Das Radio

This week I've been volunteering to preview new releases at the radio station. There's only limited space for new CDs, and we can't have a bunch of crap stealing space from musicians who are actually good. I used to think that only cool artists would bother sending their stuff to college radio. Boy, was I wrong.

Hey, I'm in a band too. I want radio play as much as the next person, so it bums me out a little to give a crappy (if well-meaning) band the thumbs down. The fact of the matter is, good bands are far outnumbered by non-good. What do I mean by non-good? Well, there are two kinds of non-good:

"Fuck, this is awful. I can barely get through a song. Do I have to listen to all of this? Fucking please kill me if I do."

and

"Well... they sound sincere. Not very original though. That'd be alright if they just played with some blood'n'guts, or some soul or something. Take a chance already! Go out on a limb from what's happening today. Backward, forward, I don't care. Just gimme something, anything."

Out of the stuff I've previewed over the past year I'd say about 20% is the first example, 75% is the second, with the remaining five being good, or at least worthwhile.

When I'm evaluating a CD for the station I have to put my own tastes aside and think of the bigger picture. I don't listen to much techno, but I know what I like and what I don't. Same with hiphop, country or any number of genres. For the purposes of this entry I'll describe what I want in a rock band for the station's CD library.

First of all, if the music sounds "weird" to me, the disc is halfway there. We're trying to be diverse as we can. If your pop-punk-emo band sounds like every other in the genre, I don't feel that advances the station's listeners much. People listen to college radio to learn and be challenged a little; to hear stuff that isn't easy to find everywhere else. I remember when I got trained way back in the day, they told me I was under no obligation to play requests I didn't like. I view cataloguing the same way.

Often I find myself on the fence about a band. "Do we add them or no?" If a band is good enough to maaayyyybe consider, I might take popularity into account. Yesterday, for example, I was faced with a CD from this band. I'm not a fan, but they're a popular band I can tolerate. I gave them the thumbs up based on the fact that it would probably make a lot of our rock listeners happy.

Anyway, weirdness is good. Nice packaging or art is not necessary, but it can get your foot in the door. Case in point:



The art reminded me a lot of this band, so big points scored there. Musically he was just weird enough to be interesting (though not something I could see myself listening to). Thumbs up for Dan.

Recording quality is irrelevant to me.





...as anyone who knows me realizes. You can't polish a turd, and I'll take a diamond-in-the-rough over a shiny turd any day.

Taking artistic chances does not necessarily mean inventing new kinds of music. A great example would be this gentleman (who may well be reading this). To play stylistically pure 80s synthpop in 2007 takes guts, but he's also got the songcrafting skills to back it up. Or what about these guys? They hardly reinvented the wheel, but there was no old-time rock and roll band in the 90s that blasted with such unrelenting guts and power.

So there you go. Tips on how to get your CD past The Baron, and onto the radio. Anticlimactic ending to a long-ass post.