BRAD MCEWEN: Radio? Who listens to the radio?

While I pretty much only really involve myself with Facebook to make certain I can share articles I’ve written for the Albany Herald (yes, I’m a shameless self-promoter), I am occasionally intrigued by the posts I stumble across as I skim through my news feed while taking a quick break from the grind of pounding out another story about a civic club meeting, or a new business opening in town.

One such post that caught my attention recently and actually got me engaged, which is always a nice treat when “Facebooking,” was a question posed by a local friend of mine, who asked the masses what area terrestrial radio stations they liked best.

What struck me first about the 40 or so responses that I read was not the realization that there were so many radio station choices available in the Albany area, but that so many people around here actually listen to the radio.

Not being one to keep all of my opinions to myself, I couldn’t resist sharing that I didn’t have a favorite area radio station and, furthermore, I couldn’t stand listening to the radio at all.

I went on share that one of my chief reasons for not liking radio is my extreme dislike of polished pop country, which, as it turns out, is an incredibly popular radio format around here, and my desire to never hear certain selections by Boston or Lynyrd Skynyrd again.

I’d actually like to amend that statement to say that not only do I hope to never have to suffer through another listening of “More Than a Feeling” or “Sweet Home Alabama,” I have absolutely no desire to listen to anything recorded by Boston or Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I’d also like to expand that list to include all songs by the Marshall Tucker Band, every Foreigner song other than “Long, Long Way from Home” (don’t ask), anything by Santana, anything by KISS, anything featured on the “Dazed and Confused” soundtrack and, most especially, “Frankenstein” by the Edgar Winter Group.

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with these songs, it’s just that I’ve heard all of them so many times on one of Albany’s most popular rock music stations that I honestly forgot why anyone likes them at all. Honestly, it’s like white noise when I’m forced to listen to them.

The radio question post also reminded me of a conversation I had recently with an old schoolmate of mine — we talked about cool new music we’d heard — that pretty much sums up my feelings exactly.

During that chat, my buddy told me he had to swap car stereos with his wife because the radio antenna in her unit wasn’t picking up a signal. This was a problem, he said, because his wife and the couples’ daughters couldn’t bear not having the radio to listen to in the car, since that’s all they listened to.

My friend’s comment was what I expected from him, because it’s representative of how we’ve viewed the radio since we were punk kids trading bootleg Metallica and Megadeth tapes in middle school.

“I just put my CD player in her car and put her broken Sony in mine, ‘cause I don’t care if the tuner doesn’t work. I hate the radio,” he said … or something along those lines.

To which I concurred, with a chuckle, “Oh yeah, dude, the radio blows.”

I’m not sure how I originally formed this opinion about the radio, but it is definitely an opinion I’ve held for quite some time.

There actually was a time, early in my life, when I did listen to the radio. I can clearly recall mornings spent listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 list and getting irritated that the Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” was still being blocked from the top slot by Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.”

There was a brief moment shortly after that when I recall staying up to listen to Sterling’s Request Line on 97.3 to hear cheeseball metal ballads like Poison’s “I Won’t Forget You,” or Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye,” that had been dedicated by Dawn to her man Johnny.

But by and large, rock radio has done nothing for me. I didn’t discover awesome bands like Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Baroness and the Sword by listening to the radio.

For the better part of the last 25 years, I’ve found new music at the suggestion of others who heard about something new from a friend or an older sibling in college.

I didn’t learn about R.E.M. by hearing “Losing My Religion” on the radio 27 times a day for three months, I learned about them from my friend Jeff, whose sister gave him a copy of a “Life’s Rich Pageant” tape she got from her best friend’s older brother who was in school in Athens.

I didn’t learn about Iron Maiden from hearing them on the radio. I learned about them when my buddy Tim got a copied cassette of a Metal Church record from his older brother Eric that just happened to have “Somewhere in Time” on the back side.

That trend continued into high school when a friend of mine’s older brother played me a Soundgarden song while giving us a ride home from school. Bands like Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Butthole Surfers, Dead Milkman, Bad Brains, the Violent Femmes, they never — and likely never will — get played on terrestrial radio. They were these magical mystery bands blasting from boom boxes who were shared via cassettes you could stick in your walkman.

And so it’s gone since. In fact, just recently my buddy Thomas turned me on a band called High on Fire and gave me a thumb drive with some of their stuff. I, in turn, passed that thumb drive on to Magid and Matt and Vince.

Vince reciprocated the next day by sending me a message to get online and check out the Royal Blood, which is awesome, by the way.

That little tidbit brings me to my final point, which is that if there is any kind of radio out there that I’m interested in, it’s not terrestrial. It’s things like Pandora and Slacker, where I can hear new and exciting things, things that make me want to call or text my buddies, and say “Check this out, dude.”

To this day, I still feel like that fourth-grade kid who went to Musicland and bought “Kill Em All” because Jarod’s older sister said “Ride the Lightning” was the future of rock music and that’s the only Metallica album I could find, every time I get the word on a new band.

I’ve had my newest car stereo for a few years now, and to my reckoning I don’t even know if the radio tuner has been turned on. In fact, I couldn’t tell you if it’s even hooked up to the antenna. As far as I’m concerned it really doesn’t matter.

I’m sure one of my like-minded music loving buddies will be passing on something new before you know it.