Dude, Strummer died in a freak gardening accident.

I feel your pain, Will. I grew up listening to DC 101 (in the Stern days) and Rock 98 out of Baltimore. Hell, I even built an array of individually tuned dipole antennas so I could pick up every rock station within a 100 mile radius of my parent’s house. That eventually led me down the road to total geekdom which I so very much enjoy today. But I digress…

I know what you are looking for, and I haven’t found it either. I tried out both satellite systems briefly, but I eventually settled on the iPod solution. It is by no means ideal either, but $10-15 a month in new songs, on top of my existing couple hundred cd library, gives me a pretty darn good selection to choose from. And there is a ton of good new stuff and live recordings out there, available for free and legal download. And of course, there is always the less legal file sharing option, should you choose to go that route (I don’t, but I am a strong believer in the value of IP & karma too).

When I really want to be surprised, I just hit the shuffle button. Of course, that’s lacking a bit in the creative use of song mix. But play lists are available for that. You can make up your own for your own personal enjoyment, plus you can trade lists with others (much like Stephen). That’s kind of cool, and new.

The only thing missing with the iPod, that exists in radio/satellite, is the feeling that you are participating in a shared and fleeting experience between you, the DJ, and other listeners out there in the ether somewhere.

But that doesn’t seem to bother me much anymore. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and more crotchety in general. Or maybe it’s because I no longer prepare for my listening experience by doing bong hits behind the woodpile….

I'm somewhat spoiled as I have an old-style free-format FM station I can get at home and within my local driving area. WCLX-FM, 102.9, from Westport, NY. Website at www.musicheads.us

That said, I've gotta believe that a station willing to tell the marketeers where to stuff their demographics will succeed in the right community. Problem is, though, figuring out what that right community might be.

Obligatory: Clear Channel delenda est!!!!

Radio Paradise has been trying to get their programing onto XM for several years.
When I had highspeed, I listened to it a lot.
The programer/dj/owner has very eclectic tastes.

PS:
DFW is a clearchannel hell. I think they send the worst PDs here.
even the non-CC stations are horrid. The stations here seem to have an iPod shuffle with 8 or 9 songs. The crapppy rap (redundant) station I'm forced to listen to inat work plays at least two songs 3 times during the morning show...in a 4.5 hour period!

I have been spoiled by WXRT here in Chicago since I was in high school, they are more mainstream now, it is just cutting edge enough to let the boomers flatter themselves that they have kept up with music. Years ago the DJs never would've talked about their kids, they rarely talked as it was. They played stuff that was not played anywhere else and they often played oddities and album sides. I tried to emulate that style as a DJ at a college radio station in Mobile Al. during the late '70s and early '80s. Ramones, English Beat, Grateful Dead, Clash, Frank Sinatra, Sex Pistols, Santana... The area was truly starved for better music. I was amazed at the number of people that I met who listened to my show just to hear something new, TK 101 not withstanding. I wish Will the best of luck in finding the optimal mix of tunes, but I'm afraid that the I-Pod may be it.

If the '60s, '70s and '80s stations were as free-ranging as the '50s station, you might have your answer. I like that 50s on 5 doesn't just play the standard list of "oldies," pretty much defined as the American Graffitti soundtrack and a couple of Elvis songs. They'll play jazz, show tunes, Doo-Wop, R&B, blues, country and rock-and-roll.

I was sick of radio by the end of last year and am stoked on my Sirius system. We use to have four or five legitimate rock stations here in Southern California when I was in high school (about 10 years ago), now there are two - one alternative station and one that's more traditional (the home station of Mark and Brian).

Sirius has a Super Shuffle Channel that pulls stuff from every station and a couple of others within it's rock category that provide a pretty wide range of stuff.

As far as personality goes, well, they also got Radio Margaritaville.

I agree with you about XM. It's far better than over-air radio stations, but a true rock station would be great. One other rock station is sorely in demand: a live station. C'mon! Why the hell should anyone ever play the studio version of "Freebird" or "Margaritaville"? (Okay, maybe not the best examples, but you get the idea...)

