As you may know, there is more than one type of Top 40 radio station. Two entries ago we visited KFMB, an Adult Top 40 station. In today's post we'll visit KEGY (a.k.a. "Energy 103.7"), a Mainstream Top 40 station. For those of you keeping score on the format label front, Mainstream Top 40 is also known as Contemporary Hit Radio. For those of you with a connection to the Big Easy, KEGY is musically pretty similar to B97.
I check in with Mainstream Top 40 radio on occasion: I'll admit that this isn't the sort of music I usually listen to, but that's not gonna stop me from putting on my archivist's hat and giving you a sample KEGY playlist and chatting about it a bit. Let's get to it then, shall we? On 16 December I tuned in to http://energy1037.cbslocal.com/ and did some live listening for just over an hour and a half; like KROQ, KEGY is owned by CBS Radio, and the KEGY Listen Live widget has the same interface that the KROQ Listen Live widget has. Here's a list of the songs that I heard, in chronological order:
Jeremih (with YG): "Don't Tell 'Em [DaaHype Remix]"
Calvin Harris (with Haim): "Pray to God"
Ariana Grande (with The Weeknd): "Love Me Harder"
Pitbull: "Give Me Everything"
Selena Gomez: "The Heart Wants What It Wants"
Paramore: "Ain't It Fun"
Sam Smith: "I'm Not the Only One"
Calvin Harris (with John Newman): "Blame"
Milky Chance: "Stolen Dance"
Hoodie Allen (with Ed Sheeran): "All About It"
Alesso (with Tove Lo): "Heroes (We Could Be)"
J. Cole: "Work Out"
James Newton Howard (with Jennifer Lawrence): "The Hanging Tree [DJ Mike D Mix]"
Jessie J (with Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj): "Bang Bang"
Don Omar (with Lucenzo): "Danza Kuduro"
Disclosure (with Sam Smith): "Latch"
OneRepublic: "I Lived [Arty Remix]"
Mr Probz: "Waves [Robin Schulz Remix]"
Meghan Trainor: "All About That Bass"
Mark Ronson (with Bruno Mars): "Uptown Funk!"
Taylor Swift: "Blank Space"
Random commentary
• It's a bit odd that Paramore shows up here but not on any of the playlists of the other radio stations we've visited. "Ain't It Fun" is as close to rock and roll as we get, and it's my favorite song in the list: funky, hard-edged, really good.
• Taking us closer to real funk is Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk!", on which Bruno Mars sings; if you enjoy the classic hits by Morris Day and the Time, this song is for you.
• Mainstream Top 40 clearly owes a great deal to the dance remix culture that got under way in the 1980s. I may not listen to much Top 40 today, but once upon a time I spent a lot of time listening to New Order and Dead or Alive, and a hop, skip, and a jump is all that separates a song like "Blue Monday" from Calvin Harris' "Pray to God".
• Some of this music is not so easy to classify. Jeremih's "Don't Tell 'Em [DaaHype Remix]" is a case in point: it's too slow to be a funk or house song, and would be a challenge to dance to; it doesn't have the swing or warmth of R&B; it's percussive and skeletal in the way that Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" is but it lacks the latter's pop sensibility; it's not straightforwardly hip-hop in the way that J. Cole's "Work Out" is, although maybe we could call it a hip-hop song via process of elimination - I guess we'll have to let the real critics out there sort this matter out, eh?
• Hoodie Allen's "All About It" and Jessie J's "Bang Bang" have an R&B vibe. The Top 40 music I listened to in the mid-1970s borrowed a lot from R&B and soul; as you would expect, these influences have largely fallen by the wayside, but it's gratifying to know that they haven't died out completely.
• Released in 2010 and the oldest song in the list, Don Omar's "Danza Kuduro" is a lively Latin house track whose lyrics are in Spanish and Portuguese; Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" sports just a tad of Latin influence but is no less energetic. BTW, Pitbull has released more studio albums than any of the other artists in the list.
• Hmmm, what else? We've got a couple of ballads in the list, they being Ariana Grande's "Love Me Harder" and Selena Gomez' "The Heart Wants What It Wants"; Sam Smith's "I'm Not the Only One" can perhaps also be classified as such. Calvin Harris' "Blame", Alesso's "Heroes (We Could Be)", and Disclosure's "Latch" fly us into full-fledged electronica. OneRepublic's "I Lived [Arty Remix]" is anthem pop (if this isn't a recognized term, I'm coining it now) in the vein of U2. Mr Probz' "Waves [Robin Schulz Remix]" is a quiet house track: do check out the original (non-remix) version, which is even more subdued.
