jfb | radio

Some radio moments:

Something I've always enjoyed is the juxtaposition created when you're between two radio markets, and stations at the same frequency start to bleed into each other. On my camping trip this summer I listened to a weather service station playing over an Andrews-Sisters-ish old country song with occasional bits of numbers station filtering in. In New Mexico this week, I heard the new Jennifer Lopez song for the first time, while at the same moment a distant station started to enumerate the various rumors about her breakup with Ben Affleck.

In Fredericksburg, Texas, I listened to a call-in radio show on which diverse political opinions were treated with respect. The topic was the Rangel-Hollings effort to reinstitute the draft, and the context was a Christian radio station, although few of the discussants mentioned religious grounds for their positions. I was a little surprised to hear this sort of discussion on a religious radio station, but I shouldn't have been--I think in this case it was the host's faith that led him to try to listen to and understand his callers, instead of just score points.

For a while a couple of years ago I kept a Christian station on standard rotation in my car radio. During my afternoon commute there was a show in which people would call in with their spiritual and ethical questions, and a thoughtful, slightly hoarse preacher would answer with interpretation of scripture. A memorable, poignant and awful moment came when a caller, suffering from chronic and acute pain, asked if suicide would really consign him to eternal torment--because, he said, sometimes he just didn't think he could stand to go on.

The host tried to answer, basically, "Yes, you can go on," because God will help you. But the caller kept saying, "Yes, but what if I can't?" The host, you could tell, couldn't say that suicide wasn't a sin, but he kept trying, within the confines of his worldview, to be kind and encouraging and somehow help this caller who had given up hope. It was kind of horrifying and kind of deeply human.

On the way out of Austin, on another Christian radio station, the hosts expressed outrage on behalf of an Algerian pilot who says his career was ruined by the U.S. government, who made him "a scapegoat because he was a Muslim and a pilot". While this was an unexpected bit of inter-faith support, I suspect it was less pro-Islam than anti-government. The next topic on the show was a planned act of armed resistance against a Michigan act of eminent domain--nobody wants it to come to violence, but when they come to take away a man's house, he has to do something.

Later on the same station, I heard an ad for organic farming (because that's the way God intended it) followed by an interview with an anti-fluoride activist.

I heard Randy Newman's formerly-over-the-top sarcastic song "Political Science" used as a transition from Laura Ingraham's show to a commercial: "Let's drop the big one and see what happens."

In rural Alabama, flipping back to radio after an hour or so of MP3s, I found the station I'd been listening to was now out of range, so I hit the "scan" button, and watched as the receiver spun around and around, trying and failing to lock in on any signal.

In Atlanta, I listened to WCLK for hours. It's the most I've enjoyed a jazz radio station since I left New Jersey. In California I have KCSM, which is good but sometimes feels weighed down by its sense of history, art, and responsibility. WCLK doesn't make jazz feel like a tradition it's holding up by force of will; it plays jazz because that's the music it plays.

radio

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