Minnesota Public Radio launches indie station 89.3 "The Current"

What's will all the old jazz stuff, though? (Lionel Hampton, Sarah Vaughan, Benny Goodman, etc.)

Huh?

But last night I heard a fun 3-song Bowie sandwich (Brazilian Seu Jorge cover of "Rebel Rebel" into Bowie doing "Suffragette" into Bauhaus' version of "Ziggy.") Also heard Wilco into Sonic Youth, neither my favorite, but pretty noisy for MPR.

I agree, it'll often be too eclectic for its own good, but public radio often is. It'll be interesting to see how their first pledge drive goes come spring, and how it impacts other community/public stations. My jury's out on whether it's a good idea overall; I'll be listening, but probably not a whole lot.

...yes...it's a little MOR, a little bland, but in the massive horrid wasteland of FM radio here it's at least commercial free and not totally "we play the same cycle of songs in the exact same order every two hours" like the others.....

it's not great, but... Stereolab? Nick Drake? the dB's? XTC? Kings of Convenience? Lifter Puller?

i don't see how this is ILM strawman levels of horridness.

My friend heard a song off the new Fall record.....the weeknight DJ, Mark Wheat, managed Radio K and is really really cool....

I know about KEXP's history and all that. (formerly KCMU, then Chris Knab fired a lot of people and made it far more NPR friendly back in the early 90s, incensing a lot of people, and then Paul Allen came in, gave it a lot of money, and moved it off campus, and all that.. incidentally, Paul Allen's funding of the station either JUST ended or will be ending very, very shortly, and KEXP is going to be truly self funded)

Also UW has its own fully NPR station, KUOW, as well, so KEXP is just as disconnected from UW as any other commercial station to me, as far as I'm concerned.

So, in many ways, KEXP/KCMU became an offshoot of the UW radio community, but it happened very slowly. Whereas, The Current does seem to be a concerted effort by NPR to experiment into a music station in one fell swoop.

This really is a huge draw. In Sydney, I was more willing to sit through awful indie rock when I knew that "Galang" could be right around the corner and I didn't have to deal with car ads.

You KNOW they're eventually going to slot some "specialty" show that'll spend a couple hours on hip-hop or club music. It'll be college-kid hip-hop or club music, but boo fucking hoo. NO FUCKING COMMERCIALS, PEOPLE. NONE.

wait a second, isn't not knowing that illegal in Minnesota? (if not, it should be, since everyone and their mom is all like "I was at the Capri Theater show, yo!"

the first graf is cringey, but afterwards this is a solid piece of reportage! i had no idea about the vigils to save the signal's earlier identity. and the "hey man it's really totally freeform" talk from the programmers is very VERY revealing. i mean, it seems to me (and i'm sure to all of you) like this "AAA" genre has obvious, strict genre limitations, but not to these folks, wow.

I know, it was weird reading it on Pitchfork! (Which is not a dismissal of PFM -- just saying this kind of piece is not usually what they go for! I'd like to see more stuff like this, though.)

so far gff and dylan hicks are the only people i've run into who are not at the least apologetic or, better, hateful about 'the current'. though tonight in a sandwich shoppe the counter boys were informing some customers about the 'pretty cool' station they had on; apparently despite the massive word of mouth and signage over the past few months there are still young men out of the LOOP. (of course, they're out of the TARGET MARKET anyway; the people i know happy about the current probably avg. around 30 years old rather than 20.)

I have such ambivalent feelings about twin cities radio right now. On one hand there's this new station and the fact that radio k's evening-and-nighttime FM translator now covers the whole of Minneapolis, which are both good things, I guess; but also 104.1 got turned from an 80's station into some weird post gen-X eclectic crap! I doubt most people even noticed, but fuck, I listened to 104.1 more than 89.3 and radio k combined!

