Welcome To My Nightm-- I mean, My New Blog!

This time I'm going to be blogging about a subject I know full well about -- life and living here in San Antonio. Whether short or long, serious or not, of miniscule importance or so great it should make the national news, I intend to blog on about it. Lord knows how often I've wanted to comment on something without the available forum to do so. So now, without further ado, my guide to San Antonio.

Part One: Local Radio

Now, you may be the kind of person who adores listening to the same song over and over again. You may also be the same kind of individual who likes to bang your head repeatedly against a brick wall. But as for the rest of us, I'm pretty sure we all agree that the now ages-old tradition of limiting what a station can play by numbers is pretty much the real thing that "killed the radio star". Our local radio stations are by no means in jeopardy of going against the grain here. You like country, even the schlocky contemporary stuff? You will sell your cowboy belt buckles and weep whenever you gaze at your Hank Williams LPs after a week's worth of "country radio" here. You appreciate and adore the '60s for its innovative music? You won't anymore after listening to KONO day in and day out for awhile. If you enjoy listening to Hawkwind, KZEP will cure you of that, and Magic 105.3 will have you questioning what if anything you saw in adult contemporary music from the '80s and '90s.

Basically, our terrestrial radio landscape is a vast post-thermonuclear wasteland. You know there's something absolutely vitally wrong with local radio when the most refreshing and enjoyable radio station on the dial is an "easy listening"/American standards radio station on the AM dial, KAHL 1310, which, aside from the AM talk radio station KTSA (550), is now the only San Antonio radio station I can listen to without snapping and raging on. The sad part is that this was all so very different even as recently as the mid '90s. Back then, Magic 105.3 used to be my destination station, a wonderful mix of new songs and '80s pop hits that, while not exactly being chronologically correct (there was very little emphasis on '80s New Wave and almost none on modern college radio rock), was still quite enjoyable. Our own local college radio station played an admirable variety of songs and artists that one could not normally find on regular radio; it remains to this day the only terrestrial radio station I have ever heard a The The song from (and they were songs off Dusk!). And really, KAHL is basically a rehash of what KQXT used to play in the early - mid '80s, back when my grandparents used to play that station for me during what was purported to be "naptime" (but I never actually napped then). But oh!, the fun I used to have listening to those classic soft pop hits!

Of course, now in the technologically advaced 2000s, one could choose to reach for a number of alternatives. One good one is satellite radio, which loosens the constraints that are ever-so present in local radio, though you do have to splurge on the necessary equipment and spend even more on a subscription to your chosen satellite radio provider, so it's obviously primarily for the rich bitches who can afford to careen carelessly down I-10 -- close to De Zavala -- in their Mercedes or BMWs. For the rest of us, either we can score a deal on satellite radio that will allow us to have it for free for a certain number of years (now it's 3), or we can be stuck at home with our CD-RW capable computers making homemade mix CDs of whatever songs we feel we won't get tired of if we listen to them approximately three times that day. I myself stopped counting how many of these "driving around" homemade mix CDs I've made thus far, but there must be at least forty of them. It was an infinitely less expensive way for me to get my entertainment thing on when my take-home pay wasn't much and I was having to spend a lot of it on school-related things. All one would need is a computer and some CD-Rs; I got to snapping up the bargain-priced Memorex brand at Wal-Mart (5 for about $2.50 = winner all around). So many of these CDs, which still work even after many dozens of plays, sustained me throughout my commute and even while studying or relaxing, portable CD player always at hand.

Because of that, though, I completely lost track of everything radio-related, and eventually stopped grieving for What Could Have Been. So San Antonio radio sucks, I figure; at least I have a way to ignore them and thus defeat them. But now I've found myself holding off on the usual CD insertion routine, even if only for a portion of my commute, to listen to KAHL and its soothing old people pop. For while its target audience consists of individuals who might be interested in finding out about the newest retirement communities, I suspect its actual audience might just be people exactly like me, people who are a long way away from thinking about "retirement" but who are about ready to retire from the rubbish regularly spoon-fed to us by the other radio stations out there. What happens, though, when KAHL finally goes down, when it's either taken off the air or replaced by yet another crappy Spanish-language or country radio station, or when its playlists stop being so comparatively adventuruous and start chafing under the pressure of having to play the same thirty or forty songs over and over again? What happens to that great democratizing thrill of just picking up radio airwaves and being entertained for hours in that way? Does it truly become yet another case of the widening gap between the haves and the have nots?