Tales From The Drop Box - Better Than Radio

It is Super Tuesday – the day we are likely to find out whether Trump will have a chance to rewrite democratic principles founded upon the Constitution into a better deal….after all the Constitution is just an old piece of paper and if he was there – he would have gotten a better deal for the American people.

However, this episode is not about the Donald or Hillary it is all about weight. When I think about all of the music that is released each year in what literally amounts to a flood of releases, I am shocked at how few tracks actually are heard by the average listener. When I consider the relative large mass of new music in the radio pipeline, the lack of new tracks defies gravity. Rock, as a genre, is more than 70 years old, and the forms emergent from that initial thrust of energy in the 1950’s appear not to diminish with time. What is also evident is that the technical competency of rock musicians today is outstanding when compared with their predecessors and that technical gap is growing. In short, there is a huge mass of new music that is very well written, composed and constructed. So, what prevents this new music from reaching new listeners? I advance this theory which may partially explain the issue: The weight of all that music in the listener pipeline pushes down the ability of songs (that are frequently only a couple of weeks old) from reaching an audience, any audience. Once released, like a new car driven off the showroom lot, these songs immediately lose listener appeal and consequently have diminished economic value. It is this weight that prevents emergent bands from connecting to an audience.

Do you ever ask yourself why some bands constantly receive airplay for their new music? Why bands past their prime receive a slot on that station’s playlist? Rock radio is dying because they haven’t factored in the perception of the weight – listeners want to hear an assortment of recently new music but they don’t even know that this new-ish music exists because radio stations don’t want to take the chance of potentially losing their daily audiences whom they believe are trained hamsters to be fed the same crap every day i.e. a diet of identifiable music and artists every single @#% day. When you clearly have a massive river of music from which to select, it begs the question – is anyone selecting music for any other reason than it sounds exactly like everything else being played by that radio station – both before and after? Perhaps the answer comes down to free will – i.e. listeners being select enough to make actual and real choices rather than accepting the choices made for them ( See it is about Trump and Hillary after all!). Imagine a world where the talking head at the radio station actually cared about what you heard and was excited about the prospect of sharing something with you that they thought was cool? It should be easy. Radio should aspire to be better. Perhaps I am also a victim of the same deceit, but episode 11, like the prior ones, takes into account the weight. Perhaps one day I can be a king. More likely … I’ll crawl into my bed each night…and listen to the National.

Here is what you’ll find in Episode # 11:

1. Some Go Haunting – “Me & You” (Wandering Souls)
2. Giants of Industry – “In With The New” (Forward)
3. James Supercave – “How To Start” (Better Strange)
4. High Highs – “How Could You Know (Cascades)
5. H-Burns – “Night Moves” (Night Moves)
6. Blackout Problems – “The National” (Holy)
7. Holy Holy – “Outside Of The Heart of It” (When The Storms Would Come)
8. Sixteen Scandals – “Time Vampires” (Create Destroy)
9. Rococode – “Panic Attack” (Don’t Worry It Will Be Dark Soon)
10. Secret Staff – “My Life Is A Steinbeck Novel (Learning not To Care EP)
11. Royal Republic – “Playball” (Weekend Man)
12. The Starting Line – “Quitter” (Anyways EP)
13. Jack Oblivion & the Sheiks – “Hey Killer” (The Lone Ranger of Love)
14. Hippo Campus – “South” (The Halocline Eps)
15. Blossom – “Light Us Up” (Blossom)

Hey killer… I’ve been told life’s not a joke you should laugh about … in my fake empire.
KFR