Tuesday, May 16, 2006

"Alternative Radio"

Triple J was once a great station when I was finishing high school in Brisbane in the early 90s, but it’s really sucked since the mid-90s. Maybe I’ve grown up, and/or we have such great public radio here in Melbourne (Triple R and PBS) that JJJ can’t compete, but geez, I usually prefer to listen to golden oldies in the lab at work if I have to choose b/w them and JJJ.

Most people I work with don’t really have the patience for public radio, it is a bit out there, which is why it’s so good, mostly. I mean I don’t love every segment, some of the stuff about computers or architecture I find really boring, and sometimes I’m not in the mood for general bullshit chatting [some is hilarious though] or can’t face various genres like country/rockabilly/rap/an d even metal – see maybe I am growing up, but the majority of metal these days seems pretty lacking – this will have to be tackled in another blog entry.

But last week, I was home babysitting, and since we were moving house (and are still unpacking, yay!), all the CDs were packed, I wanted some background music on to keep the lil’ girl asleep (she loves music, like her parents) and the preferred station had too much talk going on. So I turn to JJJ for curiosity more than anything, and no surprise, the first song I get is the Arctic Monkeys. I mean, I feel sorry for them, it’s a catchy song (the one about the dancefloor etc) but it’s not great. It’s not 5 out of 5 whatever stupid scoring things you use [you stupid over-hyping british rock mags]. But those guys will cop it all and will struggle to be heard in a year, probably, unless they do something really daring and groundbreaking for their next album, if they get that far.

I should note that later on I had JJJ on to hear the metal show for the first time in probably a decade, and that was amusing. Heard some new releases from bands I used to listen to a decade ago (and occasionally still chuck on now) and they were really boring. The highlight of an hour of listening was hearing a Metallica song from Master of Puppets. Haven’t heard that album in years. Haven’t seen it in years. Actually, just got it back from my bro, Dan and had it on last night, after a family catchup/dinner - it was the perfect end to Easter Sunday...

And don’t let me start about freakin’ rap metal. JJJ’s audience obviously is aimed at the finishing-high school-almost-at-uni-stag e, but I like to think I had more taste back when I was that age. Maybe there was better mainstream music, like Nirvana back in the early 90s, maybe that’s a dangerous topic to get into. Nowadays one has to search harder for ‘quality’ music, but in the end, that’s what makes it all the more worthwhile, hey?

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