November 19, 2008

SatRadio stinks and I don't like it

When I first moved to Grays Harbor, the one thing I noticed instantly was the lack of choice on the radio. To paraphrase The Blues Brothers, "(Harbor radio) plays both kinds of music - country and western."

Seattle radio was spotty - good in some spots, non-existent in others - in reception and with Internet radio not yet on the horizon, it was a tough time on the airwaves. Sports talk proved to be a salvation.

Then satellite radio came about and I was able to get an in-car receiver in my new Scion. Add in a house stereo component and I was back to grooving on the radio. It was a good time.

Now, with XM now taken over (not "merged" like Sirius says it was), I'm almost at the point of my first few months here on the Harbor - without my favorite music channels. Lucy (alternative), Squizz (hard alternative) and Fred (80s alternative) are gone, replaced by a thin-top-40esque playlist that Sirius loves. On the Internet, all I have to do is hook up to KNDD in Seattle or Live 105 in San Francisco to get what Sirius has on those three replaced channels - 1st Wave, Lithium and Octane.

Also, one of my guilty pleasures was Fungus, a pure punk/ska channel that was raw and absolutely fun to listen to. Classic and new punk, not the neo-alternative punk that Green Day and others love to dabble in. I like Green Day for what they are, but if I wanted punk - The Clash, Sex Pistols, The The, Black Flag, countless of no-name bands - I went to Fungus.

The Fungus was cleaned and polished into Faction - the "action sports" channel. There's still some punk/ska there, but for every Black Flag song, there's moders neo-punk, hardcore rap and other hard rock songs. It isn't bad, becuase the playlist is thick, but it just doesn't feel the same.

Oh, another guilt pleasure was the old-school rap channel - The Groove. Not the hardcore rap and pseudo-crap that's out there now, but early to mid-80s rap that was fun and inventive. A ton of Grandmaster Flash and Run-DMC came from it, along with other artists that were the pioneers of rap/R&B today.

It stayed. Thank God.

When the merger (takeover) was announced, XM said it wouldn't change any of its music channels and only a select amount of Sirius channels would be available - for an extra cost. Now, I have Sirius music on my XM. Not exactly keeping a promise there, is it?

Other than the sports channels, the play-by-play channels (Major League Baseball is worth its weight in gold gloves) and some of XM's holdovers - BB King's Bluesville (heaven), The Groove ("freaks come out at night, freaks come out at night") and The Virus (Opie & Anthony and Ron & Fez) - the vast majority of the new lineup stinks. And I don't like it.

Right now, there's no price change for what I have right now - two built-in car receivers (mine and my wife's) and the stereo component - and that's the only thing keeping me from turning the satellite off for good.

That and both types of Harbor music - "Country and Western"...

Labels: , , ,

1 Comments:

Blogger WhizGidget said...

Got another one for you - better than Live105. Channel 104.9

http://www.channel1049.com

So... listening to Sirius Left yet? Alex Bennett has a show on that channel apparently.

7:50 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home