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Hang the DJ

What has happened to the state of the radio in this country? The mainstream radio stations seem to feel the need to compete with satellite radio or something and have become total crap. Granted, most mainstream radio stations have always been crap, but lately they seem to be even crappier than ever. Meh.

Due to the fact that I work in a fairly large office all by myself, I need some background noise to keep me sane and working hard. Seriously, I don't think I'd last more than a few hours with absolutely no noise save for the cars driving past my window. So I've always enjoyed having the radio on, as I don't have to think too much about it; no need to switch cds or anything like that. Also it's helpful to have a nice variety of songs that I don't actually have to pick for myself. Apparently while at work I'm lazy about my listening choices.

Anyway, awhile back I started listening to what at the time was K-Rock, with Andy Savage and his whole morning crew that came from 107.7 The End (after they got booted off, for whatever reason). Things were going along swimmingly, a nice variety of alternative music, an amusing morning show, great DJs. And then all of a sudden one day at 10am on the nose they started playing some craptacular song by Pink. At first I though to myself that this was a joke, and then they started having commercials for Jack FM and playing all sorts of random crap. Apparently unbeknownst to anyone the station decided to just up and switch formats to a DJ-less format that plays all kinds of random crap. Thanks but no thanks.

I then moved on back to 107.7 The End, which I'd listened to previous to K-Rock. I wasn't overly happy about this as I wasn't too keen on the DJs on the End and their morning show was hideous. DJ No Name was one of the worst morning show DJs of all time. But at the very least him and his sidekick were stationed in Seattle and played decent music and often had Sean from Harvey Danger on the show. This made it all bearable. That and randomly sending snide e-mails about my distaste for DJ No Name as both a DJ and a person also helped.

Fast forward to today. Even though I thought the morning show on The End could not get any worse, the wonderful people at Entercom somehow managed to find a way to burst my bubble. They have now joined a number of different stations across the country in broadcasting the Adam Carolla morning show. Adam Carolla; a complete waste of space. I honestly don't think that man has anything to offer. He's not even funny. So instead of a little yapping by DJ No Name and Jennifer White and a fair amount of music between the hours of 6am-10am, I was subjected to inane ramblings of Adam Carolla and his co hosts this morning.

I couldn't even make it to the end of his show. It was terrible. Once I realized that there wouldn't really be any music playing, I sent an e-mail to Entercom letting them know of my distaste for the sad state of affairs that is mainstream radio and promptly turned the dial to 90.3 KEXP.

So I've been listening to KEXP for a few minutes now and it's ok. Not as "alternative" as I'm used to, but they do play John Vanderslice and Bob Mould, so they can't be all that bad. If this doesn't work out though, I don't know what I'm going to do.

UPDATE: As of 11:52am I am no longer able to stand listening to KEXP. Don't get me wrong, they do play some decent stuff, but it's so few and far between I find myself sitting here thinking "What the fuck am I listening to now?!" I need to come up with a solution to my problem that does not involve satellite radio, hearing the same song more than twice a day (unless it's a really great song and it's my decision to hear that song repeatedly for 8 hours straight) and that doesn't require me to think too much. Meh.

posted by Erin - Tuesday, January 03, 2006