You and your iPhone might need to enter a 12-step program if, during one of the rare occasions in which you are listening to FM radio, you hear Rock ‘N Roll All Night by KISS.
That’s not really a problem until your first thought is to “share” the song on Facebook. And then you remember you can’t because you are listening to the radio instead of listening to Spotify on your phone.
I both worship and curse you, Steve Jobs.
For today, I’m backing into my point by first talking about social media.
Most dictionaries offer at least two definitions for shoot from the hip, an idiom with roots in the Old West:
But when it comes to the latter definition, shooting from the lip might be more appropriate in the age of social media. Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, etc. make it so easy. Or maybe it’s just me who sometimes rattles off quick and unnecessary remarks. It happened Monday while I was waiting in line at the customer-service counter at the local Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is an easy target. And I don’t like to wait in line any more than the next person. So, like growing numbers of impatient smart-phone users, I logged onto Foursquare, shot a photo and fired off a complaint about the line moving too slowly.
But the truth is, since I type very slowly on my iPhone, it took me as long to complain as it took the Wal-Mart personnel to work their way to me in line. They actually did a pretty good job. My complaint was overblown.
Jamie Hopkins
The lesson of that experience is one of the many reasons why I want to wholeheartedly encourage Jamie Hopkins and the staff at Vintage Sound 93.1 FM and wish them well.
It would be easy to write off what they are attempting. After all, I know I am not the only music fan who has switched from commercial radio to Web-based services such Pandora or Spotify. And local commercial radio stations will never get all of those listeners back. It’s hard to compete with a service that doesn’t have announcers OR commercials and never stops playing uninterrupted music from every genre you can imagine (and probably some you can’t.)
If you have become as accustomed as I have to listening to music on your phone, Vintage Sound does use the Tune In Radio app for smart phones. This should also appeal to Muscatine residents who have moved away, but may want to listen to the FM station they listened to in high school.
But not everyone has a smart phone or an unlimited data plan to go with it. If you should find yourself in Muscatine without those luxuries, you ought to like Vintage Sound in its original format, which you can listen to for free on your radio. This will be especially true if, like me, your musical tastes run toward what I like to call old, white guy rock ‘n roll. I heard some good music Monday.
What I really liked was that it wasn’t just 30-year-old Top 40. Redneck Friend is far from the biggest hit of Jackson Browne’s career. It peaked on the charts at No. 85 in 1973. But I heard it Monday on the Muscatine radio station. And that’s good enough to get me to come back to listen some more. I’m sure I will listen to it more than I did its predecessor, MAC-FM.
With all of the things today that compete for our attention, Hopkins and the rest of the staff at Vintage Sound can’t ask for much more than being given such a chance. I’d encourage others in Muscatine to give it to them. And I hope they make the most of it.
Sam Cooke
I’m starting to worry about what a friend jokingly calls Skynet in reference to computer intelligence as depicted in the Terminator movies.
In a blog post earlier today, I referred to the Sam Cooke song, “A Change is Gonna Come.”
So, just now, I fired up a new Spotify station, using a completely different artist and song to create the station. But what do you suppose was the first song played on this station?
Yep. “A Change is Gonna Come.”
It kind of freaked me out.
AC/DC
AC/DC, the Australian hard rock band, in 1975 released It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll.)
It’s a great song.
And it could also be used to describe the changes in how music is discovered and bought by new fans. That’s an experience that has come a very long way.
When AC/DC released It’s a Long Way to the Top, I was 9 years old. From 1975 to 1985, the year I graduated from Chariton High School, if you listened to rock music in my hometown, you listened to KGGO, a classic-rock radio station in Des Moines. If you heard something you liked on the radio, you probably bought an LP record or maybe an eight-track or a cassette tape. By the time I was in high school, if you weren’t a loser like me, you had a compact disc player.
If you had the means to do so, you bought your music at a record shop in Des Moines or some other bigger town. That was because about the only option in Chariton at the time was the Pamida store or Gibson’s, which, I think, was a predecessor to Pamida. Wisconsin-based Shopko owns the Pamida stores today.
If I haven’t lost you in all of that history, my point is that options for buying music in my small hometown were limited 30 years ago.
For me, that improved when I went off to college in Sioux City, Iowa, where I discovered Uncle John Records, which was an institution on West Third Street. As I recall, half of the building was a new- and used-record shop and the other half was a head shop.
Uncle John’s helped to greatly expand my horizons — and least when it came to music.
But even that pales to how much things have changed since then. Tuesday, afternoon, I listened to “Listener Picks: Your Favorite Albums of 2012,” a podcast produced by one of my favorite blogs, National Public Radio’s All Songs Considered. They published a list of what their listeners identified as the best albums of 2012. You can listen to the podcast here.
All this proves, I guess, is it really isn’t 1983 anymore. And we’re not in Chariton, Toto.
The Avett Brothers
But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Somewhat predictably, the band and album from the NPR list that I liked the most was The Carptener by the Avett Brothers.I really liked I Never Knew You.
Because of Google, which represents an even bigger way that life has changed since the days of scooping the loop in Chariton and listening to KGGO, I can easily tell you a little about the Avett Brothers. They are a folk-rock indie band from North Carolina. The Carpenter is the band’s seventh studio album. It was produced by Rick Rubin.
Of course, I didn’t discover this band by listening to a commercial radio station. And I didn’t rush out to buy the album. I simply listened to it on Spotify, but with that, I’m starting to repeat myself.
And I need to head for work anyway. Today is the second day of a new year. Make it a good one.
