How The Internet Makes Not Living In Colorado OK

As much as I listen to my iPod when listening to music at work, I also enjoy the occasional foray into Internet radio stations. Well, radio stations that also broadcast over the Internet that is. Sometimes it’s just the local NPR affiliate, KJZZ. But much of the time it’s the world’s greatest radio station, Boulder’s KBCO. Sometimes – like maybe if KBCO has an artist in studio I don’t want to listen to – I’ll venture to Tucson’s The Mountain, which is really the same thing as KBCO … just in Tucson.

That KBCO has now become a franchise radio idea is both wonderful and deeply sad. KBCO is to radio what Boulder is to college towns – quirkier, but better. I wonder sometimes what kind of music I would enjoy if I hadn’t grown up with KBCO – and the thought makes me tremble. There were some other good radio stations in the Denver area when I grew up – for a time we had two grate rock stations right next to each other on the dial – and for a time 96.5 the Peak and 93.3 were also wonderful. In time, all of them disappeared. The rock stations were bought out and combined into one bland station. The Peak became Clear Channel-fied. And one night I went to bed listening to pleasantly alternative 93.3 and woke up listening to country – even the DJs hadn’t know what was about to happen. That day at school you know who listened to 93.3 because we were all unexplainably depressed.

But KBCO always endured. There is no radio station that plays such an eclectic variety, no radio station I have ever known that is less self-conscious. Their motto “World Class Rock” (Tucson’s The Mountain calls it “World Class Music”) could encompass just about anything … and that’s what they play. In the early 90’s you could hear Pearl Jam or Nirvana on KBCO – and you still can today. But then, as now, that Nirvana song might well be followed by a blues artist you’ve never heard of before, or a country-folk artist, or the Beatles. You never know.

That unpredictability means there will be a number of songs played on KBCO you don’t know, and some that you wish would stay unknown. But every time someone I’ve never heard of stops by to play a live set in Studio C I at least pause to listen to a little bit of the performance, because I remember that 11 years ago a band I’d never heard of played in Studio C and I got so hooked on their sound right then that even still today I trval all over the country to see DMB.

Not that listening to the radio online doesn't have some drawbacks. The frustrating thing is that when you listen to radio from Boulder or Tucson (or San Francisco, if I’m moved to put on KFOG) you inevitably hear commercials and DJs talking about incredibly exciting upcoming events … except you can’t go to them, because it’s a thousand miles away. Or you’ll hear a call-in question to win tickets to a great concert … that you can’t go to. It’s frustrating and oddly disorienting, sort of like taking a vacation while still at my desk. I even get confused by the weather reports (me: “WTF? It’s not raining outs—oh, I’m dumb”).

Anyway, I hope you didn’t expect this blog to have a point today. I’m fresh out.