NOTHING GOOD ON THE RADIO

Why can’t I listen to my music on the radio?

Right, nothing deep here – just a good old-fashioned moan at the bland and sanitising nature of commercial interests. Why can’t I listen to the music I like on the radio? It’s my frustration with the modern world in microcosm. For a little while, as a young whipper-snapper, I could listen to it on XFM. Then the sharks circled, XFM was purchased by Capital FM and, before I knew it, XFM seemed only to play The Stereophonics and the only DJ was Dave Berry. There was never anything new, or edgy, or truly alternative anymore. They were just feeding us a different aspect of the major labels’ officially sanctioned roster – the other half of the Top 20.

Then the good old BBC stepped in – the one organisation divorced from commercial considerations. They created 6Music – apparently designed for the likes of me. They kept it off the airwaves, ensuring low audiences by keeping things digital (does ANYONE have a digital car radio yet?) and advertising little. Then, when the pennies started pinching, they announced they were scrapping it – Mark Thompson citing the excuse of a serious overlap with the audience and output of commercial stations. This was ironic, given that there isn’t a single commercial station that plays a single song I identify with 6Music. Hence my point.

So what is my kind of music? It’s not that weird I promise! It’s just the usual music for a 31 year old who never stopped listening – who grew up on a combination of grunge, Britpop and Radiohead as a teenager and kept wanting thoughtful and interesting guitar music. If I listed the bands I listened to last week – Battles, Tunng, Local Natives (who I was lucky enough to see live on Tuesday), The National, Beach House, Grizzly Bear... well I’d sound obscure and pretentious to many. But that shouldn’t be so. They are not obscure or pretentious bands. Indeed the REASON you may not have heard of them is that none of the above are ever played on the radio (apart from by good old Zane Lowe perhaps on the otherwise infantile Radio 1)! There is no-one looking for exciting new music to push people’s dimensions. Because that would involve risk! No, rather the moneymen work out, via survey and focus group, exactly what people are listening to and then give them lots of it – and more ‘new’ artists that sound exactly the same again.

There is, of course, an upside to this: The internet. Things were perhaps ever thus on the airwaves, but  back in ‘the day’ of course people didn’t have Hype Machine... or Last FM... or ITunes... or a million other ways to explore, investigate and expand a budding musical horizon. We are, in reality, spoiled. But, in appreciating the fact, I don’t want to divorce myself from the lovely institution of radio, nor the guiding influence of a real human DJ.

In short, what am I saying? Please don’t scrap 6Music!