Weekend Plans Post: The Radio Stations that Went Away

When I was a kid and finally allowed to take over some of the programmable radio buttons on the family car, I went with the usual ones. Sunny Radio! They played the upbeat pop hits! Power 95! They played upbeat pop hits and sometimes “hard rock” (in the vicinity of Van Halen’s “Jump”). When I hit, I dunno, 16 or thereabouts, I discovered that there was more to life than what MTV played.

There was what MTV used to play!

And, after that, a bunch of stuff that was classic rock and other stuff that was hard rock and then classic hard rock and, holy cow… what’s this “alternative music” thing?

As it turns out, there was this alternative music that never made it to me or my circle. But somewhere around 1993, I discovered 102.7 “The Max”. It was freakin’ awesome. It played Cracker and Dinosaur Jr and Bjork and, yeah, stuff that any given “Classic Rock” station will play today but, at the time, it felt so much more “authentic” than the stuff that actually made it all the way up the charts. “Hey! My songs only made it to number 30 on the top 40!”

After a wonderful year of songs that felt weird and new, The Max became a country station and then a 1970’s station. (The 1970’s station was pretty good. Played a lot of more obscure Elton John stuff.) Then, right around the time it changed format again, I discovered that Pikes Peak Community College had a radio station too.

And, oh man, that radio station was *AWESOME*.

It was, like, Gen X Radio. It played a whole bunch of stuff from the punk era, the post-punk era, and a handful of new bands that definitely qualified as Not Top 40.

Like, I remember driving home from college in the mid-90’s right before Christmas break and tuning in and the DJ was talking about how they were going away for two weeks but would be back on January 5th or 6th or something and then he played The Doors “The End”. Like, the *CLASSIC ROCK* station wouldn’t play that one. Never in a million years! Well, the college station did.

Well, they played it right before they went away for two weeks.

A few years later, they upped their game enough to have 2 and 4 hour long tapes to play over breaks and one of the 4 hour tapes was probably the best music mix I had ever heard. I loved working and listening to that station.

And the DJs were, like, COMPLETELY amateurs. Like, they were *AWFUL*.

They would mispronounce “Depeche Mode” and “UB40” on the occasions that those bands would get played and I would yell at the radio in the car whenever they talked because they always messed *SOMETHING* up. And then, at the next break, they’d talk about the phone calls they got during the song and apologized.

It’s a Colorado Public Radio station now. It plays songs that the current “alternative” radio station plays but also a handful of the more weird and obscure… but usually it’s stuff that gets played ad nauseum by the “alternative” radio station a month later.

The DJs for the new station are professionals. They never make mistakes.

Sigh.

After a week of cold and snow (including a day of the big ol’ fluffy flakes that they use in Hallmark movies), it looks like we’ll be hitting 50 again on Saturday. Which will be nice. And, of course, the hour thieves show up this weekend as well and will steal our precious hour on Saturday night. Not to be seen again until after Halloween.

So… what’s on your docket?