General

You may be brain dead…

 

The legendary British radio DJ, John Peel, said that when he got his first break (in the US), he was amazed that he was expected to play from a list of 40 songs. Peel went on to fame by doing just the opposite.

Experts tell us that the music we like the most is the music we heard during our formulative years. The pop of our time, whatever it was during our first years of sex on rugs and raves on roll-ups, is burnt into our brains. Forever thereafter we like that music, we’ll even defend real rubbish, because we get taken back subliminally… emotionally, to a time, a place, a situation (this may explain why your friend of a slightly different age sometimes has such appalling taste).

It’s also said that we only like the new music that sounds like the old, and perhaps we get into new music just like anything else that’s an ‘acquired taste’, maybe it’s an exercise in intellectual cool. Typical FM radio targets the hordes who can’t be bothered, and churns out narrow-beam genre channels with play-lists of 100 songs (or even less) for the whole station. Dead-heads who stay tuned into such stations invariably complain that there’s no new music that’s any good: How do they know? What new music do they ever hear?

Corporate radio is counting on everyone sticking to what they know - I’m counting on it all breaking apart.

Peel, on the BBC and its World Service, aired bands that no one had heard of, then only played them again if they stayed fresh with more left to say. On Peel, you heard stuff that would be big a few years later (Pink Floyd, The Cure, Radiohead and this bloke... the list is long - and your favourite is on that list). In addition to pop and rock, Peel gave exposure to punk, techno, noise, reggae and hip-hop, all before they crossed over into the mainstream, and we listened even though it wasn’t our ‘groove-thang’. Knowing what Peel was playing made you cool, keeping track bent a few new brain synapses, Zappa style.

Where’s the next JP?

When Peel died in 2004 it seemed, on reflection, to be an appropriate time for the man to pass. For decades Peel had been all about new music, but by 2005 the scene was suffering; everything was derivative: Franz Ferdinand were just The Gang of Four’s sound with The Jam’s look; That new Dylan must be new Dawn number 65; yes there was Will Oldham, but he’d been around ten years already.

The time had come, music had emptied to make room for overproduction: P.W.E.I. had debauched to become Pop Will Regurgitate, and eat itself, again and again. The big music labels formed bands based on sexual appeal; 21st Century teenagers with nothing but ‘classic rock’ stations were ‘into’ 70’s rock without ever having heard Twentieth Century Man covered by Catherine Wheel, and even these already mind-numbing radio offerings were being further depleted by Clearchannel’s consolidation and domination of the airwaves. In the USA new ‘local’ radio stations are now run from one central national location, each looping inside the same straitjacket playlist. How could ANY new music emerge from this?

Even the BBC, first to the web with some of their great music programming also started scaling back; dumping the brilliant ‘Mixing It’; a program which played and discussed the strangest in innovative music. Things were bleak, but things were changing, they still are. Out there on the net there are new venues and DJs with expansive tastes, soaking up all that is new and producing broadcasts well worth a listen… it’s time for us to get behind the good things that are happening.

The Stones Are Even Shorter On The Internet 

 
On stations like WOXY and OPBMusic you won’t hear any Stones, Zeppelin or Santana. Apart from bands like Radiohead, who still have originality, the music is by new and lesser known acts. You want singer/songwriters? Check out Kate Nash or Jose Gonzalez. Something with that XTC smart complexity? Try Yeasayer and Helio Sequence. No? – you just want strange? Hey there’s Moldy Peaches & Baby Dee &…. It’s a revitalizing experience no matter how your head got wired.

Caught in the web or let out of the box?

WOXY.com went off-air and was rescued in late 2006 by entrepreneur Bill Nguyen – Crucially the  DJs retain editorial control. And for 2007 the station was anounced Internet radio station of the year again (after winning in 2005).

Apart from WOXY, it’s been hard to find good internet music sites: Webradiolist.com lists dozens, but many of these are just feeds for ads, or offer very limited music that imitates the worst about FM.

MusicSojourn.com (now Coolstream) has had music programming on the web since ’98. Coolstream’s statement says they are formed “for the purpose of expanding the concept of providing the highest quality music content free from the dictates of commercial pressures and influence.” Laudable, but what is the purpose of “expanding the concept of providing” anything?

