"Lucy is all about the most important and well known songs in the history of Alternative Music. While Fred, Ethel, Squizz and other XM Alt channels go deep, Lucy is about the encores…the giants…the defining songs of the generation."<\/p>\n
What I love about XM is they consider An Emotional Fish to be a giant.<\/p>\n
I’m trying with Sirius, I really am.\u00c2\u00a0 But they haven’t earned my trust yet.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s that new Coffee House station.\u00c2\u00a0 With Jackson Browne and Oscar Peterson.\u00c2\u00a0 Who ever thought up this channel should be shot.\u00c2\u00a0 Are you really telling me someone who likes singer-songwriters likes jazz?\u00c2\u00a0 Was there an audience waiting for a station like this?\u00c2\u00a0 OF COURSE NOT!\u00c2\u00a0 When I think of Jackson Browne I don’t think of instrumental noodling.\u00c2\u00a0 But it gets worse, they’ve got TORCH SINGERS!\u00c2\u00a0 If there was a coffee house playing this music it would be EMPTY!<\/p>\n
I like their all Stones channel.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard "Fingerprint File" today.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the sound is so godawful.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know whether it’s the technology or whether Sirius thinks people really want to hear radio that sounds just like the radio they’re used to.\u00c2\u00a0 Compressed.\u00c2\u00a0 I was about to trade my new car in.\u00c2\u00a0 Go back to my old BMW.\u00c2\u00a0 I was convinced my new stereo was defective.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I got the XM hooked up.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not the head unit.\u00c2\u00a0 The XM plays through the Alpine AUX.\u00c2\u00a0 And Sirius goes STRAIGHT THROUGH the Alpine.\u00c2\u00a0 Please, someone at Sirius, LISTEN TO ME!\u00c2\u00a0 Open the bandwidth.\u00c2\u00a0 We can take it.\u00c2\u00a0 I want a concert hall on wheels.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a re-creation of my high school days cruising in my mom’s Country Squire.<\/p>\n
Oh, but it gets a bit worse.\u00c2\u00a0 They played that James Taylor quasi-rarity "Paper Moon" on the aforementioned Coffee House.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow, I don’t love the song, but I appreciate the deep choice.\u00c2\u00a0 But then they played it again the VERY NEXT DAY!\u00c2\u00a0 As if it wasn’t evidence of the station’s depth but a wink to the audience…see how HIP we are!!<\/p>\n
So I bounced back to XM.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s where I heard "Celebrate".<\/p>\n
I’m a bit too old to be an alternative rock junkie, an expert.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to be in your early forties.\u00c2\u00a0 The eighties have to be your HIGH school years.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, does the average Gen-X’er know An Emotional Fish’s "Celebrate"?<\/p>\n
I mean I’ve heard of the band.\u00c2\u00a0 But there wasn’t a fucking radio station in Los Angeles that played them.<\/p>\n
Back in the sixties and early seventies there was a partnership between radio and the listener.\u00c2\u00a0 A sacred trust.\u00c2\u00a0 We play great music, TURN YOU ON to great music, and as payment you’ve got to sit through a few commercials.\u00c2\u00a0 But then the commercial load increased.\u00c2\u00a0 Because business fucks took over and just saw the music as a vehicle to sell ads.\u00c2\u00a0 And the best way to keep the audience tuned in to the ads was to play the same damn songs over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where people tuned out.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s worse…where are we supposed to HEAR the good new stuff?<\/p>\n
Oh, I want to get turned on to great new stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I know it exists.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m not a fucking archaeologist.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t spend all my time digging.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s SOMEBODY ELSE’S job.\u00c2\u00a0 The deejay.<\/p>\n
But the deejay lost all power YEARS ago.\u00c2\u00a0 And the program director’s just a guy collecting indie promo payments.\u00c2\u00a0 A pyramid of soulless mediocrity with a patina of slickness.\u00c2\u00a0 Make me puke.<\/p>\n
I really was off radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I got XM.<\/p>\n
