Music!
by Vince Daliessio
I LOVE XM. Listening on the way in to work takes me back to what even commercial FM radio was like when I was in high school and college in Philadelphia – even heavily programmed AOR stations played music from different genres – something unheard of on broadcast radio today. The mix of cutting edge rock and ear candy pop on several of the stations is a real treat to these ears.
A J-Pop (Japanese pop) song called “Sayonara” by Puffy AmiYumi, stunned me with how good it was. I didn’t understand a word of it, except of course the title (they sing entirely in Japanese), but it sounded to me like it might one of the world’s great pop breakup songs, more Matthew Sweet than Shonen Knife.
Even a throwaway pop song like “You Got The Style” by the British band Athlete sounds good, next to the moronic mess that is FM radio here in NY in the early 21st century.
On XM there are at least 8 channels (with names like "XMU", "Fred", "Ethel", and "Unsigned"), more or less dedicated to (pick a cliché) “modern”, “alternative” “new” or “something that isn’t just a load of ‘classic rock’ crap” music.
Groups I have only read about, like Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, Trail of Dead, The Arcade Fire, and many, many, many others come streaming through the cab of my truck on the way to work, and it’s great.
Yes, they play ‘classic’ things on these stations too, after a fashion (80’s pop seems to predominate here, and apparently one of the programmers has an unhealthy fixation on Siouxie and The Banshees). But for the first time in a long while, I can say I am regularly astonished by what I hear coming out of my radio, and that’s cool. Oh, and they have lots of other music, comedy, traffic, weather, news, sports, etc.
You can check it out online, FOR FREE, if you visit www.xmradio.com.