Monday, November 24, 2014

What I Succumb To Is Making Me Numb

This post will be the second post in a series of posts on Southern California radio stations. The first post of this series was on classic rock station KLOS, and is posted here.

You may not like classic rock: "It's stuck in the past" and "It plays the same small set of songs over and over again" you might say, and these would be fair criticisms. Accordingly, today we'll check in with KPRI, a radio station that musically casts a much wider net than does KLOS or New Orleans' WKBU.

Format-wise, Wikipedia classifies KPRI as an adult album alternative station. You can't read too much into these format labels, so let's just get to the music, shall we? Two weeks ago Tuesday (11 November) I tuned in to http://www.kprifm.com/ and did some live listening for almost an hour and a half. Here's a list of the songs that I heard, in chronological order:

David Bowie: "Young Americans"
James Bay: "Let It Go"
Smashing Pumpkins: "Tonight, Tonight"
Elvis Costello: "Pump It Up"
INXS: "New Sensation"
Dido: "White Flag"
George Ezra: "Budapest"
Jackson Browne: "Running on Empty"
Bastille: "Pompeii"
Gavin DeGraw: "I Don't Want to Be"
Sam Smith: "Stay with Me"
No Doubt: "Just a Girl"
O.A.R.: "Favorite Song"
Men at Work: "Down Under"
The Head and the Heart: "Another Story"
The Doors: "Love Her Madly"
U2: "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
Third Eye Blind: "How's It Going to Be"
Muse: "Madness"
John Mayer: "No Such Thing"

Some of this music was completely new to me - I had never heard of James Bay, O.A.R. ("Of a Revolution"), and The Head and the Heart before, for example - and that's a good thing: we wouldn't want to know it all by heart, would we?

Overlap with other formats

I can imagine the late Casey Kasem playing any of these songs on American Top 40: there are no deep cuts here but it's a nice mix nonetheless.

A number of these songs could fit on a classic rock station playlist: definitely the David Bowie, Jackson Browne, The Doors, and U2 songs, maybe the INXS, Elvis Costello, and Men at Work songs depending on the station.

The songs by Smashing Pumpkins, Bastille, No Doubt, The Head and the Heart, Third Eye Blind, Muse, and possibly Elvis Costello* and O.A.R. could fit on the playlist of a modern rock station like ("The World Famous") KROQ, whom we'll visit in a future entry. (*Musically "Pump It Up" is a match for a modern rock station, but this song is 36 years old.)

The songs by The Doors and Men at Work and possibly Jackson Browne** could fit on the playlist of an oldies station like New Orleans' WTIX (**I know that 'TIX-FM plays "Doctor My Eyes" but I'm not sure about "Running on Empty").

With its lo-fi indie sound, the song by The Head and the Heart could even be sneaked onto a college radio station playlist.

Playlist interface

KPRI maintains an On Air Playlist that
(a) logs the songs KPRI has played over the last 24 hours,
(b) provides lyrics (when available) for those songs, and
(c-g) provides brief bios, (not always complete) album discographies, lists of top tracks, videos, and any concert announcements for the songs' artists.
Ah, now that's what I call user-friendly radio!

Sin of commission

I cannot refrain from taking DJ Mookie to task for playing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", the most white-bread song in U2's catalog. If you're gonna go back to The Joshua Tree - and not reach for Songs of Innocence, as you should be doing - can you grow a pair and play "Bullet the Blue Sky", please? (On second thought, the quiet "Running to Stand Still" might be an even ballsier choice.)

Sin of omission

You may have noticed that the song list features a lot of singer-songwriter material. The male/female ratio of that material is conspicuously lopsided, Dido being the only female. Can we get cuts from Chrissie Hynde's Stockholm, Juliana Hatfield's Wild Animals, and Alanis Morissette's Havoc and Bright Lights on the air, please?

We may or may not turn the spotlight on KFMB-FM, Jack FM's San Diego station, in the following entry.

Monday, November 17, 2014

His Hair Was Perfect

A while back I noted that I listened to KMET, a Los Angeles rock music radio station, during my coming-of-age years. KMET's chief competition at the time was KLOS, a rock station slightly to the right of KMET on the radio dial. Unlike KMET, KLOS is still around, so given that I am back in California I thought I would check in with KLOS to see what it was playing these days.

