Two things happened today that make me simultaneously proud but sad.
First, we had our annual convening of former 70s Chattanooga radio personalities today and we swapped the same great lies and told a few new whoppers just to keep us laughing in the face of the knowledge that a couple of us had died earlier this year. Then I get home to find my latest issue of The Oxford American in the mail. It's a great literary/music magazine for us southern types. It's significant to me in that it features a lot of new music reviews throughout the year and then, once a year, there's an annual issue that features the music - and articles about the music - of one of the southern states, complete with a CD. This year it's Texas. It features a lot of the stuff that made Texas music what it is today - but also a lot of the new stuff. And the progressive rock jock that was me 40 years ago needs to shed a tear for local radio for a moment. I'm sitting here listening to a track from Sarah Jarosz and thinking I would have played the hell out of this back when WSIM-FM was in its heyday in Chattanooga - and wishing someone had the balls or the lottery winnings to put a station on the air that featured great, new, but largely unknown roots music from around this great country with passionate, knowledgeable and approachable jocks who could control what they played and just created a sound that anyone could appreciate and use to discover new music.
That is all; please return to your regularly scheduled programming and I'll go back to my corner and sip some Buffalo Trace now...
First, we had our annual convening of former 70s Chattanooga radio personalities today and we swapped the same great lies and told a few new whoppers just to keep us laughing in the face of the knowledge that a couple of us had died earlier this year. Then I get home to find my latest issue of The Oxford American in the mail. It's a great literary/music magazine for us southern types. It's significant to me in that it features a lot of new music reviews throughout the year and then, once a year, there's an annual issue that features the music - and articles about the music - of one of the southern states, complete with a CD. This year it's Texas. It features a lot of the stuff that made Texas music what it is today - but also a lot of the new stuff. And the progressive rock jock that was me 40 years ago needs to shed a tear for local radio for a moment. I'm sitting here listening to a track from Sarah Jarosz and thinking I would have played the hell out of this back when WSIM-FM was in its heyday in Chattanooga - and wishing someone had the balls or the lottery winnings to put a station on the air that featured great, new, but largely unknown roots music from around this great country with passionate, knowledgeable and approachable jocks who could control what they played and just created a sound that anyone could appreciate and use to discover new music.
That is all; please return to your regularly scheduled programming and I'll go back to my corner and sip some Buffalo Trace now...