I'll second the earlier Radio Paradise suggestion. I too grew tired of the same old playlists on local radio. I had done some minor listening to streaming internet radio before, but for the last 6 months, it's been exclusively Radio Paradise. Eclectic indeed, with enough repetition of the extensive playlist so you can get to hear that new one you liked every few weeks.

I agree about XM, I recently got it for a cross-country drive this summer. I don't think I will keep it, I want a radio station that will play a wide mix of music.

Something like Los Lobos->Rush->Grateful Dead->Stevie Ray Vaugn->Peter Tosh->Robert Earl Keene->and then a couple of bands I have never heard of...

I miss WMNF in Tampa, they introduced me to alot of new musicians/music and I never had to switch stations. I am starting to hate XM because I feel like I always have to keep looking for something I want to listen to.

"Why are they just repeating ClearChannel's playlist on Top Tracks and Big Tracks?"

It might well be because, if I remember correctly, XM is at least partly owned by Clear Channel. I just stay with terrestrial radio, though I've heard Sirius is really good...

Oh, and JP, it's a low-down dirty shame what Clear Channel did to Eagle 97.1. I remember late last year when I was up in that area and I turned it on to see if they were still playing that lite-rock tripe...when I heard what was coming out of the speakers, well, let's just say it's a good thing I wasn't driving, or I'd have run off the road.

This is making me start missing WLIR all over again.

I suspect KG is saying 'Southern California' when he means 'LA', because fm949 in San Diego has a broader playlist than typical alternative stations and no annoying morning personalities.

yeah, sorry about that bgates, kinda forget about san diego from time to time. my bad

You are so right. I spent a year in Pensacola in 1980, and TK101 was the best. It beat anything in New Orleans. Up here in Richmond, we have Liberty radio "we play anything" except ... they don't. typical

jaymaster wrote: "The only thing missing with the iPod, that exists in radio/satellite, is the feeling that you are participating in a shared and fleeting experience between you, the DJ, and other listeners out there in the ether somewhere.

But that doesn’t seem to bother me much anymore. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and more crotchety in general."

I have the same feeling. I haven't felt that "shared experience" since 1988 or so (the latter part of my college years). Commercial FM is so, well, commercial - it's Yack & Babble on the morning show, screaming car dealership ads, and then the latest hit from whatever the entertainment biz has dragged up from the depths of The Sea of No Talent. Some of today's music is good, but it's a gold nugget in a pile of manure, which in turn sits in a field of blandness. And you know what really frosts my cookies? When you hear, in the afternoon, the exact same banter between the DJ's that you heard in the morning. Not just the same words and "pacing," but a freakin' recording! Definitely not fleeting.

I'm not iPod'ded, but I listen to WBOB - my 12-disc CD changer loaded up with, right now, The Call, a Teaching Company sampler, Sarah Brightman's Harem, Michael McDonald's The Ultimate Collection, and a bunch of homebrew discs with everything from ABBA ("Knowing Me, Knowing You") to ZZ Topp ("Got Me Under Pressure").

There was a time when each radio had its own "sound and feel." TK101 was rock, WFTW was pop/Top 40 (and that's going waaay back!), and so forth. That time's long gone for most of us. Reminds me of a Queen semi-hit, "Radio Gaga":

I'd sit alone,
and watch your light,
my only friend,
through teen-aged nights.
And everything I had to know,
I heard it on my radio.

Will - I worked for CC in New Orleans from '97-2000. One of my fellow salesmen had come to us from Pensacola where he sold ads for TK-101. He wouldn't shut up about TK and how great it was. I was convinced after one trip to Mobile/Pensacola where we had it on constantly. He was pretty bummed when CC bought it 2000, knowing it was the end of an era.

Maybe there's no "random whatever" programming on XM because their research suggests the market for same is very, very small?

I mean, sure, I might (indeed, do, given my experience with my iPod) want a channel to go from (for example) Slayer to Dido to Einsturzende Neubauten to Hank Williams (Senior. The only one that counts.)... but I'm pretty sure that would cause most people to change the channel and never, ever go back.