A week ago Monday (10 November) I tuned in to http://www.955klos.com/ and did some live listening for a little over an hour. Here's a list of the songs that I heard, in chronological order:

The Tubes: "She's a Beauty"
Robert Plant: "Rainbow"
ZZ Top: "La Grange"
Warren Zevon: "Werewolves of London"
Dire Straits: "Sultans of Swing"
Mötley Crüe: "Girls, Girls, Girls"
Van Halen: "Jump"
The Cars: "Let's Go"
Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Lookin' Out My Back Door"
AC/DC: "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"
Collective Soul: "Shine"
Toto: "Hold the Line"
Foghat: "Slow Ride"
The Beatles: "Revolution"
Alice in Chains: "Man in the Box"
Pink Floyd: "Run like Hell"

KLOS doesn't call itself a classic rock station - its slogan is "Southern California's Best Rock" - but it clearly qualifies thereas, I think you would agree.

Random notes

(1) Oh my goodness, there's actually a new song here, that being Robert Plant's "Rainbow", the second cut on 2014's Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar. "Rainbow" has a bit of a world music feel and was a good choice for that reason. FYI, the legendary Bob Coburn, of Rockline fame, was DJ-ing at the time. (Bob was sitting in for Melissa Maxx, who was under the weather that day.)

(2) The oldest song of the lot is the Beatles' "Revolution", which goes back to 1968. DJ Gary Moore played the harder-rocking (45 rpm) single version of "Revolution" as opposed to the mellower "Revolution 1" version that begins Side 4 of the White Album.

(3) There are two nods to 1990s alternative rock: Collective Soul's "Shine" and Alice in Chains' "Man in the Box". I don't believe New Orleans' WKBU plays these songs but I could be wrong about that.

(4) The songs by The Tubes that got radio airplay back in the day were "White Punks on Dope", "What Do You Want from Life?", "Don't Touch Me There", and "Prime Time". The Tubes mainstreamed with 1981's The Completion Backward Principle, and I don't fault them for that, I really don't, although I do fault Bob, who was on the air back in the day and cannot claim to be unfamiliar with the aforementioned songs, for not playing an edgier track than "She's a Beauty".

(5) Singer-songwriter-wise we've got one entry, that being Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London", which appears on 1978's Excitable Boy. (Something I didn't know: the "Werewolves of London" rhythm section comprised Mick Fleetwood and John McVie from you-know-who.) After Excitable Boy Zevon released nine studio albums prior to his untimely death from cancer in 2003. Have you heard anything at all from those records on the radio? I haven't.

(6) Man, it's been eons since I've heard any of Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side of the Moon material on the radio. The KMET playlist included "Free Four", "One of These Days", "Fearless", and even "Careful with That Axe, Eugene", songs that are at least as good as if not better than "Run like Hell" (or anything else on The Wall, for that matter). Moreover, The Endless River, Pink Floyd's new and presumably final album, is out: man up and play something from that, guys.

OK, I think I've picked on classic rock radio enough at this point - we'll look at a different radio format next time.

Friday, November 7, 2014

The Post Cereal Collapse

Breakfast for me is a bowl of cereal with milk, a small glass of juice, and a cup of coffee. As breakfast options go, cereal has a lot going for it. Its simplicity and convenience can't be beat for a non-morning person such as myself. It's healthier than bacon and eggs or a doughnut. It's way less expensive than going out.

I genuinely enjoy good cereal even though most cereals on supermarket shelves are not to my tastes (I find them lacking in character, shall we say). Unfortunately, my 'cereal experience' has gone downhill in a major way over the past several years because a number of cereals that I used to buy are no longer available. The Post Foods cereal company is the chief malefactor in this regard; specifically, Post has discontinued the following first-rate cereals:

(1) Maple Pecan Crunch
(2) Vanilla Almond Shredded Wheat
(3) Shredded Wheat with Real Strawberries
(4) Just Bunches! - Caramel
(5) Cinna-Cluster Raisin Bran

A murkier case:
(6) According to its Web site, Post still makes Blueberry Morning. I go to Post's "Where to Buy" page and check Blueberry Morning's availability for my current (Vista) and previous (New Orleans) zip codes: "No stores found within 100 miles". Moreover, some Post cereals can be purchased directly from Post but Blueberry Morning isn't one of them. I run a "Blueberry Morning" Google search: Amazon can get it for you for $5-6 a box.

As intimated above, Post is not the only guilty party here: Post's partners-in-crime include Kellogg's and Sunbelt Bakery, which have shamefully discontinued
(7) Frosted Mini-Wheats: Vanilla Creme and
(8) Berry Basic,
respectively.