I think that's enough 'radio anthropology' for the time being - we'll do something completely different next time.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
A Conversation Only We Could Make
We continue today our tour of Southern California pop/rock music radio stations. Short of a college station, a modern rock station is as adventurous as you're going to get on the airwaves, and in this post we'll check in with KROQ, the 'godfather' of modern rock stations. KROQ has been in the modern rock business for almost 40 years, more specifically, since 1976, perhaps not coincidentally the year that the Ramones released their debut album.
By the way, there are at present no modern rock stations serving the New Orleans metropolitan area. I was around during the WZRH and KKND years and listened to those stations from time to time but they are long gone.
Modern rock stations are also termed alternative rock stations. I was going to say that the alternative rock moniker was more appropriate back in the day whereas the modern rock moniker is more apt today, but on second thought I'm not so sure about that. I don't recall listening to KROQ in the late 1970s - in fact, I don't think I was even aware of KROQ back then - so I can't tell you how cutting-edge it really was at the time. (I mean, I'm sure it didn't play anything by, say, The Doobie Brothers or the Eagles, but this is setting the bar pretty low, yes?) Meanwhile, The Police's "Roxanne", The Clash's "London Calling", and Blondie's "One Way or Another" had trickled onto the playlists of many AOR stations by the end of the 1970s. I've noted previously that radio format labels have to be taken with a grain of salt, and the modern/alternative rock label is no exception.
Suppose a radio station limited its playlist to songs by classic artists on albums released in 2000 or later - e.g., The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang, The Who's Endless Wire, Bruce Springsteen's High Hopes - wouldn't that playlist be a "modern rock" playlist? Given that such a station would be clearly different than the typical classic rock station, wouldn't that make the station an "alternative rock" station? Inquiring minds would like to know!
Anyway, let me get down to brass tacks here... Four weeks ago Thursday (13 November) I tuned in to http://kroq.cbslocal.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:
The Black Keys: "Tighten Up"
The Smashing Pumpkins: "One and All"
311: "Love Song"
Imagine Dragons: "Demons"
Green Day: "Welcome to Paradise"
Hozier: "Take Me to Church"
Muse: "Supermassive Black Hole"
Lorde: "Yellow Flicker Beat"
Sublime: "Santeria"
Arctic Monkeys: "Do I Wanna Know?"
Keane: "Somewhere Only We Know"
Foo Fighters: "Something from Nothing"
Franz Ferdinand: "Take Me Out"
The Neighbourhood: "Afraid"
U2: "Song for Someone"
The White Stripes: "Seven Nation Army"
Walk the Moon: "Shut Up and Dance"
Jane's Addiction: "Jane Says"
Vance Joy: "Riptide"
The KROQ Listen Live widget offers lyrics for the songs that it plays but otherwise doesn't provide anything (bios, album discographies, etc.) for the songs' artists.
The above list is broadly consistent with the modern rock designation although there is some room for improvement, as discussed below.
Random commentary
• For better or for worse, I think of bands like The Black Keys and The White Stripes as being less raw versions of The Stooges; some people call such bands "garage rock" but I prefer to call them "dirty blues". "Tighten Up" and "Seven Nation Army" go back to 2010 and 2003, respectively. FYI: The White Stripes broke up in 2011.
• The Smashing Pumpkins' "One and All" is brand new, and is satisfyingly grungy à la "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" vis-à-vis "1979".
• 311's "Love Song" is actually a cover of The Cure's "Lovesong"; a reggae styling gives 311's version a warmth that the original lacks. (Admittedly, of all the adjectives one might use to describe The Cure, "warm" is not one of them.)
• Green Day's "Welcome to Paradise" goes back to 1994 and appears on the band's Dookie album. Green Day has released 8 studio albums since then: why not play something from 2012's ¡Tré!?
• Hozier, who is from Ireland, is one of three singer-songwriters in the list (Lorde and Vance Joy are the other two). "Take Me to Church" has some soul, a bit of gospel, and a dash of the blues in its sound, but is still very much a pop song - definitely different.
• Granted that you can dance to pretty much anything, Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" is very much a dance track, and it's a very good dance track.
• Sublime's "Santeria" is our second reggae-pop entry. As you may know, Sublime ended when vocalist/guitarist Brad Nowell tragically died from a heroin overdose in 1996.
• I had never heard of Keane before, I have to confess. "Somewhere Only We Know" is a pretty piano-based balled, and is wistful in a "The Long and Winding Road" kind of way; it also reminded me a bit of Queen: "Freddie Mercury should be singing this," I thought as I was listening.
• You may count me among those who hold that Foo Fighters is a better band than Nirvana ever was. "Something from Nothing" is a well-written, structured song that starts slowly and builds to a charging hard-rock attack - definitely one of the high points of the set.
• Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", which appears on the band's eponymous 2004 debut album, is as edgy and noisy a track as you could hope to hear on a commercial radio station. All right, KROQ! That said, Franz Ferdinand has released 3 studio albums since then, and 2013's Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action finds the band in altogether more rhythmic territory - why not play something from that?
• Re the U2 selection: At last, something from Songs of Innocence! And it was a good song!
• I hadn't heard of Walk the Moon before, either. Per its title, "Shut Up and Dance" is a dance-pop song; I didn't care for it so I decided to check out some of the band's other Popular Songs, specifically, "Anna Sun", "Tightrope", and "Quesadilla", all of which I thought were better than "Shut Up and Dance". There's just no accounting for musical tastes, is there?
• "Jane Says" appears on Jane's Addiction's first proper studio album, 1988's Nothing's Shocking, and is the oldest song in the list. I understand that a song like "Jane Says" serves as a bone to throw to the casual listener, but be that as it may, most of us have heard "Jane Says" and "Been Caught Stealing" enough times, so why not play something from 2003's Strays (which has a great title track) or 2011's The Great Escape Artist?
Barring unforeseen circumstances, we'll visit KEGY in the following entry.
By the way, there are at present no modern rock stations serving the New Orleans metropolitan area. I was around during the WZRH and KKND years and listened to those stations from time to time but they are long gone.
Modern rock stations are also termed alternative rock stations. I was going to say that the alternative rock moniker was more appropriate back in the day whereas the modern rock moniker is more apt today, but on second thought I'm not so sure about that. I don't recall listening to KROQ in the late 1970s - in fact, I don't think I was even aware of KROQ back then - so I can't tell you how cutting-edge it really was at the time. (I mean, I'm sure it didn't play anything by, say, The Doobie Brothers or the Eagles, but this is setting the bar pretty low, yes?) Meanwhile, The Police's "Roxanne", The Clash's "London Calling", and Blondie's "One Way or Another" had trickled onto the playlists of many AOR stations by the end of the 1970s. I've noted previously that radio format labels have to be taken with a grain of salt, and the modern/alternative rock label is no exception.
Suppose a radio station limited its playlist to songs by classic artists on albums released in 2000 or later - e.g., The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang, The Who's Endless Wire, Bruce Springsteen's High Hopes - wouldn't that playlist be a "modern rock" playlist? Given that such a station would be clearly different than the typical classic rock station, wouldn't that make the station an "alternative rock" station? Inquiring minds would like to know!
Anyway, let me get down to brass tacks here... Four weeks ago Thursday (13 November) I tuned in to http://kroq.cbslocal.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:
The Black Keys: "Tighten Up"
The Smashing Pumpkins: "One and All"
311: "Love Song"
Imagine Dragons: "Demons"
Green Day: "Welcome to Paradise"
Hozier: "Take Me to Church"
Muse: "Supermassive Black Hole"
Lorde: "Yellow Flicker Beat"
Sublime: "Santeria"
Arctic Monkeys: "Do I Wanna Know?"
Keane: "Somewhere Only We Know"
Foo Fighters: "Something from Nothing"
Franz Ferdinand: "Take Me Out"
The Neighbourhood: "Afraid"
U2: "Song for Someone"
The White Stripes: "Seven Nation Army"
Walk the Moon: "Shut Up and Dance"
Jane's Addiction: "Jane Says"
Vance Joy: "Riptide"
The KROQ Listen Live widget offers lyrics for the songs that it plays but otherwise doesn't provide anything (bios, album discographies, etc.) for the songs' artists.
The above list is broadly consistent with the modern rock designation although there is some room for improvement, as discussed below.
Random commentary
• For better or for worse, I think of bands like The Black Keys and The White Stripes as being less raw versions of The Stooges; some people call such bands "garage rock" but I prefer to call them "dirty blues". "Tighten Up" and "Seven Nation Army" go back to 2010 and 2003, respectively. FYI: The White Stripes broke up in 2011.
• The Smashing Pumpkins' "One and All" is brand new, and is satisfyingly grungy à la "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" vis-à-vis "1979".
• 311's "Love Song" is actually a cover of The Cure's "Lovesong"; a reggae styling gives 311's version a warmth that the original lacks. (Admittedly, of all the adjectives one might use to describe The Cure, "warm" is not one of them.)
• Green Day's "Welcome to Paradise" goes back to 1994 and appears on the band's Dookie album. Green Day has released 8 studio albums since then: why not play something from 2012's ¡Tré!?