There's a slim chance the local pop station might play a song I want to listen to, just like this notional no-format station might for the average listener... but just like them, I don't tune in just to see, knowing the odds.

(Which brings up the other thing... when there's nationwide 3G or EVDO, we can all listen to internet radio in our cars!)

I've been enjoying Jack-FM, www.jack.fm, online while at work. They also have several broadcast stations around the country, including 104.3 in the Chicago area. They play some stuff I could really live without, but the mix is much wider than most other stations out there.

If some online music store doesn't already have it, it seems that having a shared playlist feature might interesting, if well implemented. That would probably have to include: create, share, tag, rate, and buy all songs on a playlist. Give them permalinks so people can have an url to a playlist to blog, email, etc...

I'm with you, man. I've been an XM subscriber for three years and HATE that the progrock channel is now online only. I listen to X-Country and Bluesville, for the most part, and if it weren't for the MLB and college sports broadcasts, I would strongly consider Sirius.

Dish Network carries Sirius, which has a "free form" station that reminds me of the late, lamented KOTR (The Mighty Otter) in Cambria/San Luis Obispo, Calif. Get yer Hank Williams, Louis Prima and King Crimson, all in one set. The Sirius jam-bands channel is fun, too, if you're a Deadhead or Allman Bros. fan.

Were I starting from scratch, and not a baseball fanatic, Sirius would be mighty tempting.

Okay, I've gotta get my like-in-kind stations from the Washington, DC area. WHFS in Bethesda was jock programmed and anything went. It never did really survive its move to Annapolis, MD in 1983. In the late '90's the previous owner of WHFS started WRNR in Annapolis. Very faithful to the old WHFS format until they, you guessed it, sold out in 2002. Pitty.

To all - thanks for the great memories of radio as a kid. An especially big thanks for the Radio Paradise tip - I've been enjoying in for a few hours now, the mix is terrific!

DC Carter

I went to high school and college in Southern Cal, and there were some great rock stations way back then. KGB in San Diego (you might guess from the three letter call sign that it's one of the oldest radio stations in the US) and KMET in LA were my favorites. The former is now "classic rock," and the latter is defunct, the frequency now belongs to some new age station (or did the last time, years ago, I was down there vainly looking for good FM radio).

KMET was the home station of Dr. Demento, where he taped his syndicated two hour show. He also broadcast a live four hour show which was much better than the syndicated one. It also was home to some DJs later featured on Roger Waters' Radio Kaos album.

Ah yes, TK-101 - Pensacola: Flight school, summer storms and bushwhackers on the beach by the tiki-hut.

Would have said that that was a million years ago, but your reminder brought it all back in a moment, like the scent of a ex-girlfriends perfume in a crowd.

Thanks for that.

You might try XM's Fine Tuning on channel 76. They describe it as eclectic, and it's not an old style FM rock, but it's got an interesting mix. You'll hear everything from Tangerine Dream to Alan Parsons to Yes to The Chieftains. Unfortunately, Yanni may show up from time to time.

Will,

The old Z-93 in Atlanta has a format just like you are looking for.

http://www.929davefm.com/music/

Do the link link....

Ahh...pining for the old AOR days.

Because right now, radio sucks the big, long schlong.

In my early days, San Jose had two kick-ass AOR stations, KSJO and KOME, in addition to being able to receive two or three good AOR stations out of SFO. KOME was cool for its station ID drop-ins - one was Chevy Chase yelling out "Don't touch that dial - there's KOME on it!" - as well as the late nights with Dennis Erectus. KSJO had better musical quality in order to keep up with KOME's comedy.

Then came Infinity, then came CheapChannel. Infinity/Viacom/CBS bought KOME and turned it into some proto-new wave similar to Live-105 in SFO while keeping the KOME call letters, and has since gone Spanish. KSJO was absorbed by CheapChannel, held on to AOR for a few years, but has since also gone Spanish.

Now I live in Sacramento, and the entire FM radio dial is CheapChannel or Infinity, programmed elsewhere, no matter the format.

