Radio is still king.  What we want is an outlet that’s ALIVE, that’s programmed by PEOPLE, to turn us on to great music.

I love everything on my iPod, but I don’t want to listen to it in my car.  Because it provides no SURPRISES!

But delving deeper into the radio realm, one must dismiss terrestrial.  Because of the COMMERCIALS!  Listenership ain’t gonna go up, not until there are fewer than TEN minutes of spots an hour instead of twenty.  I mean really, if terrestrial radio was a parent, we would report it to child services for ABUSE!  NO ONE should be subjected to one minute of tripe for two minutes of music.  And you listen and you don’t like everything, so the hit to shit ratio is SO low, that people tune out COMPLETELY!

And then you’ve got Internet radio.  What a fucking hype THAT is.  As if radio is not a profession, not a skill, that ANYBODY can program.  I don’t want to listen to some amateur, and I don’t want to listen to a computer either.  I want someone picking the tunes because HE likes them, not because some computer or research said I would.

Research.  That killed radio.  If we followed the research, we’d make every woman look like Pamela Anderson, and I didn’t want to fuck her BEFORE the insane fake boobies.  I laugh when I see her listed as the most desirable woman on the planet.  Who DECIDES this?  We’ve got a whole world of misconceptions, trotted out by mainstream media focus-grouped to death.  Which is why mainstream media got into trouble to begin with.  Lose your soul and you lose your identity, we can sense the absence of passion, and we MOVE ON!

Then there’s Sirius satellite radio.  A haven compared to terrestrial, but too similar to what’s come before, it’s not a REVOLUTION!  Just yesterday a label bigwig told me he canceled his Sirius subscription when he was hearing the same pieces over and over on the CLASSICAL channel!

Now sometimes I wish I was exposed to tracks more often on XM, so I could get into them, but I’ll take their open playlist programming ANY DAY over Sirius’s.

Satellite radio missed its window.  It wasn’t promoted early enough.  Now there are too many competing technologies.  Satellite radio is niche.  But XM is still great.  Because of the DISCOVERY!

So I’m in bumper to bumper on the 405 yesterday, waiting to merge into the 101, when I flip over to the Cafe and they’re playing CLAPTON!

I gave up on Clapton LONG AGO!  I saw Cream twice when they WERE Cream.  Even saw Blind Faith.  But the last Clapton album I enjoyed was the one he did with Phil Collins, you remember, SHE’S WAITING!

Clapton is a joke, so mellow, so NOT Slowhand.

And this sounded like it was from the new album, with J.J. Cale, that got mediocre reviews, but I just found out it’s the opening cut from the PREVIOUS album, "Back Home".  Which wasn’t quite reviled, but ignored.  And I can’t say I heard it, because WHERE WOULD I???  When it comes to the dinosaurs, the classic rock acts, there’s no airplay to speak of, and people, many of whom weren’t into the acts in their heyday, keep these performers alive on the road, where they only want to hear the oldies.  Must be frustrating for an artist.  A true artist continues to grow, expand, test the limits, but in music we don’t WANT THIS!  We want you to GO AWAY, so we can make room for…the tripe on Top Forty radio.

ANYWAY, I was predisposed to hate "So Tired".  But then, stopped completely, I found myself playing drum fills on the steering wheel.  It was involuntary, I couldn’t help myself.

And I’d like to tell you I’m getting the exact same effect listening to the track on my computer right now, but it’s not quite the same thing.  It’s when someone SPRINGS IT ON YOU, when you’re not expecting it, when you’re OPEN that a track truly resonates.

XM radio is a black hole, that one falls into and DOESN’T WANT TO GET OUT OF!  There’s so much good music there, so much DISCOVERY!  If it merges with Sirius, you know Karmazin will win, that we’ll get tight playlists.  But with tight playlists discovery is gone, you end up tuning out once again.