I gave up on the radio years ago. The only place where radio is decent is Los Angeles, where there�s one station to satisfy all but the most obscure genres. During my 90 minute commute to work I would shuffle through my eighteen presets (a trick I learned from my Mom) and only suffering occasional frustration while I sat among the endless stream of crawling automobiles along the 5 Freeway.
Here in San Francisco we have the public stations, which most people I know find to be able to stomach quite well, but it isn�t my thing. Otherwise, you have the boy bands, the �alternative� station (which, in the Bay Area, seems to be defined as �metal�), an OK chick rock station, an OK 80�s-90s station, and an OK 70s-80s R & B station. Unfortunately, even these reek of bad radio commercials and unentertaining jockeys.
I know what you�re thinking now: �Well, just pop in a CD, you whiny little pinchy-faced twerp!�. But I am obsessed with the concept of not knowing what I am going to hear next. The anticipation really turns me on in a non-sexual way. So there. Besides, if you�re using the word �twerp�, you probably shouldn�t be reading this magazine anyway.
All right then. Enough of my pretentious and self-righteous bitching for now. There is no need to bitch anymore, because I have found a world where Donna Summer�s �She Works Hard For The Money� is at my random disposal.
(OK, there was no �Japanese Club Kids on Psychedelics� station, but I thought there should be.)
After a few months of this e-radio Valhalla, I began to grow restless (or, one might say, spoiled). I picked up a lot of new songs that I never would have known about otherwise, but I was fast growing tired of the playlist. It was time for me to move on to even greener pastures. I had to have ALL the options, because this is the 21st century, and it�s time for more, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it.
At this point I was compulsively toggling between two different radio windows, and as if that wasn�t bad enough, I was toggling from station to station WITHIN each respective host. And, to put icing on the cake, I was about to abandon all of my previous musical fixes for my next, but not last aural mania.
I had just started a new job (ironically, next door to Spinner�s headquarters), when I came across an ad for Live365.com. I thought, �Sure, why not?�, not knowing what I was getting myself into. What I saw before me was a virtual smorgasbord of stations, but this was not just any garden variety site conjured up by demographic reports and consumer research. I had entered the territory of listener-compiled playlists. This was getting to be too much.
After doing some more searching, I found a universe of the most random music archives within the realms of belief. My favorite part of Live 365 quickly became the small group of stations which played old tapes of the mid-sixties phenomenon Radio London (for those of you who are out of the loop, Radio London was a controversial British pirate radio station that operated from an offshore ship. Think KFRC meets �Pump Up the Volume�. It played the grooviest songs of the day and was supported my many a hip artist, but was eventually shut down by the government). For hours on end I would listen to the same half-dozen sets, all the while visualizing dandy boys and mod girls traipsing gaily down Carnaby Street and grooving to the happening sounds of the Who, David Bowie (then Jones), Dusty Springfield, and the like.
At last, for a time, it seemed that I had found home, a place where I was not alone. The pinnacle of my Live365 experience was �Beyond the Valley�, which, courtesy of DJ Neely O�Hara, played the soundtracks for �Valley of the Dolls� and �Beyond the Valley of the Dolls� in a constant loop. I could now �look on up at the bottom� every twenty glorious minutes.
Finally, when it seemed that my radio experience couldn�t possibly get any more decadent, I stumbled upon my true calling. I was about to become a radio DJ, and drag everyone I knew down with me.