The Tao of Sat

The death of Tony Bennett, as well as the death of Ed Ames two months earlier, has reinforced something I've come to learn and appreciate in the past four years.  Satellite radio, or "sat," is no longer a pleasurable luxury.  It's become a necessity. 

All of the music you'll ever want to hear is on sat.  Rock, jazz, country and western, rhythm and blues, classical - you name it.  But practically none of the music you want to hear is on terrestrial radio anymore.  Some of it is still lurking about on a couple of little radio stations in rural and suburban or exurban areas, but just try to get a clear signal for it - especially if the station you're seeking out is a low-wattage FM station.  Thankfully, satellite radio has restored the natural order of the musical universe in broadcasting.  Whereas many forms of music are not profitable enough for commercial radio anymore, you can find any and all of them on sat.  Even Muzak.

This is especially true for singers of Bennett's and Ames's generation.  I challenge you to find a station in your listening area that still plays big-band jazz, which was Tony Bennett's specialty, or traditional pop, which was Ames's forte.  In the New York area, we had WNEW-AM playing big-band music and traditional pop, but that went off the air long ago when Michael Bloomberg - this was before he entered politics - bought it and turned it into WBBR-AM, a financial-news station.  Another New York station with a big-band/traditional pop format, WQEW-AM, flipped to a kiddie format after Disney bought it.    What happened to big-band/traditional pop radio is now happening to rock radio, of course, and  stations that play current hit singles are playing songs that aren't rock music.  They're not soul music or country music, either.  As far as I'm concerned, they're not even music - they're rap and electronica.  I don't need to tell you again what has happened to rock radio in New York City, but perhaps I ought to tell you what happened to soul radio.  WRKS-FM, from 1994 to 2012, played R&B for those of us who appreciated music made by black performers who still believed in vocals and arrangements; no more of that hip-hop stuff, as it had been playing in the past.  But in 2012, that station went off the air in favor of an FM simulcast of ESPN Radio's New York AM station.   

New York has a "country" station, but the music it plays is more exurban than country, with heavy drums and highly mixed electric guitars - certainly nothing Willie Nelson would recognize.  Oldies?  Sure.  WCBS-FM, New York's long-time oldies station, gave up on the Beatles and Motown and instead concentrates now on only songs that were hits after Jimmy Carter left the White House.  And of course, WNEW-FM, where rock lived, plays the sort of light, lightweight pop ballads that you would always listen to WNEW-FM to get away from.

So, satellite radio is the only way to go.  You know what would boost President Biden's popularity in the polls?  If he proposed a federal subsidy to help people buy satellite radio subscriptions.  I have a theory - and I'm at least being partly serious here - that a lot of the people who gathered  in Washington on January 6, 2021, were ticked off that their favorite rock or country station got flipped to a hip-hop format or, possibly even worse, hot adult contemporary (all that Ed Sheeran!), and, angered by the takeover of their favorite radio stations by corporate-America coastal elitists who think everyone likes to listen to Olivia Rodrigo, descended on the Capitol and stormed that building in the hope of taking out the first Democrat who actually likes that stuff.

Obvious solution - get them sat! 

Sirius XM not only have rock and country channels, they have channels that play Tony Bennett and Ed Ames.  Really. 

No Alternative

Radio programmers have officially given up on rock and roll in New York City.

WNYL-FM, the alternative-rock station in New York that went on the air in 2017 on the 92.3-mhz frequency, signed off this past month and became WINS-FM, a simulcast of  WINS-AM, which switched from Top 40 to news back in 1965. 

The format flip allows WINS to reach more listeners on the stronger FM band, but it also makes it clear that rock and roll radio has no place in New York.  All of the great FM rock stations in the Big Apple are gone, with only a couple of rock stations with spotty reception in the northern New Jersey and Westchester County suburbs.   In the city, rock is down to WAXQ-FM, a classic rock station that is putting way too many eighties hair bands in its playlists.

Rock, of course, has been in trouble for years, many because its demographic matches that of the folks who voted for Donald Trump.  (Many political reporters have made note of Trump's heavy use of rock songs at his rallies, even as Joe Biden has hosted Olivia Rodrigo at the White House to encourage her to spread the word about COVID vaccines to young people; I would note, in addition, that he didn't send for Greta Van Fleet to publicize the vaccines.  Yeah, yeah, I know - Greta Van Fleet? Who's she?)   Rock became associated with aging white people who never changed their tastes even as tastes in popular music kept changing, which only allowed rock to calcify rather than remain open to new bands and new innovations.  It thus became so irrelevant that, if not for the rock category at the Grammy Awards, rockers wouldn't win any Grammys at all these days.   

It makes sense that, whenever YouTube guys like Rick Beato comment on whether or not rock can come back, they look like they're going through shell shock.

And although black people invented rock and roll, and despite the presence of predominantly black bands like the Alabama Shakes and TV On the Radio, as well as Gary Clark, Jr., people of color these days would rather not bother with guitar-driven blues-based numbers you can't dance to.  Among female acts, it's no accident that Taylor Swift is more pop than rock - so much, in fact, that she named one of her albums 1989 not just because she was born in that year but because 1989 was a year dominated by pop divas like herself and a year in which only one rock album - Dr. Feelgood by Mötley Crüe (one of those cassette-era bands that reaffirmed black people's decision to by and large disown rock and roll and create rap) - topped the Billboard album chart.   

And so, even an alternative-rock station in the country's biggest metropolitan area couldn't save rock and roll radio.  Or rock and roll itself.  (What, you thought they were going to flip a hip-hop FM station to simulcast WINS?)

Aah, I've long since given up on terrestrial radio, which is dying faster than rock and roll is.  Sirius XM satellite radio's rock channels have all the songs you love.  The Spectrum channel promotes new bands and plays a few classic rock songs, and the classic-rock channels Classic Vinyl and Classic Rewind are there for all of your favorite tunes.  And the Deep Tracks channels plays rock songs that may have never aired on terrestrial radio at all.   Sirius XM isn't cheap but in today's declining and falling terrestrial-radio environment, it's worth it.  In fact, it's essential.

Let, then, New York rock radio pass.  It's a pity that this song has lost all of its relevance and meaning.  

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.

Definition: Satellite Radio

Satellite radio is a contraption that allows Americans to listen to Hothouse Flowers and the Gurus of the New Millennium in their cars without having to take a chance by bringing their rare, imported CDs on the road.

It's also good for listening to soccer games from Germany.

If Sirius and XM - now one company - can't make satellite radio profitable with no competition - and with Howard Stern - what's the hope for this medium? :-O