(photo courtesy of edgar wright)
You were not always perfect, but compared to KROQ (and every other radio station in LA) you were the shining city on the hill.
After five years, Indie is going off air so it won't have to play the corporate radio game anymore. From now on, it'll be an internet only station which is great if you happen to be at home a lot. It was the best thing to drive around and actually hear new music (that's good), who actually listens to internet radio all the time? Fuck that, when I'm at home it's the TV, when I'm on the road, it's the radio and between Indie and KCRW, I had a nice thing going on.
Fact is, "corporate" Indie was still leaps and bounds better than any other radio station in Los Angeles for consistently breaking new music and programming quality, niche shows. Joe Escalante and Barley Legal Radio, Jonesy's Jukebox, Watusi Rodeo, Head Trip, Coup d’état, Harmony In my Head. Then, on top of that, the regular rotation featured cool, hip music.
You can tell they were trying to make it, with gimmicks like "Indie Activists" and all the corporate tie ins. They cut costs by letting Joe Escalante go and there were always a fair amount of commercials. But I could always count on them to play consistently quality music. I'll be damned if I'm gong to listen to Nicole Alvarez over at KROQ on my drive home. She is the epitome of what is wrong with KROQ nowadays. She has a very narrow taste in music and has such a fake radio persona. If KROQ could just let Kat Korbet, Jed the Fish, and Rodney program their own music, it would ease the pain. Instead we get Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Crap du jour in emo, nu-metal and pop-punk.
Just when I though terrestrial radio still had a chance...
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2 comments:
Although I never really had the pleasure of listening to it, I know that you SoCal guys believed in it so that is a shame. This and the original Pirate Radio will be inducted into the "people in LA are too stupid to adequately support good radio (or football teams)" hall of fame. By the way, during my extensive research for this article, I found out that Pirate Radio is "often cited by many in the radio industry as one of the most high profile failures in the history of commercial radio in the United States."
Farewell Indie 103.1, I barely knew thee.
i missed the allusion upon first reading... kudos. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill)
-dk
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