Sat!

I finally have satellite radio in my car!

I got Sirius XM for my Volkswagen as a Christmas present.  (Never mind who it was from; that's a family secret.)  

It's been a long time coming.  If you want satellite radio - or "sat," as I call it - Sirius XM is your only recourse since Sirius and XM merged in 2008, but if you want plain old radio the way it used to be, then satellite radio is your only recourse, period.  Terrestrial radio is mostly just a bunch of stations that play the same old boring pop songs and rap records of recent vintage, as older music from farther back has all but disappeared from regular radio and new music that I actually want to listen to is virtually nowhere to be found on regular radio at all.  I still wonder how long Alt 92.3, New York's alternative-rock station, is going to last.  Public music stations still offer new music I like to hear, but I couldn't help but notice how the public music station in my area, WFUV-FM, which broadcasts from Fordham University in the Bronx, is actually getting quite lame.  I think I've had my fill of Iron & Wine for years to come.  

On Sirius XM, the choices are practically endless.  Now I can hear 1950s music, 1960s music, 1970s music - all of which get their own individual radio channels - and I can hear more of that same music on other channels!  And with none of the commercial interruptions that have become more prevalent on terrestrial commercial radio and have virtually ruined old-school radio for me.  Sirius XM has rock channels that play basic classic rock, but there's even a channel that plays obscure songs from classic albums and from obscure albums by famous bands - bet you never heard anything from Jethro Tull's 1978 album Heavy Horses on terrestrial radio before! - as well as music from bands even I have never heard of!  (Family, alas, don't get airplay on sat, but who cares, I have all their albums.)  There's a new-rock channel, a channel playing new and classic rock together, a blues channel,  a jazz channel, a show-tunes channel, two classical channels, and all sorts of themed music channels, such as one for  Elvis, another for the Beatles, another for the Grateful Dead . . . there's even one for Tom Petty.  And there are many more.  My only regret is that I can only program ten channels maximum on my receiver.

News and talk?  Yeah, there is some of that, along with a channel for Howard Stern, but I'm not interested much in any of that - and I'm completely disinterested in Howard Stern in particular.  My old fellow Drew alum Karen Hunter, who once ridiculed former House Speaker Paul Ryan for still listening to Led Zeppelin in 2012, has a Sirius XM show, but I'll be damned if I know what channel it's on.  Anyway, I don't plan to listen to Karen's show.

I'm too busy listening to the classic rock channels and '70s on 7.

It's amazing how there are songs you used to hear on terrestrial radio that you only hear on sat now.  A couple of weeks ago I had '70s on 7 playing, and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by the Bee Gees came on.  "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" was the Bee Gees' first American number-one hit, having topped the charts for virtually the entire month of August 1971, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find a terrestrial radio station that plays it today.  Heck, I've even noticed how FM classic rock stations seem to be leaning more toward classic rock performers that only began their recording careers after Jimmy Carter left the White House.  Imagine that: rock from the genre's 1960s/1970s "classic" period, which is supposed to stand the test of time, has seen its time up on terrestrial radio.

Am I still listening to WFUV?  Yeah, about that . . ..  I love WFUV's Saturday afternoon "Mixed Bag" show, where Don McGee plays an eclectic mix of folk, soul, rock and country music.  One Saturday after I got satellite radio, I turned off Sirius XM and tuned in to "Mixed Bag" . . . only to find that it was pre-empted by a Fordham basketball game.  The show was still on WFUV's Internet page, but WFUV is obliged to air Fordham varsity sports on the radio station.

I turned it off and went back to sat.

I don't want to abandon terrestrial music radio entirely.  But there's too much good stuff on Sirius XM to listen to now.  And despite WFUV's eclectic mix, it's hard to settle for variety from one station when sat gives you even more variety over a hundred-odd channels.