 10,000 stations and 9,972 will be the same. I do not want to hear a shitty song being played 10 times in one hour. And this one station, will play the same song about 5 times an hour. Now, if I do not have my MP3 player with me, I will listen to my country or nothing at all

[tropicsgoddess]

Me and my fiance only have the radio on a select few stations since we can't stand listening to the top 40. It's all the same craptacular music: no substance,soul and originality.

[horror]

I have my own radio station. It's called an iPod.
The only time I listen to the radio is when I want to catch Coast to Coast.

[daleduke17]

When I was growing up I live in the center of five different radio markets. That sucked. I could tell you what day of the week it was just by turning on the radio:

Sunday- Morning: Top 40 Countdown (either Casey Casem or random country person). Afternoon: NASCAR (Country), idiotic live remotes (Top 40 stations).

Saturday- After 11am: College football or basketball (country usually, or the select top 40 station). After 9pm: idiotic live remotes at the bars (top 40 stations). Some kind of NASCAR talk show (country and rock stations)

Friday- Evening: high school football (depends on which town, could be on any genre of station).

Weeknights - "Open House Party" (top 40 stations), "Nights With Alice Cooper" (rock and classic rock), "Delilah" (either country or light rock).

The other part that sucked was that I was right on the border of Cubs/Cards country. The stations to the north of me would play the Cubs feed for games and the ones to the south would play the Cardinals (it really is a moot point any other time of year surprisingly).

XM radio is great. You'll find me on either channels 7, 8, 9, 20, 26, 30, 48, 49 or sometimes 150 (until baseball season then it will be the XM station with the Red Sox games on).

Also, has anyone also figured out that any station you can't listen to normally, like ones found via good weather or travel, are the ones you want to listen to the most (thank goodness for live streaming*).

*- every so often I'll throw on either WQUL (The Bear - Carbondale, IL), KSHE95 (St. Louis) or KUPD (Phoenix).

[MadMike]

It is like that, where I live. there seems to be 10,000 stations and 9,972 will be the same.

What really cracks me up is that they all claim to be better than the rest of the stations, when they all just play the same handful of songs over and over again.

I used to listen to mainstream radio, until I was flipping thru stations and caught a metal show that was being played on one of the college radio stations. After that, I never went back to Top 40 again.

[protege]

That's what I do too. Pittsburgh radio sucks in the morning...so I'm either listening to CDs or I have the iPod in the car. There's nothing like blasting "The Self-Preservation Society" from the original Italian Job while cruising through the tunnels here

[the_std]

I'm not saying it's a generational thing, so don't take that away from what I'm about to say...

But to me, everything that my PARENTS (61 and 56) listen to sounds exactly the same.

Mysty beat me to it, darn it. Whenever I hear statements like this ("Kids these day have no respect!" "People are so rude now!" "No one is respectful of 'blah' anymore!"), I tend to reply with this. Every generation has said the same thing, or a variant of the same thing, about the generation that comes after them. It's just... The progression of how things are. It becomes more apparent to you as different mediums are used and the access to said mediums are increased, but great-great-great-great-great-to-the-nth-grammy and ditto-grampy thought the same thing about Mozart and his contemporaries.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that my post was meant to invalidate your point. I wholeheartedly agree with the "not being able to listen to it" part. I cannot stand top 40 radio. I just meant to say that it's not a new thing.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

My thing is 80s alternative music.

Look for a book entitled "Our Band Could Be Your Life." Contains profiles of bands like Black Flag, The Minutemen, Butthole Surfers(<---life changing), Minor Threat, Fugazi, Mission of Burma, Husker Du, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Beat Happening, and maybe one or two more bands I forgot about.

I swore off top-40 and the local rock stations years ago.

[Antipsych]

That's what I do too. Pittsburgh radio sucks in the morning...so I'm either listening to CDs or I have the iPod in the car. There's nothing like blasting "The Self-Preservation Society" from the original Italian Job while cruising through the tunnels here

Yes - even DVE's morning show sucks compared to what it was before Scott Paulsen left. They used to do hilarious skits, but now it's just a bunch of overly macho stupid s*** (and I'm a very straight man, in case anyone's wondering).

Like most of you, I can't stand modern brainless, soulless "music," and listen to cds most of the time. Imho, things started going downhill in the 90s, until now there's hardly anything left except the few surviving bands from the 80s and earlier decades, and the few good ones from the 90s. Bring back songs with a balance between melodic music and good vocals, instead of this crap that emphasizes vocal acrobatics and uses minimal music in the background.

Long live Fleetwood Mac!

[ArenaBoy]

No radio for me. Ipod is the way for me. Throw in podcasts of things I like and I'm sold.

Right now I get new sources of music from countless things. Commercials, soundtracks, friends, websites, a musician's influence, video games, forums, heck even a band's sideproject. (Hundred in the Hands is brilliant and different than the Boggs).

My thing is 80s alternative music.

Look for a book entitled "Our Band Could Be Your Life." Contains profiles of bands like Black Flag, The Minutemen, Butthole Surfers(<---life changing), Minor Threat, Fugazi, Mission of Burma, Husker Du, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Beat Happening, and maybe one or two more bands I forgot about.

I swore off top-40 and the local rock stations years ago.

Best book ever.

[Slytovhand]

I have about 2 hours a week of 'good' stuff... a local community station plays Screaming Symphony, dedicated solely to power/prog/symphonic metal... and it's the only one in the country.

So, occasionally I'll hear something that grabs me enough to go searching elsewhere for it.

Otherwise, just 'alternative' music (which is getting less and less alternative... but still no Britney or Paris...).

What annoys me is hearing that 'metal' is all the same screaming and banging noise.... like, top 40 is any different? If you changed the vocalist, you'd still not notice any difference - but you'd get a whole new album!

[RootedPhoenix]

I think this whole cookie-cutter music thing is because of the music buisness is terrified at letting anything in that doesn't conform to the same "hitmaking" ideal they've got stuck in their heads.

iPods and MP3 players for the win. Internet radio is a wonderful thing too.

[DGoddess]

What really cracks me up is that they all claim to be better than the rest of the stations, when they all just play the same handful of songs over and over again.

We have that problem with some of our local radio stations . . .

Rock 92.3 FM (which is a classic rock station in my part of NC) is a prime example. They will constantly play the same handful of stuff almost every day . . . if I hear "Highway to Heaven" anymore, I think I"ll commit sideways.

Even worse is when the stations decide to flip-flop their formats. We don't need 5 country stations. We have 2 classic rock stations, 1 adult contemporary (and even it sucks now, as it's either the same stuff from the 80's/90's/00's or the crap Delilah plays on her syndicated show,) 1 rap/hip hop station/2 top 40 stations, 2 Christian contemporary/gospel stations, 1 Tejana station, 1 that last I checked it played mostly 80's stuff, 1 college jazz station, 1 urban contemporary and one that plays pop/soft rock faves from the 70's/80's and 90's.

The last country station we got was once our only OLDIES station - and that oldies station was about the only one I was listening to (other than the adult contemporary one on occasion) any length of time.

I'm now usually either listening to CD's, XM radio through the tv (which we have courtesy of DirecTV) or Internet radio on occasion (where I can find tailor made stations.)

You can even set up a custom radio station with Pandora (the songs are voted on and those you don't like, they don't play) . . . which can play some really good music as well.

Local radio sucks canal water anymore.