off by one for 2005 March 10 (entry 1)

Thu Mar 10 11:28:45 it's bittersweet... sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet:

I'll miss WXRT, one of the coolest and most original radio stations I've ever listened to, commercial or otherwise. They have their niche, which is really several niches including blues, and for being a big city radio station, they really feel down to earth and in touch with the city. They play a lot of local music, support local artists, bring in good concerts, have lots of great on-air appearances, and break interesting artists. Right now they're sponsoring a program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which is essentially street-level music education with WXRT people and CSO performers. I'll miss the personalities, especially Marty Lennartz (and The Regular Guy movie reviews, coincidence...?). It's a station you can almost always count on to having something good to hear.

I won't miss Q101, "Chicago's alternative since 1992." Wow, you almost gotta blow the dust off that slogan! 13 years is a long time to be an alternative, and like other alt.stations in the nations, Q101 has stayed Staunchly Alternative -- but as we all know, "alternative" has become it's own kind of mainstream, one which I am not a fan of anymore.

When I was coming to visit NPU as a high school senior, I thought that Q101 was the coolest station on earth; they sounded like our local college station! But then the music industry changed, much like the Borg refactoring sheild and phaser frequencies.

I won't make disparaging, out of touch old guy remarks about "what Alternative is" or "what Alternative isn't," but I will say that when Alternative stopped being an adjective, got a capital letter and became a noun it stopped breaking molds and started, to turn a phrase, "thinking inside the bun." Yuck.

I think I would almost rather listen to any other station in Chicago, maybe even B96. Not because Q101 "sold out" and I have something to prove (I think that was inevitable given their narrow-yet-demographically-lucrative scope), but because now, 11 years later, I'm just not interested in the alternative they offer. It took me a while to realize that, but now I almost never tune in to Q101. Especially not during "Love Line."

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