What web pages are for...speaking “frankly”

My station is devoted purely to music. To air my political views, I would have to expand my media holdings to AM talk, a nauseating prospect if there ever was one. I fly the flag (right there on my home page), and I thank God and my lucky stars I was born American, because a misfit such as myself would likely not have lasted long anywhere else. Squeaky wheels prefer peace, but the oil we long for, to use an ironic metaphor, seems about to run dry in the land we love.

A Bush in the Hand...

My great ambition when I launched this page was to expose Dubya for the fraud he obviously is.. but where to begin? So I defer instead to all those who consistently do so far better than my poor power to add or detract. I can only lend this introductory insight...the man has a longer criminal record than the list of all the felony convictions to emerge from the Clinton White House...by a factor of three! Go, traveler, and point your squeaky-wheeled mouse at these sites for edification of the most corrupt President we never had.

Your Constitutionally guaranteed voice: Moveon.org
Jim Hightower is proof not everyone in Texas got hit by the great locoweed epidemic of '94.
Relegate your GOP-run city daily to emergency asswipe! Get the real story at Dailykos.
For great satire of right-wing twits, try Idleworm, This Modern World, Get Your War On, or Too Stupid to Be President. Bartcop is a daily must-read.
Change your long-distance service now to Working Assets.

If we as a species are going to survive much longer, we'd better develop something akin to an allergic reaction to the liars in our midst. One of the biggest lies infecting us in recent memory is that the “liberals” who run the media are out to destroy our nation. Who are they? The nicely dressed bunch lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to further consolidate broadcast licenses into fewer hands? Be for real! The only liberal thing about these bottom-feeders is the helpings of public airwaves they gobble up.

The paradox, the sublime irony, of course, is that this accusation is right for all the wrong reasons. Most certainly the worst of these accusers is the “chunder from down under” that calls itself News Corp., d/b/a Fox News Channel. When these folks spin, my friends, we're not talking about their slowly rotating cube logo in the corner of your screen. It's more like mud flying from the wheels of monster trucks in redneck heaven on Saturday night.

When a supposedly erudite panel gathered on their Sunday morning press show a while back to discuss David Letterman's possible move to ABC, eclipsing Ted Koppel's star in the process, they bowed their heads to mourn the passing of serious network news reporting. “It's too bad,” one noted, “that networks are abandoning their news divisions.” This from a network that never had one!

November 7, 2000...

...will long stand as a dark day in broadcast journalism, perhaps the end of the paradigm as we once knew it. What a perfect scam! When the chips were down for ol' Dubya in the Sunshine State (or is it Where the Sun Don't Shine State?), Fox News came to the rescue. Competing networks had already stepped into Fox's flaming bag of shit when they rescinded their projection of Gore's victory. When Fox boldly (and premeditatively) declared Dubya the victor in Florida after midnight, the other networks panicked and climbed all over one another in pursuit of Fox's scoop.

The investigative skills of a 5-year-old would have led them to an obvious scandal here, but by then it was too late. The Fox executive approving the decision to call Florida was none other than John Ellis, Dubya's first cousin! So why didn't you ever hear about this from Tom, Dan or Peter? Well, duh! Networks aren't supposed to investigate each other, you moron! They're supposed to spend 2 hours pondering the reason why Michael Jackson dangles small children out fifth-floor windows. You can't expect them to do anything that would make them look foolish!!!

Fair? That's just the weather anchor saying it's a nice day. Balanced? Coming from the nutrition expert, perhaps. The rest is unadulterated bullshit.

Good night, David. Good night, Chet. And good night to your right to know.

“You've been a great audience...
for me to poop on!”

To paraphrase both Triumph the insult comic dog and its CEO, Cur Channel is in the business of helping advertisers sell, not informing audiences. That's bad news if you live in a town like Minot, North Dakota, where CC owns six of seven radio stations, and there's a toxic leak after a train derailment. None of the automated stations was available to assist civil defense officials dispense vital information, and these pinheads remain unapologetic. Boycotting the Dixie Chicks makes great PR, but when real disaster strikes (mayhap nuclear or bioterror?), don't count on this indifferent behemoth to do much more than pass out plastic flags afterward at their next promo.
   A Cur Channel station 600 kHz away splatters my signal with spurious sidebands for months. Notification of both their engineer and the FCC brought remedy, then it began again! Why does it take someone like me to draw attention to serious noncompliance?
   Read an essay on the new indecency craze sweeping the land.

