Chicago MMXIII: Walk Don't Run

Ha. Yes. WXPN is the WXRT of Philadelphia and they used to play it at an old job of mine and there were dizzying highs and gut wrenching lows, sometimes in the same hour.

Thank you, jaymc and LL. This is very helpful. Also LOL at "Rhythmic Top 40"

As opposed to all that top 40 music that is just a big heap of soggy pudding.

From downtown, if you're downtown, you might be able to get Triton College 88.9, which is the same kind of mix as WNUR and can be great.

I am downtown and I am very fond of college radio.

I just learned from L3sl13 that my undergrad alumni group meets at Timothy O'Toole's to watch our alma mater's football games. LOL.

3: 93.1 (WXRT) = maybe the most consistently good radio station in Chicago; definite ROCK focus, but everything from classic to new indie, usually nothing terrible (tho sometimes a bit too NPR/Rolling Stone; like, you'll hear Led Zep but not Steve Miller Band); smart DJs, most of whom have been with the station forever, etc. etc. etc.

I was back in Chicago over the holidays and I not that surprised to find out that XRT's core playlist hasn't changed in 25 years. John Hiatt! The Eurogliders! The BoDeans! Poi Dog Pondering!

*was not that surprised

OMG what is the deal with poi dog pondering?! for real, i don't get it.

First two records are really good, when they were legit Austin weird.

I wasn't around here for it, but I bet they moved to town at just the right point where a lot of Chicago folks, the kind who don't go out of their way to be music connoisseurs but want something they can like outdoors at the Zoo once a year, embraced them as something sunnier than the Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, and Urge.

^ this is OTM. I knew more than a few people whose favorite band -- of all time -- was Poi Dog Pondering. It was like some mini-Parrot-Head cult.

ok that makes sense
reelin in the years though eh?

Wishing Like a Mountain and Thinking Like the Sea got a lot of play in the House of Hippies where I lived junior year of college.

I cannot get 88.9 btw. :(

i had friends who had friends who listened to poi dog pondering, but iirc none of my friends liked that sort of thing. this is like rusted root?

I legitimately like this PDP song quite a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWmfXimrLSU

YES it is like Rusted Root! It is very much like Rusted Root. Maybe not entirely in sound, but definitely in demographics/style/size/enthusiasm of following.

is there an intersection with DMB people?

if so, this was decidedly not my scene but i recognize the people

IME that demographic is "Deadheads trying to be open-minded about music."

Again, in my experience, and I was kind of dead center in the time and place for this stuff (let me tell you about the time I hung out with Rusted Root at an outdoor festival at a ski resort in PA while I was tripping on so much acid!!!!) there was a lot of DMB overlap in the early days (let me tell you about the time I got kicked out of a DMB show at the Stone Balloon in Newark, DE for being drunkenly belligerent and trying to fight with a bouncer!!!!) but not so much when DMB were cemented as a white basball hat college bro band.

Like, I am almost positive that I saw an outdoor festival show featuring Dave Matthews Band, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and like... Widespread Panic or something. I mean, I know I saw Bela Fleck and DMB at an outdoor festival show, but I can't remember who the third band was.

In the middle of all that grunge, here's this guy singing "Are you the cup that I hold by the cheekbones? / I pull you close and I drink you up."

I was trying to figure out why I think of them alongside Crash Test Dummies, and it's because they both sang a lot about breasts and sex and things in a way that ran counter to the irony/sarcasm/violence of other "alternative" music on the radio at the time. And who wants to have ironic sex, anyway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4j7EQtKPUc

xp - gotcha, that's exactly what i was talking about! now i know. the friend of friend who i knew sold my friend and i mushrooms once and iirc that guy was pretty nice and basically acted like i was invisible, which i liked. i also once drove him for four hours to visit friends at a college (i was visiting different friends) and we listened to the greatest hits of bob dylan vol 1 and 2 over and over and over both there and back. i mean while we're telling lol stories. i guess those aren't very good stories now that i re-read them.

eazy only pays attention to the songs about boobz looooooooooool ;)

lolling at the rusted root comparison, so otm

Much better lyrics, though. (That "Thanksgiving" song above is A+.)

I actually don't know Poi Dog's music very well at all, but one of the band members used to work as a sound guy at the Beat Kitchen and ended up recording C4n4st4 on a few occasions and is a pretty decent dude. IIRC, the band started out in Hawaii before moving to Austin and then Chicago.