And yes we have Jack-FM, and Jack-FM is a joke, with 35-40 minutes max per hour of music, and a 30- to 60-second drop-in BETWEEN EVERY SONG singing the praises of Jack-FM.

The day I could play my MP3 through my car stereo was the best day of my commuting life.

Feh.

We're back to internet only, but Rhapsody has some pretty interesting "radio" stations.

Plus, there's a feature where you can pick up to ten artists and create your own radio station. Rhapsody takes your ten and adds in songs from other artists that fit within that range. E.g., give it Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett and Roseanne Cash, and it will also play Charlie Robison and Emilou Harris.

Thanks for the Radio Paradise tip.

Very nice.

Also internet-only, but have you tried the music genome project at http://www.pandora.com?

Loads of fun, and free.

Okay, I've gotta get my like-in-kind stations from the Washington, DC area. WHFS in Bethesda was jock programmed and anything went.

Ahh, the days of Weasel and Damian. I'd give up my XM in a minute for the good old days of WHFS. Man, I'm getting old.

I second Dave's comment about Pandora. I definitely recommend it as it's helping me discover new artists and rediscover old faves. Plus, the skill with which it predicts what I like is becoming eerie.

ucfengr

Don’t Forget Diane in the morning and Milo, who came on after Weasel and UPI news at 9:00PM. Remember his opening song - "Theme from the Boiler Room"? God, I'd love to find a copy of that track!

DC Carter

XM right now is running up against some major bandwidth issues (as is Sirius), as well as being in a battle with Clear Channel over the remnants of their original deal -- CC used to be a major investor in the company but now it's more of an adversarial relationship. XM just lost an arbitration ruling earlier this year that forced it to allow commercials on the four music channels programmed by Clear Channel, as well as adding CC-owned stations WLW and WSIX to their lineup (they'll also be adding CC regional composite news/talk channels in the near future as part of the arbitration ruling).

The end result is XM created four non-commercial channels to mirror the CC stations (which no longer carry artist/song title info on the tuner's display screen -- take that Lowery Mays!), and had to cut bandwith from their other music channels, as well as axing a couple of existing channels like XM Music Lab, which came after they had to dump channels late last year to make way for manditory Canadian content channels as part of a deal to allow the sale of XM radios north of the border.

All this is tightening up the playlists and making the stations far less eclectic than when I first got XM three years ago (I really miss On The Rocks and Special X). Hopefully, they'll figure out a way to either improve their channel compression or get the FCC to allocate more bandwith for satellite transmissions in the future so they can go back to offering more of what regular radio does not (though I think they will gain some frequency in 2009 when the Clear Channel deal expires and they can dump the CC stations).

Best. Radio. Station. Ever! John in the Morning for new music and Don Slack for good old country twang.

Look up the possibly-internet-enabled guy running the pirate radio station in Terlingua-more-remote-than-Waziristan-Texas. Dude Owns.

Sorry, JD, but KOME was just a cheap-suit version of KSAN, overlaid(!) with the suave and sophisticated sexual innuendo of the typical 14 year old boy (their usual demographic).

The unfortunately premature loss of Tom Donahue doomed KSAN to it's eventual fate. WIthout his great musical taste, they followed their gotta-be-against-the-man revolutionary fervor into the fetid swamps of punk, and the carcass finally switched to country.

If you wanted eclectic programming, however, the all time champion was just down the road apiece from SJ: KFAT in Gilroy. Where else could you get an unknown country rocker followed by Tibetan chants?

KPIG tried to continue the madness, but I haven't listened to them since they decided to switch to requiring me to load Real spyware (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ADJUST...!) on my machine to get them over the net.

If you guys want a look into the mind of a radio marketing guru, visit:

http://www.radiomarketingnexus.com/

He has open comments so share your mind with an insider.

I see that CC is selling off stations. They must have decided they've milked FM dry by now.

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You don't seem to be a Country fan, but the new Denver Country station is pretty good. They spend a lot of time hyping themselves but they have a very deep and wide playlist.

btw: I must have missed the golden age of radio because I don't remember any "good" stations. Or perhaps it was living in Wisconsin...