Volume CXXXIII, Number 14 February 1, 2002 f

Rocking out to internet radio
DANIEL JEFFERSON MILLER

I have just discovered that the MP3 player on my laptop can dial into several dozen internet radio stations. Divided into musical genres, there are stations from all over the world: the Russian pop station, the French classic rock station, and a country station based out of the small town of Sullivan, Missouri.

A Missouri native myself, I wouldn't expect more than a handful of Bowdoin students to recognize how out of place 100.9 KTUI seems to be. What an age we live in! From the comfort of my own room in Brunswick, Maine, I can rock out to the country sound stylings of a rural Missouri station. I can listen to the sensible midwestern disc jockey banter that amuses few and irritates many.

Maybe I don't want to listen to KTUI from more than 1,000 miles away. Maybe radio stations in Sullivan, Missouri radio should stay within the weak range of their broadcast signals. As globalization seeps into every last crack and seam of society, regionalism is dying at an alarming rate.

At first, I'll admit, the novelty of these stations seemed cool. I found one station that drew me in with back to back to back hits by The Doors. Two of these were live versions of "The End" and "The Unknown Soldier"-lengthy songs, roughly ten minutes apiece, and not songs one might normally hear on a radio station. The Doors triple-shot was followed by a couple of somewhat obscure Grateful Dead songs, then Pink Floyd, and on down the expected route.

As I sat in my room, following up on emails and reading over the latest issue of The New Yorker, I found myself rocking out. For those of you who aren't familiar with "rocking out," let me explain. Rocking out can best be described as hanging out and listening to tunes that remind you of good times in your life ("Oh, this song is so ninth grade!").

Rocking out is epitomized by that feeling of excitement you get when you've just heard a great song on the radio and another one of your favorites comes on next. Even though you're completely comfortable with the present volume level, you inexplicably crank it up another notch. Rocking out to certain songs, such as Boston's "More than a Feeling" or Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me," is highly unavoidable, even though your musical consciousness tells you these titles are somewhat exhausted.

I was indeed rocking out when the Guess Who's "American Woman" came on. Having heard the Lenny Kravitz version several dozen times a day for the last few years, I was glad to rock out to the opening guitar riffs of the original, but I digress….

I've made it apparent that I was impressed by the musical selections. As Jethro Tull's Bungle in the Jungle came on, I adjusted the volume without thought, thus placing myself at further risk of irreversible inner-ear damage. Several rock anthems later I realized that I had been rocking out for nearly an hour.

It was then that I became fully aware of what I was listening to. Every so often some computer generated voice came on with a tone that seems to suggest, "If you even think about turning off your radio I'll kick your ass, because you have pledged your soul to rocking out twenty-four hours a day."

This voice irritated me, but after a quick, tired, comedic soundbyte from the Chris Farley classic Tommy Boy, it was back to the tunes.

But where was the DJ? Where were the quips about Clinton's sex life, or Bush's inability to masticate properly? (Sophomoric DJs nationwide took great delight in discovering this word in the wake of Bush's pretzel incident.)
This is not to say that I am a fan of the idiotic chitchat that plagues nearly every commercial radio station. What bothered me was the amount of effort, or lack thereof, that was going into these broadcasts. Technically, if given the proper computer equipment, a fourteen-year-old boy could effectively produce this stuff out of his parent's garage in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

These stations, while they effectively allow you to rock, undermine our attention spans. WBOR will begin regular broadcasting next Monday, and not soon enough. After experimenting with the character-less and empty broadcasts of internet radio, I'm ready to listen to a station where there is some effort dedicated to each show. I'm tired of listening to never-ending playlists. Yes, I've enjoyed rocking out; I've made that abundantly clear. But if we all subscribe to faceless entertainment, are we not at risk of becoming faceless ourselves?