Let’s Make One Thing Clear (Channel)

I liked the outfit that looked as if pizza dough fell on top of Lady Gaga’s head. I appreciated the flotilla of vicious strummers madly head-bobbing behind Bob Dylan. I felt Jagger channeling his inner old brother. Yet most of the music on the Grammy Awards Sunday night was unfamiliar to me. Maybe I need to listen to more Top 40 Radio.

There is more talk about rancor on the radio than music on the radio.

Clear Channel  Communications and Infinity Broadcasting dominate the domestic dial, spending millions for the right to play the same songs over and over and over and over, so we can honor a couple of people over and over and over and over at televised award programs.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 created this mess, ultimately insuring that you will hear popular music with anesthetizing uniformity, or all Bieber all the time. It might be good, but more likely just predictable. Major labels, major promoters, and major stations control it all, resulting in efficiency on the order – and quality of McDonald’s.

It’s all so perfect, but depressing in the way that nostalgia always works – we miss the way things were downtown as we shop at Target and park safely. On the other hand, since the lack of variety on the radio is so evident, the internet has become a boundless reservoir for music new and old, domestic and international.

Congress would like to defund NPR. Before you agree to support this, try listening to something here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/.