(The piece below was written in 1996 and to be honest, I don't really remember if it was published anywhere or not. Strangely, almost 11 years after its creation, it is still as relevant today as it was the day I wrote it. Just substitute the newly-born-lame "Everything That Rocks" radio format for the old, busted "Modern Rock" sound and sprinkle in a portion of "Jack" or "Bob" and you have a radio landscape that blows every bit as badly as it did a decade ago. Further supporting my argument, Nashville's WKDF-FM changed formats from "modern rock" to "new country" a few years ago in search of a larger audience. Unfortunately, corporate radio will probably still suck in 2017, too, so what are you gonna do? - Reverend.K, Feb. 2007)

"Radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools,
trying to anesthetize the way that you feel...."

                   ........... Elvis Costello / Radio, Radio

To be perfectly blunt, radio sucks these days. The radio industry has become so rigidly formated, publicized and over-reported that listening to the white-bread music and inane chatter squeezed in between commercials that is your typical station is an experience closely akin to a rectal exam. You'll find it extremely painful for the first few minutes, and then the numbness sets in.

"Talk Radio," that one-time bastion of free-speech and controversy, has devolved into the blandest sort of pablum, as stations try to jack up their ratings (and ad revenue) with Limbaugh clones and fascist hosts. But it wasn't always this way, folks. Back in the late-60s / early-70s, as the infant that was FM radio attempted to discover its identity, "free form" radio, listener-requested playlists and cross-genre formats ruled the roost, creating what may be viewed today as the "golden age" of  FM.

By mid-decade, however, the dreaded profit motive settled in as station after station discovered that it was damned difficult to continue generating large increases in revenue with their existing formats. In moved the radio "consultancy," the single most evil entity on the face of the planet, bringing with them the concept of the "formated playlist." Stations no longer had to rely on the whims of their program directors, for whom regional considerations and personal taste often affected station playlists. Now they would get a computerized print-out of the songs that were "appropriate" for their market, and, serviced with those discs only, could sound exactly like every other FM station in every other city. Widespread formatting was born, and creatures like MOR, AOR and TOP 40 began to roam the airwaves, reducing the art form of radio programming into a mere ratings appeal to the lowest-common-denominator.

Gone were the days when one might hear a Bill Monroe bluegrass cut followed by the tortured, bluesy wail of Janis Joplin, segueing into a Motown tune or a Creedence Clearwater Revival rocker. Only charting artists who fit into the narrow confines of the playlist would receive airplay, and woe be unto the artist who found themselves on the outside looking in. The advent of consultant-driven formats and computerized playlists would have a sweeping affect on the entire music industry, tipping the playing field in favor of vanilla artistry and excluding musicians and performers who showed the least bit of creativity or originality. Stations refused to play such "unpopular" artists, record labels cut back on their signings and rock & roll itself has suffered from the indignity of it all.

Now it's 1996, just about two decades into the grand experiment started by those overpaid consultants during the lost decade of the '70s. What has it gotten us? A mish-mash of formats that run the gamut from "album-oriented rock" (i.e. dinosaur rock) and its kissing cousin, the "oldies" station (i.e. fossil rock) to "soft rock," "rockin' country" and now, "modern rock." All of this emphasis on rock, yet nobody is really "rockin' around the clock." Stations change their formats like a model changes clothes in search of bigger revenues, and then wonder why they never seem to be able to build a loyal audience like radio used to do.

Of all of these varied formats, however, it's a recent variation on the "modern rock" format that is the worst. Called "cutting edge," the format seems to be the commercial industry's belated recognition of a decade and a half of alternative rock and college radio's role in supporting it. Purporting to be fresh and "outrageous," this format - as exemplified locally by WKDF-FM 103 - is a musical toss-off, a bastard hybrid of the old, the new and the merely mundane.

KDF, as the station is known in Nashville, has put together a patchwork playlist of current commercial favorites like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers and silverchair, mixed with cuts from whatever the record  labels are pimping this week, over-hyped bands like Ammonia or Rust. Unable to shake its ties to the days when AOR sat atop the ratings heap, the station covers all of its bets, trying to retain some of its older redneck rocker audience by sprinkling the format with heavy doses of moldie oldies from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Rush and Van Halen. Sorry, folks, but these artists weren't "cutting edge" twenty-five years ago, and they're certainly not so today.

Part of the problem is the nature of formating itself. When a station and its personnel adhere to a given format of music to the exclusion of all else, they become all but ignorant of other musical trends that may be surrounding them. Although I have no doubt that some of KDF's erstwhile jocks have more than a passing familiarity with music outside of the station's all-too-narrow playlist, the management - lockstepped into a quest for ratings and revenue - has their blinders on, refusing to venture beyond what the computer (or their consultant for the week) tells them to play.

Cutting edge? Bollocks! WKDF, and stations like it that adopt this feeble format are nothing more than snake-oil salesmen trying to put a prom dress on a sow and sell it off as their lovely sister. They're reacting to trends, content on being followers rather than leaders, never trying to make their audience think too much or expose them to something new and different. There's room on their playlists for commercial artists like Rancid and Green Day (both of whom I like), but why no Rocket From The Crypt or Voodoo Glow Skulls? They'll play Pearl Jam or Stone Temple Pilots, why not Motorhead? From Pavement to Liz Phair, Guided By Voices to Today Is The Day, there's a myriad of fresh, young artists that stations could add to their rotation, introducing their audience to new talent and supporting and original alternative music scene that could use the exposure. Now that, friends, would really be "cutting edge!"