The Bhopal of American broadcasting

This self-proclaimed holding company owns a rock station near my town. While driving through on St. Patrick's day, I listened as they engaged in an on-air promo that required one to guess the common thread of three songs. U2 and Thin Lizzy were the first two, so the theme became obvious. Waiting for the third, we debated who they might feature. Sinead? Not a chance. The Cranberries? Maybe. I forwarded Van Morrison, and the matter seemed settled. So what was the third artist? The Scorpions! The DJ rather sheepishly took the winning call that guessed all were foreign acts. Subterfuge might have been an acceptable ploy here, but when it became apparent from further listening that Van Morrison, a class act that's withstood the test of time, doesn't fall within their playlist parameters, you begin to realize these people have become risk-averse to the point of self-mutilation.

I've been listening to them more lately, largely the result of being a captive audience in someone else's car. My ear has detected a warble in the high end of many songs that is similar to a low quality mp3 download. When I visited their site and discovered their system of displaying the song currently airing (no longer active, by the way), I realized that was exactly what I had heard... a poorly functioning digital audio chain. The upshot: my rinky-dink two-bit operation sounds better than a station whose license is worth over $10 million!
Long live analog modulation!

To find out

what corporate emblem is entrusted with your musical airwaves, go to the horse's ass...I mean mouth and run a call sign search. To track down the license of the AM station giving giving aid and comfort to right-wing oral terrorists, go here.

File sh(e)aring?

Confessions of a downloader: Yes, in the heyday of Napster, I was a frequent filer. My motivation, as flimsy a defense as it may be, was not to save money but to connect with those like-minded souls who just happened to own an album I also liked. I didn't even start until September of 2000, well after all the notoriety had hit the press.

The only music I downloaded was either a) what I already owned, except it was trapped on obsolete vinyl, or b) music that simply could not be found in the back bins of any used record outlets. What I did was not legal as the law is currently written, but my self-regulation is at least as honorable as the “voluntary” pollution standards our government now enforces.

I've still managed to help put food in the mouths of a lot of musician's kids, certainly at the same time a great many record company execs were doing the exact opposite. It's just too damn bad the recording industry couldn't read the tea leaves in time. In 1988, one far-sighted individual wrote:

“Music consumers like to consume MUSIC, not specifically the vinyl artifact wrapped in cardboard... We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate the best of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items, store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances... All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the consumer, etc., would be automatic, built into the software for the system. The consumer has the option of subscribing

to one or more special interest category,” without regard for the quantity of the music the customer wishes to tape. Providing material in such quantity at a reduced price could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night... Most of the hardware devices are, even as you read this, available as off-the-shelf items, just waiting to be plugged into each other in order to put an end to the record business as we now know it.” Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 338-340

For more information about Frank, please visit www.zappa.com

To buy The Real Frank Zappa Book, visit Powells, Amazon, Barnes and Noble

or your local book seller. And doesn't this look like what some folks envisioned over a decade ago?

If you've already read it, you know the record companies and Frank didn't see eye to eye on much of anything, and it's to their great detriment that they ignored him on this matter, too. These dinosaurs won't leave us without a fight, though, and no matter their record on screwing artists, they do have one irrefutable argument: copying music you never paid for is stealing, and deprives composers, the people who construct the music for you, most of all. So support your favorite artists, local or otherwise. They've got it bad enough, having to compete for attention with dimwits like Eminumb, Britney Spurts, and of course, Wacko Jacko. Give 'em a break.

Wait a minute, you say. Isn't broadcasting music without paying royalties stealing? Well, yes, I suppose, if I intended to

1. Cultivate an audience
2. Sell airtime and
3. Cast a signal beyond shouting distance

Since I fulfill none of these requirements, my conscience rests easily. If somebody is listening to me on a regular basis, it is no more than inviting this person into my home to sample my record collection, or in the case of satellite channels, using it as background for study or pleasant conversation. However, I doubt I have any serious listeners, and this is based on personal experience.

I used to have neighbors across the street who occasionally play their music loud when occupied by some task in the garage. One evening I heard them tune in my station while it was in classic rock mode. Their delight at discovering this great commercial-free station must have quickly dissipated when it kept changing formats throughout the evening. I never heard them tune me in again. Of course, if somebody is out there who adores what I do, is captivated by the mystery of my anonymous broadcasts and awestruck by my devotion to making one life more complete, then my soulmate lives within blocks of me and I may never know it. Such is the lot of the selfless.

Back to Technical

Back to Home