Oh, I didn’t believe XM would be any good.\u00c2\u00a0 But now it’s my best friend.\u00c2\u00a0 Truly.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s who I rely on.\u00c2\u00a0 To get me through.<\/p>\n
I’ve got my presets.\u00c2\u00a0 And most of them reside in the rock area.\u00c2\u00a0 40-54.\u00c2\u00a0 Deep Tracks to Lucy.<\/p>\n
Oh, I start at the Loft.\u00c2\u00a0 Go to Deep Tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Then to Top Tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 And then up the dial from the Boneyard to XMU to Fred to Ethel and eventually Lucy.<\/p>\n
I mean I’m driving to the shrink.\u00c2\u00a0 Up 20th street.\u00c2\u00a0 Trying not to get into an accident as I push the buttons.\u00c2\u00a0 And suddenly, I hear this bass sound.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind that No Doubt built its career on.\u00c2\u00a0 But then there’s this spacy guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never heard this song before, but instantly I know I LIKE IT!<\/p>\n
All I can see on the readout is "An Emotion".\u00c2\u00a0 And the name of the track, "Celebrate".<\/p>\n
So I come home and fire up Google.\u00c2\u00a0 And turn up nothing.<\/p>\n
But then I go to the dreaded allmusic.com.\u00c2\u00a0 A worthwhile site that was redesigned to the point of almost complete unusability.\u00c2\u00a0 Rule one of the Web…make your site run FAST!\u00c2\u00a0 PLEASE get rid of those flash intros.\u00c2\u00a0 Let me get to the heart of the matter right away.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that there’s a flash intro to allmusic, it’s just GLACIALLY slow.<\/p>\n
But I found out "Celebrate" was done by AN EMOTIONAL FISH!<\/p>\n
You can’t get ANY music by the band at the iTunes Music Store.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the iTunes Music Store is just a conventional record store in your own damn home.\u00c2\u00a0 The iPod’s cool, but the store is just a slicker Best Buy.\u00c2\u00a0 In cahoots with the labels.\u00c2\u00a0 Selling copy protected tracks for a buck.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not an invitation to discovery, it’s the place you go LAST, after you’ve found out about the cut somewhere else and can’t find it P2P.<\/p>\n
I found "Celebrate" P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 Came right down.<\/p>\n
And, stunningly, it sounds just as good at home as it did on XM.<\/p>\n
I know you.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re afraid of your computer.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re afraid of P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, not YOU!!\u00c2\u00a0 YOU I know know more than me.\u00c2\u00a0 But the MAINSTREAM GUY!\u00c2\u00a0 The guy running the label, the guy driving the German automobile, clueless as to how the rest of us live our lives, still trying to get your piece of crap productions on Top Forty, YOU’RE the ones I’m speaking to.\u00c2\u00a0 Come into the twenty first century.\u00c2\u00a0 Fire up your P2P program.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, it won’t bite.\u00c2\u00a0 Won’t destroy your computer.\u00c2\u00a0 Download "Celebrate".<\/p>\n
This is not Top Forty ready.\u00c2\u00a0 Take your hit hat off.\u00c2\u00a0 Just let the music wash over you, ENERGIZE YOU!\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me this isn’t fucking great.<\/p>\n
That’s the vintage experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing something special on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Needing to own it, not RENT IT!\u00c2\u00a0 Needing to possess it so you can COUNT ON IT!<\/p>\n
I don’t hoard my friends.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t prevent them from mingling.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel the more the merrier.<\/p>\n
So please come join me in the XM village.\u00c2\u00a0 It will change your life.<\/p>\n
They’re paying me not a whit.\u00c2\u00a0 I just want you to be ENRICHED!<\/p>\n
JUST go to: http:\/\/friends.xmradio.com<\/a> and enter Lee.Abrams@xmradio.com<\/a> to access the discount center.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll thank me.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" "Lucy is all about the most important and well known songs in the history of Alternative Music. While Fred, Ethel, Squizz and other XM Alt channels go deep, Lucy is about the encores…the giants…the defining songs of the generation." What I love about XM is they consider An Emotional Fish to be a giant. I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-3j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}