3/22/5

It's the anti-Indie!

Have you been listening to Jack? Here in LA, the long-time dominant classic-rock station has been 95.5 KLOS, because they constantly alter their format just enough to gain as many younger listeners as they lose in older ones. You don't hear The Beatles very much anymore, but Guns and Roses are regulars. They stick to solid time-honored, heavily-worn hits. They don't experiment too much with the lesser known tracks by the big bands, or the lesser known bands, or the more dated material. Thus, you get "Hot Legs" but not "Do You Think I'm Sexy", you get "Every Breath You Take" but not "Spirits In The Material World". And Led Zeppelin. You get LOTS of Zeppelin!

Many have come and gone over the years who have boldy attempted to put some actual integrity and variety into the basic classic-rock format, but they all have died various quick or slow deaths. KMET was God in the 80's, and Jim Ladd still talks about his days there while doing his KLOS shows. Pirate Radio was an attempt to bridge the classics to the hair-metal, or something like that. It changed formats a couple times, but it's demise and subsequent buy-out to an easy-listening format was even satirized in the film "Airheads" with Brendan Fraser. Arrow 93, "all rock-and-roll oldies" started off trying to convince me that classics were now oldies, so the oldies from the 40s and 50s were now somehow ancient, I guess. But they stuck around for a good twelve years, giving KLOS a run for their money and Joe Benson a good home.

Until last week. Suddenly, without warning, it's now 93.1 Jack FM. So I've been listening and giving it a fair shake. "They play what they want." What that is I think I've finally pinned down: It's the anti-Indie.

I've been raving for over a year about Indie 103.1 being the coolest damned thing on the dial. 103.1 has been many different things over the years, from Mars FM techno to Mozart classical, and one infamous format change came after 48 hours of one line by the The Spice Girls going "Tell me what you want, what you really really want" looping over and over and over ad nauseum. The current Indie plays all those underground alternative things that have had little cults of fans just under the radar for so long, kids in black jackets or make-up or mohawks. New stuff from Mars Volta, grunge stuff by Mudhoney, synth from New Order, punk from The Ramones, all the way back to The Velvet Underground. All sorts of a-couple-hours-a-week specialty shows give you techno, heavy-metal, reggae, rock-a-billy, even rock en espanol. It's an eclectic mix, and it's very cool. Nothing commercial, except by accident. "Peek-A-Boo" by Siouxse And The Banshees being a hit in 1988 was a fluke.

So what does the new Jack FM play? It's like someone went through the recycle bin of disposable pop songs. All those "other" hits that KLOS won't play because they don't test. Unadulterated commercial music. But an eclectic mix of it. Like, blatantly deliberate juxtapositions of songs. "Dirty White Boy" from Foreigner followed by "Unbelievable" by EMF. They've gone as far back as "All Right Now" by Free and as recent as "Hella Good" by No Doubt. Eddy Grant doing "Electric Avenue" is back on the radio. It's almost like they pick the "other" hit that was not so timeless and forgotten about. When I say Billy Idol, KLOS says "Rebel Yell" or "White Wedding", but Jack gives me "Eyes Without A Face". Robert Palmer is still "Addicted To Love" but I'd forgotten he was also "Simply Irresistable".

So now I can choose between edgy, cool tunes that barely, if ever, get radio airplay and that I may have never heard before, but was happy to be educated about on Indie. Or overplayed and beaten to death in their time, now forgotten and "why the hell did you bring that song back?" Jack. Do we really need a station willing to play "Blaze Of Glory" by Jon Bon Jovi off the Young Guns II soundtrack?

BACK - - - BLOG INDEX - - - NEXT