KALX is pretty much the only thing I listen to, when I’m not listening to a new band I discovered from listening to a KALX DJ.

So yeah, it’s a college radio station, and yeah, it’s my old college’s radio station, but I’m not being lame so you shut your mouth.  The thing is, I haven’t heard another station near me that is as eclectic as I am.  Please post here if you know one!

I also think college and underground radio stations are really important.  I’m not a fan of brainwashing in general, unless it involves a healthy diet (that one’s for you, L. Ron) and the basic mechanism of mainstream radio is the brainwashing of the public into liking a new song so the record company can sell a lot of albums.

College radio, on the other hand, is purely taste driven (by the way, I was totally kidding about that whole brainwashing and healthy diet thing… cults are bad).  If the DJ likes something, he plays it for you and he explains why he likes it, and he plays you other things that may have influenced the first thing, and he also doesn’t give a shit if the song he plays is 10 minutes long because music, like sentences, are long sometimes and that’s okay because so are thoughts and periods of concentration.

Mainstream Radio Uses Brainwashing

Oh, and if the DJ plays stupid shit, he gets voted out. Like one time there was a really nerdy Asian DJ on KALX who was really serious about playing full length versions of video game music, “…so again, this is the theme from Metroid. NES version. Met- roid.” So I guess a bunch of people wrote in emails to the station and he got excused, but not without one final session, and he was really pissed of and aggressive on the air. “…because some people don’t appreciate good music…” It was actually the most entertaining he had ever been.

Summary:

College radio is important and awesome, however, mainstream radio can suck it, record labels can suck it, L. Ron Hubbard can suck it (or any new religious movement and/or cult), long bouts of vintage video game music played on college radio stations can suck it, but when nerdy Asian guys are aggressive on the college radio station mics, they are awesome.