To summarize:

Overrated: radio k, current
Underrated: KMOJ
RIP: 104.1

Me and a friend were having a convo re: The Current the other day, and neither one of us listens to it nearly as much as we thought we would.....Mark Wheat's 7 to midnight is the best by far, and those SNOOOZ-O MPR REJECT MORNIING DUDES HAVE TO GO! You're putting everyone back to sleep with yr tweedy "aaaaaand....thaaaat....wasAimeeMann" voices! Sheesh

I think Radio K is a great great station for the most part. I mean, I could see getting sick of the student DJs sometime, but overall it's great...also, their punk show (out of step) and hip hop shows (the beatbox) are great....great live local music every friday at 4pm on off the record too.

http://internetfunk.com/TheCurrent

http://i61.tinypic.com/2iavp5y.png

Ugh so painful and so true

Also they have a beer now it's just all so embarrassing

When I first started coming to Minnesota in 2009 (From the UK) I used to love listening to The Current but over the years I've gotten pretty bored with it. Now I live here I barely listen to it all. They do still play some nice surprises now and again but it is the repetition that's killed it for me. I'm not as interested in a lot of the local music they play either. Some of it is really average.

it's a bit frustrating that their very narrow view of what constitutes the local music scene is sort of codified as "what's happening"

like for example there was an amazing festival last weekend all local acts, pretty uniformly great from the psych/weird/experimental axis and it's def not something the current would play

http://heliotrope-festival.com/

Yeah I'm sure there is good stuff around. I just find most of the new local bands they play blend into one another after a while (Apart from Atmosphere)

yeah i mean there are a lot of cool bands, lots more mediocre ones
mpls is probably better than average but i mean i dunno it's a bit overblown
we are lucky to have a lot of venues where you can do weird stuff pretty easily

hey ums, missed you dicking around on fri but i caught the saturday bill and it was pretty awesome. prostate!

ah too bad, but what a great festival they put together, intermedia was a cool venue

yeah prostate is something! some weird nexus of black metal, old school industrial, and goth/synth pop...

feel like they should be getting some buzz on the national level in extreme music circles but they probably are hurt by not fitting nicely into a genre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9QGq4P66mQ

i'm no current fan but isn't that chart misleading given that we are only partway through 2014? or were the statistics adjusted accordingly

This article on the chart makes note of that

http://www.reviler.org/2014/04/09/89-3-current-variety-decline/

And I would add I am basically ambivalent on the Current, it is what it is. I sometimes listen when I flip around the dial, they do occasionally play great stuff, but more often they play music that isn't exactly my cup of tea, to put it politely.

They can play whatever they want to play, I just don't think they should act like they are WFMU or something, which according to the ads they run all the time and they do.

And they are certainly supportive of a certain segment of local music, probably the segment that least needs their help.

aww heliotrope <333 miss that so much

The Current introduced me to Tom Vek so I'm still okay with them rolling along as a white bread indie caricature radio station because sometimes that's exactly what you want to hear

they had the band X play at their yearly festival. does the average current listener give a fuck about X or know anything about them? just seemed so weird

probably not. seriously fuck rock the garden tho

re-reading the thread and: whatever happened to heliotrope festival ?

I was tempted to go just to see X and The Beths. The National headlining was a major turn off though.

heliotrope was back this year at heart of the beast, wasn't able to catch much but glad it's back

dang i didn’t realize.

i wonder if there are enough mpls posters to sustain an ongoing show / events thread

but then the NYC thread hasn’t been active for a bit so idk

There’s always this one: Rolling Totes PWNING Awesome Shows in Twin Cities Thread!

ah thanks

Separately, the Current's Minnesota music history podcast, the Current Rewind, written by ILXor vet M. Matos, has been a consistently great listen.

https://www.thecurrent.org/collection/rewind

they had the band X play at their yearly festival. does the average current listener give a fuck about X or know anything about them? just seemed so weird

― global tetrahedron, Sunday, June 30, 2019 1:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Does the Current even play X? Or are they just another one those bands the Current talks about playing but never seems to get around to?

I suppose it would have been cool to see them the Robins Kaplan LLP VIP Area, I heard there were a lot of great snacks and of course the respite from the rest of the unwashed upper-middle class white people in attendance in the General Admission area

fwiw, X was great in the heat. Billy and Exene looked to be doing well. was getting a bit of Sabbath vibe on Nausea and a couple other songs, which is not a connection I've made in the past. got a little nervous-where is this going?-when Exene thanked the signing interpreter, but thankfully didn't go anywhere weird.

and the Beths were really good as well, harmonies were right on. would have preferred seeing their first pass at the Hex or the Entry, but glad to see them (and Courtney). that whole record is great.

still bummed i skipped that hex show

https://www.thecurrent.org/countdown/march-music-madness--greatest-movie-soundtracks/

Words can not describe how much I loathe listeners of The Current.

LOL!!

Good Will Hunting
51.8%

Repo Man
48.2%