• Hozier, who is from Ireland, is one of three singer-songwriters in the list (Lorde and Vance Joy are the other two). "Take Me to Church" has some soul, a bit of gospel, and a dash of the blues in its sound, but is still very much a pop song - definitely different.
• Granted that you can dance to pretty much anything, Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" is very much a dance track, and it's a very good dance track.
• Sublime's "Santeria" is our second reggae-pop entry. As you may know, Sublime ended when vocalist/guitarist Brad Nowell tragically died from a heroin overdose in 1996.
• I had never heard of Keane before, I have to confess. "Somewhere Only We Know" is a pretty piano-based balled, and is wistful in a "The Long and Winding Road" kind of way; it also reminded me a bit of Queen: "Freddie Mercury should be singing this," I thought as I was listening.
• You may count me among those who hold that Foo Fighters is a better band than Nirvana ever was. "Something from Nothing" is a well-written, structured song that starts slowly and builds to a charging hard-rock attack - definitely one of the high points of the set.
• Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", which appears on the band's eponymous 2004 debut album, is as edgy and noisy a track as you could hope to hear on a commercial radio station. All right, KROQ! That said, Franz Ferdinand has released 3 studio albums since then, and 2013's Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action finds the band in altogether more rhythmic territory - why not play something from that?
• Re the U2 selection: At last, something from Songs of Innocence! And it was a good song!
• I hadn't heard of Walk the Moon before, either. Per its title, "Shut Up and Dance" is a dance-pop song; I didn't care for it so I decided to check out some of the band's other Popular Songs, specifically, "Anna Sun", "Tightrope", and "Quesadilla", all of which I thought were better than "Shut Up and Dance". There's just no accounting for musical tastes, is there?
• "Jane Says" appears on Jane's Addiction's first proper studio album, 1988's Nothing's Shocking, and is the oldest song in the list. I understand that a song like "Jane Says" serves as a bone to throw to the casual listener, but be that as it may, most of us have heard "Jane Says" and "Been Caught Stealing" enough times, so why not play something from 2003's Strays (which has a great title track) or 2011's The Great Escape Artist?
Barring unforeseen circumstances, we'll visit KEGY in the following entry.
Monday, December 1, 2014
We Can Dance Until We Die
I began my popular music education in the mid-1970s with KCBQ, a San Diego-based Top 40 AM radio station. The hits on the air at the time included Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony's "The Hustle", Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love", Ace's "How Long", and the Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'" - good stuff! (Admittedly, Morris Albert's "Feelings" was not such good stuff.) In due course I graduated to FM rock radio and left KCBQ behind. KCBQ is at present a talk radio station, although it hasn't abandoned music completely, namely, it broadcasts a "Sock Hop" program (some of whose past shows are archived here) on Saturday night and a "Moldie Oldies Radio" program on Sunday night.
In today's post we'll check in with KFMB-FM, which is part of the Jack FM family of radio stations and is a Top 40 station for all intents and purposes. Wikipedia variously describes the KFMB format as
The music
Three weeks ago Wednesday (12 November) I tuned in to http://www.sandiegojack.com/ and did some live listening for almost an hour and a half. KFMB says that its online streaming
The Neighbourhood: "Sweater Weather"
One Direction: "Story of My Life"
U2: "Pride (in the Name of Love)"
Katy Perry: "Teenage Dream"
Maroon 5: "Animals"
Ella Henderson: "Ghost"
Ed Sheeran: "Sing"
Sam Smith: "Stay with Me"
Vance Joy: "Riptide"
The Cranberries: "Dreams"
Tove Lo: "Habits (Stay High)"
Switchfoot: "Meant to Live"
Meghan Trainor: "Lips Are Movin'"
Echosmith: "Cool Kids"
Lorde: "Royals"
Phillip Phillips: "Raging Fire"
Gwen Stefani: "Baby Don't Lie"
Taylor Swift: "Blank Space"
The KFMB Online Player also provides brief bios, album discographies, and photos for the songs' artists.
History
The oldest song is U2's "Pride (in the Name of Love)", which dates to 1984.
The Cranberries' "Dreams" goes back to 1992.
Switchfoot's "Meant to Live" goes back to 2003.
Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" was released in 2010.
The remaining 14 songs have all been released within the last two years.
Solo artist commentary
• As for our KPRI visit the list contains a lot of singer-songwriter material but this time we've got a 7:4 female/male ratio. Vance Joy is from Oz, Tove Lo is Swedish, and Lorde is a Kiwi; the rest of these artists are either American or English.
• Ella Henderson's "Ghost", with its muscular R&B sound, is the song in this category I like best. Honorable mention goes to Meghan Trainor's "Lips Are Movin'", which is noteworthy in that it has one foot in vintage (circa 1960) rock and roll.