Perhaps the most unique thing out there is Pandora.com. It’s “a music discovery service” that’s come out of the Music Genome Project, at their site you enter an artist and it builds a stream of related songs, you can then influence the stream by rating songs as they come along, so you basically have a music station tuned to your taste.

After struggling to survive on memberships & ad revenue most sites now sell CDs to bolster revenues, but dealing with Internet Royalties can be tricky and often restricts broadcast to within national boundaries.

The ‘Orygun’ Trail

Opbmusic is an offshoot of Oregon Public Broadcasting, programs are via web and HD Radio™ around the clock. (HD Radio is digital, eliminating signal interference) 

Opbmusic.org, like Pandora, offers listeners real interaction, but keeps the DJ steering the programming, which adds a dimension. The connection to OPB has some big advantages: OPB is one of the largest public radio stations in the USA, and presumably it has created opbmusic to attract a new younger generation of paying members, this translates to plenty of dosh for opbmusic and no royalty issues. If Opbmusic can stave off OPB’s notoriously dodgy programming interference, and be left to present new, touring and local music, it could become the best thing since Peel himself.

Petersen In studio with Jose Gonzalez

Currently, opbmusic.org has a 24 hour stream and just one DJ’d program - the excellent In House that’s produced and ‘hosted’ by Jeremy Petersen – and the In Studio interviews featuring live performances (can be too much chat for Saturday night party crowds, but illuminating and invaluable when you can listen whenever you fancy).

Petersen has the right initials to fill the Peel void, but this budding JP is modest and reverent of the great one - the similarity is in the love of music and helping to keep it vibrant and alive.

I asked if there might be tension between opbmusic’s local strategy (the site header says ‘Music from and for Oregonians’) and the web-wide reach – what if someone at OPB thinks they can become the next BBC? But Petersen and his boss, David Christensen, aren’t planning to conquer the world, they hope opbmusic evolves “in partnership with independent music”, and “becomes more than a channel, presenting and sponsoring shows”. Already, at the website, there is more interaction than you’d expect - punters are free to review and rate the music. Particularly useful, and welcome, anywhere that bands are touring, is Petersen’s Sunday program when he showcases acts that will perform in the Pacific Northwest the coming week.

Opbmusic’s 24hr stream is geared towards the active concert-going music fans with a taste for the rock/alt segments of indie music plus a sprinkling of the folksy, roots and the soulful. But still it’s pop - lot’s of great stuff, but not too weird or edgy, you won’t hear rap, hip-hop or techno. Petersen though, knows his stuff, and slips in some great extras during In House. Let’s hope for more of that as new programming is added.

Until 2007, OPB had another exceptional DJ in Steven Cantor; he hosted an eclectic show called Beats and Pieces. Cantor’s taste and knowledge added jazz, trance and avant-garde to the ‘indie’ faire. But, as brilliant as Cantor was, some disliked the big shifts in the mix (I found his half hour excursions into ‘new’ pop/disco soul hard to tolerate, some things should be left buried in the 70’s disco experience).

Cantor, who reminds me of the great Charlie Gillet,  moved on to a smaller FM jazz station KMHD, also on the web, but only streaming – no on-demand, and he has honed Beats & Peices to cover the jazz/world/new-classical range – just the type of show opbmusic might need in the future.

 For better  or for worse?

The way we hear music is changing, if the people at ROKU succeed in delivering wifi internet radio stations to our increasingly small and ubiquitous devices, we’ll be able to stream music almost anywhere, Pandora already have deals with two cell phone companies. Will we let this chance slip and end up with the same old 40 song slop, or will we embrace these pioneering new stations in sufficient numbers to keep them alive?

Ray Davies, of Kinks fame, said last month that he only started in rock because as an art student in the 60’s he realised there wasn’t anything left to do in Modern Art. Davies thinks that point has now been reached in music. Maybe, perhaps everything will be somehow derivative hereon, but if that was all it were, nothing would sound as fresh as the current music scene does, we just need to get to hear it. 

Petersen recently played a cut from Arcade Fire’s latest and noted a Springsteen feel to it. I hadn’t realised that, but yes it was there. I’d been noticing the Joy Division influence in the drumming as Arcade Fire reminded me of a wilder Teardrop Explodes… then, were those the distant strains of Echo & The Bunnymen…? Yes it may be derivative, but you can’t deny stuff like The Arcade Fire, it’s new and it’s hot.