On Feb 7, 2005, at 7:35 AM, Tosh Cooey wrote:
downloaded matt mcqueen's latest radio show (a counter-argument to
your
claim that 'this' would never happen on american radio), a fabrice
lig mix,
an old mixmaster morris mix
--> Matt's a great guy, but he's playing for a very very very small
niche in a very very very small niche market, not exactly mainstream.
Somehow i missed this thread, sorry for the late reply Tosh. I
appreciate the olive branch, but that attitude cracks me up. there was
once a time in the US when people probably said House music was very
very small niche when it was on the air here 15-20 years ago and guess
what... it fired up a world phenomenon that is still a part of the
dance music culture you celebrate daily. if you said that back then
to the people Djing on WBMX or Hotmix 5 or whatever, yeah, they could
have said "why bother?" -- at that time it was niche, they were playing
weirdo italo disco that was already 5 years old to US radio audiences.
they played disco after disco was "dead". but but they made a
difference instead, they mixed it up and did their own music and called
it house, those radio shows fundamentally shaped the future of
electronic dance music forever. It was the same way with Mojo. A lot
of what he played was pop, sure, but he mixed it with a lot of local
detroit techno records that people then wanted to check out, get
interested in, or at least listen to religiously on his his show. These
were major market commercial stations! Now, what has happened in the
last 10 years with Clear Channel and the homogenization of radio
programming options absolutely sucks, sure, but has only made the
independent stations that much more fired up to keep doing what they're
doing. it hasn't devastated the airwaves... yet
We're broadcasting in chicago on friday nights, prime time 9:30pm -
12:30 am... how you define a "very very small niche" but to me that's
a HUUUGE opportunity to turn people on. We've had calls from as far
as 50 miles north of the city who can pick us up on a clear night, and
last I checked we were the 3rd or 4th largest city in the US. Think of
how dense the population is in chicago. Having a broadcasting tower is
a the great equalizer. It's time people took community radio seriously
as an alternative to the ClearChannel near-monopoly of programming.
Everyone in the US who just sits on the outside of radio and takes
pot-shots, have you ever scanned your dial for community or university
stations, many of whom still truly CARE about the formatting, are
non-commerical or ethical in how they conduct business, present
alternative viewpoints to the mainstream stations, and work true
musical diversity into their programming time? Many major markets
have these. There are some amazing radio programs in NYC too. Here in
chicago you can hear polish folk music to punk to salsa programming to
underground hip-hop, you can find it on the air here. When Bill VanLoo
was going to school in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, way up in the remote
parts of the snow-buried rural land, he was pumping out detroit techno
week after week. In Chicago I can think of a few other stations
besides WNUR in chicago who have awesome programming on other nights.
Is it mainstream? Only if you hit people squarely in the ears who had
NO IDEA there were still good radio programs in the US, people click
around. I'm not out to change the world and have techno on every radio
station, but I am trying to turn people on to quality electronic music,
one listener at a time.
And i'm not even getting into the webcasting and site downloads.. i
check the logs and we've got people from 50+ countries regularly
listening. Community radio in the US is powerful, were' on the ghetto
end of the dial, but don't sit there across the world and give us a
little pat on the head. :)
peace
--
MM
http://sonicsunset.com
