Where Can You Find New Music
These Days?
 I’ve been a radio addict
for as long as I can remember. As a small child I had a small portable AM/FM radio that I
would listen to at bedtime. When I was nine I received a stereo that had a turntable,
cassette player and AM/FM radio in one chassis. I didn’t listen to the radio that
much when I got this stereo because I was too happy to be able to play my records
in my room. But, when I got to middle school and found that other kids were
listening to music that I hadn’t really heard before, I started to listen to the
radio more and more.
I remember getting hooked on the local rock and college FM
stations. The best rock station had a program director who had a Sunday night radio show
where he played new and independent music. If my memory is correct, the show was called
"Nocturnal Emissions" -- a reference I was probably too young to appreciate at
the time. I tried never to miss this show that introduced me to bands like The Smiths,
R.E.M., The Cocteau Twins and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
My favorite college radio station was WHRB, Harvard
University’s radio station, because of their "orgy" series. The station
covered classical music, jazz, and the usual hipster college fair and they would play this
music in what they called "orgies." An "orgy" would be all (or almost
all) of the recorded music of the featured artist; for example, a Mozart orgy would give
you days of Mozart and a Sub Pop orgy would mean music only from the Sub Pop label. For a
young teenager there was no better way to learn about all kinds of music.
It is not news that commercial radio stations have
tightened their playlists and removed musical decisions from deejays. I don’t think a
show like "Nocturnal Emissions" would appear on commercial radio today. Even the
college stations in the New York area seem to play it safe and do not exhibit the kind of
innovation I’d expect. I’m afraid a young teenager interested in music today
will have a much harder time finding interesting music on the radio.
One of the WHRB orgies featured early industrial and
noise-rock, which produced my own holy grail. My best friend and I taped part of the orgy
on a cassette with a blue case (for years it was simply "The Blue Tape"). As a
15- and 16-year-old, it was my mission to hunt down every record played on The Blue Tape:
Throbbing Gristle, Eight-Eyed Spy, early Human League and on and on and on. I don’t
listen to much of that music now, but I can still remember the excitement and thrill of
being so intrigued by music.
The hunt for The Blue Tape music led me to spend hours in
every record store in Boston and Cambridge. It was over an hour-long trip by bus and train
for me to get to Boston, but I’d leave early on Saturday and make my way through at
least six record stores -- often spending more than an hour in each store. I would go
through the record bins like Sherlock Holmes looking for an important clue. I would rarely
find any music from The Blue Tape, but I’d come home with an armful of records
nonetheless. Browsing through a record bin was a great way to find music you never knew
existed. You couldn’t always be sure the music would live up to the record sleeve,
but that was part of the fun.
The last time I was in Cambridge and Boston I noticed how
the record stores have changed -- some have closed completely, others only have compact
discs and are in smaller store fronts. I’ve also noticed a decrease in the number of
record stores in Manhattan. The decrease in storefronts is not surprising, given the rise
of the Internet, but I do think that it hinders the search for new music. There is nothing
in online shopping comparable to flipping through record bins. Sure, sites like Amazon
will give you a list of CDs that were purchased by other people who bought the CD you are
looking for, but that’s a different kind of browsing. In the store, an interesting
cover would catch my eye and I could check the record label and information on the back
cover. I think it would be very rare to have an album cover intrigue you online in the
same way. Buying music online simply doesn’t afford the same chance to find new music
as a good ol’-fashioned record store would.
There does seem to be a new outlet for the discovery of new
music: Internet radio. The ability for just about anyone to run their own radio station
means that there are thousands of radio stations available to listen to online. Certainly
there are traditional radio stations that stream their programming over the Internet, but
many of the more interesting stations are only available on the Internet. Services like
Live365 and Shoutcast bring thousands of stations together for easy browsing. My favorite
new radio station is programmed by David Byrne, who is perhaps best known as a member of
the Talking Heads, and is available from his website.
When I first started to explore Internet radio stations I
was happy with the vast music selection, but was unhappy to have it confined to my laptop
listening. Sure, the audio quality on many stations is sub par, but for casual listening I
still wanted to listen over my stereo system. This was just one of the reasons I was very
excited when I found the Squeezebox, made by Slim Devices. This component allows you to
stream Internet radio and your own digital library over your Wi-Fi network and connects to
your stereo via analog or digital output. I love my Squeezeboxes (I couldn’t have
just one) and I review it this month in hopes of introducing others to a great new
product.
…Eric D. Hetherington
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