The (1)-(8) links lead to corresponding cereal profiles maintained by the Mr. Breakfast Cereal Project. At the bottom of the profile pages are Comments About This Cereal sections in which visitors gush about these cereals, so I know I'm not the only one who liked them. When I am shopping for cereal I look at all the crummy cereals that haven't been discontinued and think, "How can this be? Why is it that good items disappear whereas mediocre items are left behind? Who is responsible for this? Do the honchos at cereal companies actually eat cereal? This isn't a government conspiracy that aims to deaden our senses, is it?" And then I remember the age-old saying:

Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Or as commenter Cyclone puts it on the Mr. Breakfast Blueberry Morning page, The executives at Post are out of touch with consumers.

Anyway, of the cereals that are still available, here are some of my favorites:

Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry
With the Vanilla Creme variant gone, this is the next best thing.

Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats Little Bites Chocolate
The "wheats" part of this cereal gives it enough heft to be satisfying, its sweetness notwithstanding.

Kellogg's Müeslix
This cereal is pretty grainy but that's what I like about it.

Quaker Life - Maple & Brown Sugar
Much better than the Original and Cinnamon versions.

• Quaker Oatmeal Squares - Brown Sugar or Golden Maple
Forget Cap'n Crunch and Quisp - this is Quaker's flagship cereal.

Quaker Granola - Oats, Honey, Raisins, and Almonds
I'm a big fan of mixing cereals, and this cereal makes a great base on which to layer a second, less dense cereal.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Take Me to the Comments

Once a week or fortnight I pay a visit to Nick Corcodilos's Ask The Headhunter (ATH) blog, which addresses any and all issues relating to the world of work. Several months ago I wrote to Nick to notify him about a problem with the Comments links on his blog's home page. Nick replied, Thanks for your note, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those links work fine. I was going to send a "No, those links are not fine, here are the details of what's going on..." follow-up but then thought, "If no one has brought this to Nick's attention and I'm the only one in the world who cares about it, why bother?" In lieu of that second email, today's post will briefly discuss the Comments links problem and its very simple solution.

Anchor AWOL

So, I'm looking over a post on the home page of a blog and there's a Comments link below the post. Upon clicking that link, I expect to be taken directly to the Comments section of the individual post page; perhaps other users have other expectations but this is my expectation as a seasoned Web surfer. This isn't what happens at Nick's blog: clicking a Comments link on the ATH home page takes the user to the top of a post page, not to the Comments section that follows (the ad below) the post.

Let's look at the HTML for the Comments link at the bottom of Nick's most recent post, "The Indeed.com Game: Are you as dumb as HR?".

<a href="http://corcodilos.com/blog/7571/the-indeed-com-game-are-you-as-dumb-as-hr#comments"
title="Comment on The Indeed.com Game: Are you as dumb as HR?">Comments (2)</a>


Note that the href attribute's URL value ends with a #comments reference. The comments part of the reference specifies the name of a destination anchor within the http://corcodilos.com/blog/7571/the-indeed-com-game-are-you-as-dumb-as-hr document. (The comments string is technically known as a fragment identifier - now there's a term you can throw around at your next networking event, eh?)

I accessed the source of the post page and searched for a comments anchor: per my suspicion, nothing came up. The http://corcodilos.com/blog/7571/the-indeed-com-game-are-you-as-dumb-as-hr#comments URL effectively points to a resource that doesn't exist. In following the Comments link, the link URL resolves to that for the page as a whole, and that's why the user ends up at the top of the page.

Try it yourself by clicking the link below:

Comments for the "The Indeed.com Game: Are you as dumb as HR?" post

I've added a target="_blank" attribute to the anchor element start-tag so that the link opens in a new window.

Getting the target

As you may know, the HTML id attribute can serve "as a target anchor for hypertext links", quoting the W3C. A class="commentWrap" div element holds the Comments section of an ATH post page: giving the commentWrap div an id="comments" attribute is all that is necessary to solve our little problem.

<!-- You can start editing here. -->
<div class="commentWrap" id="comments">
<div class="commentDate">
...


I first learned about internal anchors from HTML Goodies's "So You Want A Page Jump, Huh?" tutorial, which discusses the classical way to link to a document fragment, that is, linking via an <a name="codeword"></a> element. (Actually, the tutorial leaves out the </a> tag, which does need to be present, as commenter Eric points out.) Accordingly, Nick could deploy an <a name="comments"></a> anchor

<!-- You can start editing here. -->
<a name="comments"></a>
<div class="commentWrap">
...


rather than an id anchor although I myself would go with the latter given that ATH pages are served as XHTML 1.0 Strict

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">


and that XHTML deprecates the name attribute of the anchor element.

For all I know, Nick may have said to his Webmaster, "When users click on a Comments link, I want them to go to the top of the post page and not to the Comments section" - if so, fair enough - but if he'd rather have them go straight to the Comments, then that's pretty easy to arrange, as you can see.