The Human Touch

As you probably know if you’ve read more than half a post on this blog, you know that we at Garagerocktopia are huge fans of internet radio and, though we’ll decline to name them right here and now, of streaming music sites.

    

Growing up, we thought of ourselves as victims of commercial radio, which, though it wasn’t as lame

as it is now, was still usually pretty bad.

Here in Inland Southern California, we are lucky enough to have a lot of college stations, which often played cool stuff. But, then again, at each of them there seemed to be a contingent of music nazis whose sole purpose in life was to play the weirdest crap possible, whether or not there was any discernable artistry at all.

 Fast forward to the ‘90s and the advent of the internet, and cool music was only a click away. We can’t remember the last time we listened to the big FM rock stations in Southern California. I think I may have listened to the so-called “alternative” station in Pasadena sometime in 1999, but I can’t swear to it.

So the internet is good if you want to listen to cool music. But there are downsides, too.

We have already noted that along with so many internet stations, you can find any kind of music you want any time you want. But the days of shared musical culture may be gone forever. But there are a couple of other downsides as well.

Khaled

As we probably have noted already, we’re not just fans of garage rock up in here. We love us some African music which was not easy to find even in stores, and very tough to find on the radio. 

We also love Middle Eastern music, particularly Algerian Rai music (definitely check out this blend of rock, rap, funk and traditional Arabic music if you’re not familiar, particularly Khaled and Rachid Taha). 

These kinds of music were almost never heard on the radio in these parts at all – perhaps the Pacifica station in Los Angeles. And when you did hear them, it was quite a treat.

 Now, though we still love these kinds of music, they’re as readily available as Pharrell Williams -- if you know where to look. In other words, the world wide web has robbed us of the specialness of hearing something really cool. It’s no longer a treat – it has become routine. And maybe we’re showing just how in need of therapy we really are, but it is sad.

But the big question we ponder this week – how important is a DJ? We always thought of them as something of a nuisance, a necessary evil at best. But in the on-demand age, we have come to appreciate the DJ just a little more. True, we can fit multitudes of songs on our various gadgets. We can listen to streaming music and find things that we really like. 

 None of this replaces the human touch, though. There was something unpredictable about having some guy play the records for us, especially in the days – which we only barely remember – when DJs actually had some input into what they were playing.

On-demand is great. But most of us have our tastes. Even if our musical tastes are eclectic, we at Garagerocktopia find that there are just certain sounds and tones we gravitate to. It’s like even though we seek out different kinds of music, somehow there’s a sameness to it. Subconsciously, we’re stuck in a rut of certain tastes.  

I was never a fan of Jim Ladd, perhaps Los Angeles’ most legendary rock radio DJ. I found him to be strident and pedantic. 

Yet, I have to give him credit – he could be evangelizing whatever earth-shaking cause he was promoting that day, and come up with a brilliant soundtrack that completely erased my annoyance at what he spouting off about. And on these nights, he almost never failed to uncork some gem of a song that I might otherwise not know ever existed.

Internet radio, at least as far as I know, has not come up with anything similar, and I really don’t see

how it ever will.

The last bastion of this, I suppose, is the aforementioned college radio, which on one hand can be amateurish. Yet, sometimes that lack of polish can be a virtue rather than a vice. But if it’s personality you’re looking for, at this point college radio is the way to go. Full disclosure: I myself do participate in college radio, so I see first-hand how much the shows mean to some of the students, faculty, and alumni of these schools. That attachment frequently comes through, making college radio, in our humble opinion here, indispensable for finding good stuff to listen to.

Jim Ladd

 Satellite radio, which at its best does recreate that freewheeling feel, but can also be as corporate and soulless as its terrestrial bretheren. And, you certainly pay a hefty fee for equipment and a monthly fee.

We’ll admit here exactly the kind of music you want, when you want, is certainly a lot better than being stuck in the desert known as commercial radio. But once in a while, it is nice to let someone else do the driving.

We're still working on setting up interviews with more great artists. We’ve been in touch with one of the founders of the most important groups of the garage rock revival of the late ‘90s. This could make for a great feature. Nothing is set yet, but we’ll let you know when it happens.