• Sam Smith's "Stay with Me" is the one point of overlap with the KPRI song list. Smith was recently profiled by the Associated Press.
• BTW, Magic 101.9 plays a version of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" that removes the song's
Band commentary
• Interestingly, there's a hard rock song in the list, that being Switchfoot's "Meant to Live": as Switchfoot is from San Diego, perhaps this is a "they're local boys" thing.
• I'm glad that The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" is a hit because it's kind of a dark track musically.
• Echosmith's "Cool Kids" has a vaguely retro-1980s pop-rock sound, which is OK, I'd much rather hear that than a empty dance track.
The spice of radio
The Jack FM brand has a semi-smug
We'll go after KROQ in the next post.
In today's post we'll check in with KFMB-FM, which is part of the Jack FM family of radio stations and is a Top 40 station for all intents and purposes. Wikipedia variously describes the KFMB format as
adult hits,
variety hits, or
modern adult contemporary- whatever. Vis-à-vis the radio stations I used to listen to in New Orleans, KFMB is somewhat similar to B97 and Magic 101.9 but is more straightforwardly grounded in pop music than those stations are, more specifically, it doesn't have B97's urban feel and it doesn't play nearly as many ballads as Magic 101.9 does.
The music
Three weeks ago Wednesday (12 November) I tuned in to http://www.sandiegojack.com/ and did some live listening for almost an hour and a half. KFMB says that its online streaming
is unable to be heard outside of the San Diego area, regardless of device: although I live in North San Diego County and not in San Diego itself, I was able to use the KFMB Online Player without any problems. Here's a list of the songs that I heard, in chronological order:
The Neighbourhood: "Sweater Weather"
One Direction: "Story of My Life"
U2: "Pride (in the Name of Love)"
Katy Perry: "Teenage Dream"
Maroon 5: "Animals"
Ella Henderson: "Ghost"
Ed Sheeran: "Sing"
Sam Smith: "Stay with Me"
Vance Joy: "Riptide"
The Cranberries: "Dreams"
Tove Lo: "Habits (Stay High)"
Switchfoot: "Meant to Live"
Meghan Trainor: "Lips Are Movin'"
Echosmith: "Cool Kids"
Lorde: "Royals"
Phillip Phillips: "Raging Fire"
Gwen Stefani: "Baby Don't Lie"
Taylor Swift: "Blank Space"
The KFMB Online Player also provides brief bios, album discographies, and photos for the songs' artists.
History
The oldest song is U2's "Pride (in the Name of Love)", which dates to 1984.
The Cranberries' "Dreams" goes back to 1992.
Switchfoot's "Meant to Live" goes back to 2003.
Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" was released in 2010.
The remaining 14 songs have all been released within the last two years.
Solo artist commentary
• As for our KPRI visit the list contains a lot of singer-songwriter material but this time we've got a 7:4 female/male ratio. Vance Joy is from Oz, Tove Lo is Swedish, and Lorde is a Kiwi; the rest of these artists are either American or English.
• Ella Henderson's "Ghost", with its muscular R&B sound, is the song in this category I like best. Honorable mention goes to Meghan Trainor's "Lips Are Movin'", which is noteworthy in that it has one foot in vintage (circa 1960) rock and roll.
• Sam Smith's "Stay with Me" is the one point of overlap with the KPRI song list. Smith was recently profiled by the Associated Press.
• BTW, Magic 101.9 plays a version of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" that removes the song's
in my skin-tight jeanslines; there was no bowdlerization on KFMB's part.
Band commentary
• Interestingly, there's a hard rock song in the list, that being Switchfoot's "Meant to Live": as Switchfoot is from San Diego, perhaps this is a "they're local boys" thing.
• I'm glad that The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" is a hit because it's kind of a dark track musically.
• Echosmith's "Cool Kids" has a vaguely retro-1980s pop-rock sound, which is OK, I'd much rather hear that than a empty dance track.
The spice of radio
The Jack FM brand has a semi-smug
Playing What We Wantslogan. If Jack FM stations are content to play Top 40 hits with a few 'oldies' mixed in, then fair enough, I suppose, but the slogan implies that those stations should go off the beaten track some of the time, and that clearly doesn't happen at KFMB, or at least it didn't during my listening session; if a varied playlist is what you're after, KPRI is a better choice.
We'll go after KROQ in the next post.
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
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.
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 alternativestation. 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.
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,
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.
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,
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?".
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
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.
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
rather than an id anchor although I myself would go with the latter given that ATH pages are served as XHTML 1.0 Strict
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)