Okay, I went with:

91.5 WBEZ
93.1 WXRT
98.7 WFMT
97.1 The Drive
103.5 KISS FM
107.5 WCGI

I'm sure they are very nice people, and they clearly have a ~chill vibe~ -- I don't think I'm super into their music but that's true for lots of things. More power to them for lasting this long.

xp Yeah, they're totally Chicago's Rusted Root.

XRT used to (and maybe still does) cheerlead some of the most tepid and mediocre Chicago bands...but then, they never played local music (outside of "Local Anesthetic") unless the band was on a major label (cf. the Insiders, Nicholas Tremulis).

Nicholas Tremulis
this is a perfect example! a guy I truly hadn't heard of til I got to Chicago and then he was mr big man

lol @ Nicholas Tremulis

they never played local music (outside of "Local Anesthetic") unless the band was on a major label

I don't know that this is entirely true. I've heard locals JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound (on Bloodshot) a few times.

And I *think* C4n4st4 got a couple of spins during regular programming hours.

But it's probably the exception.

Allegedly the alt-countryish band I was in for like 6 months in 2006 or whenever got played on that show before I joined, and they were never signed to anything.

lol I ruined their careerz

wtg

I dunno, XRT definitely has its flaws. I agree that it often defaults to the bland and rootsy, and I don't give a shit about the BoDeans, either. But I don't know any other commercial radio station with such a wide-ranging playlist (you could conceivably hear the Kinks into New Order into Spoon into Prince*), along with some decent featured programming (I'm always happy to catch Saturday Morning Flashback), and DJs that aren't annoying.

*I know that's not THAT wide-ranging in the grand scheme of things, but for a commercial station, it is.

I always have to smile when I happen to tune in to WHPK randomly and hear some excruciating noise track or whatever.

The only college station I can get 'round here is the Columbia College station.

But you cam get 'Round Here on XRT!

Typo due to enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, I'm excited about my new work computer! Big upgrade from XP to Windows 7. I can search within my Outlook! I don't have to ask people to resend their .docx files as .doc! (I had Word/Excel '97.) I can finally use Spotify and, once again, YouTube! Web pages (hopefully) won't take forever to load!

^^^this was me about 4-5 months ago, we had kept fuckin XP around due to some stupid database no-one had updated to work w/ win7. Back to being only one OS iteration behind the curve!

i like 92.3 (rap) through their reception is oddly shitty. i need to find out what the other rap stations are.

xrt really likes the alabama shakes, who i don't get, they're like a boring version of the gossip

I listen to a lot of KISS more than B96, but 80% of the time WXRT is sure to give you something good.

First two records are really good, when they were legit Austin weird.

Wasn't this when Poi Dog was Hawaii weird, or was that after? I know a lot of people who love this band. I'm not sure I've heard a note. Certainly I hear the BoDeans on XRT more than Poi Dog, afaict. XRT is the only place I come across Dave Matthews, but they also love the Talking Heads, New Order, Bowie, Richard Thompson, Beatles et al., as well as new stuff like Arcade Fire, Spoon, even LCD Soundsystem, etc. Not really sure I've heard much Prince there.

Used to be an oldies station, but I think it's currently less old. 94 something? and 104 something is all over the place, too.

I briefly had "Hold On" on my 2012 playlist before realizing I didn't really like it that much.

Not really sure I've heard much Prince there.

Yeah, not much, but not out of the question -- IIRC, I heard "Raspberry Beret" on there a couple of weeks ago.

For a station that definitely does love rootsy folksy stuff, they're not *entirely* opposed to electronic sounds. I've heard some new-wave synth-pop (New Order but also Yaz) as well as recent indie w/electronic flourishes (Phoenix, M83). They also currently have Alex Clare's "Too Close" in rotation, which is probably the only song in the last year that I've heard on both XRT and B96. (Well, and "Somebody That I Used to Know," but the two stations play different mixes of it.)

i used to write reviews for a bad music website and the proprietor sent me a bodeans album on vinyl as an xmas present. i never listened to it (don't think i had a record player at the time).

I think you wrote for that site at the same time that Ben T@usig did.

no, that site is good, i'm talking about a shittier site that i wrote for before that

i should have stuck with writing for dusted, probably

I briefly had "Hold On" on my 2012 playlist before realizing I didn't really like it that much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbXvaE39wM