By Xifer Fortier

The only thing better than reminiscing about not listening to rock radio in the 00’s is reminiscing about not listening to rock radio in the 90’s. The 90’s was FM’s last gasp as a culture-defining institution in America. AM radio telegraphed the evolution of ideals in the 60’s. In the 70’s FM solidified the unity of a generation with respect to sex, politics, money, recreational drug-use, and ill-advised facial-hair.

In the 80’s, radio was a manipulator. It absorbed our discontent, boredom, gayness, quaint modernity and coke-fueled excess and served it back to us warmly in a caramel demi-glace, indulging our collective sweet tooth while tacitly allowing us propriety over our eccentricities. We were addicts, blissfully unaware of the conspiracy afoot. With sensei-like precision, radio reversed it’s polarity over the course of the decade, morphing from mirror to puppeteer.

In 1990, radio scampered into the theater like the director of Cats on callback day, ready to move units, make money and PUT ON A SHOW!!! The script was mighty clever; the angst and the party were there. The disaffected youth. The dedication to our friends, who were more ironically evolved than the rest. The industry was even smart enough to take a few darlings from the 80’s and anoint them 90’s superstars. “Ok, ok, you can keep REM, but tell that guy to stop mumbling…”

Waddle down memory lane with me. There were Sugar Ray and Matchbox 20. Kid Rock. Smashmouth. Everlast, Everclear and Silverchair. TLC, STP, EMF and Jesus Jones. Live, Bush, and Pulp. Creed, Tool, and Incubus. There was Garbage. LOTS of Garbage. There were Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, Cranberries, Cardigans and Semisonic. Every decade claims at least one song geared specifically toward getting stragglers laid at last call. The 60’s had “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” The 70’s and 80’s had “Let Me Take You Home Tonight” (Boston) and “Take Me Home Tonight” (Eddie Money) respectively. The 90’s got Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” with it’s no-mystery chorus, “I know who I want to take me home …” meticulously under-crafted to be singable at otherwise paralyzing blood/alcohol levels.

Photo by Merkley??? www.threequestionmarks.com

It was when “dynamics” meant playing soft, then loud, then soft again, then loud again. Clever. Metallica charted hits. The Chili Peppers decided Anthony Keidis should croon. Third wave ska came into its own as a cult wherein the faithful got back-tattoos, smoked Mexican weed and faced Long Beach, bowing in daily prayer.

It was an era of empty platitudes; verse after vacant verse about how I woke up and got all angsty for no other reason than ” … well, I’m sketchy on the details but maaaan, it all just sucks … ” “What’s Going On?!!!” shouted Linda Perry, because she didn’t really know. Neither did we, although we were informed that she woke up in a shit mood, did an enormous bong-rip and was compelled into a wordless sing-a-long that she hoped might heal us all.

And it DID heal someone: the suburbs. Rock radio before the 90’s was biased toward the deeply urban and the deeply rural. The 80’s were all about the style and excess of New York, London and LA. In the 70’s the radio gods embraced southern rock (for example) because, with the rise of the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker, they could count on a stronger market share in places like Mobile, Macon, Tupelo and Jacksonville. This same process was applied in the 90’s with our pals, the ‘burbs, and this time it was a go-for-broke, hostage-situation.

Suburban culture had never been so celebrated, had never felt so accepted in the rock music world. Pre-90’s, only suburban outcasts had been granted rock radio credentials (The metal world mined the suburban-misfit dollar as early as the first KISS record in 1974). In the 90’s the Recording Industry put the thickening necks and fattening wallets of the proper suburbs in their cross-hairs and forged a product perfectly suited to mall-shoppers from gated communities everywhere.

The songs were pandering and about nothing. The production values were like fists of pure ham. The drumming was perfectly gibbon-like, consistent with a gnostic directive called (perhaps), “The 10 Beats That Work.” The guitars, squashed mercilessly between the monstrous snare drum and yarled lead vocal, were played with calculated abandon.

It was dreadful and brilliant. And it worked … for a minute.

Photo by Merkley??? www.threequestionmarks.com

By 1998 it seemed we were sentenced to a popular music trajectory that would always make room for the next generation’s Korn, Offspring, or Limp Bizkit and their endless soundtrack to meathead hijinks.

And then … poof! The genie exited the bottle in early 2000 when AOL leaked the code for decentralized file sharing and reintroduced music consumers to their own listening destinies. Napster was born, sued, and beaten into submission. When the dust cleared, music-seekers discovered that as an internet-savvy republic they could look somewhere besides fascist FM radio for music that spoke to them.

A thousand lawsuits later, old-world radio plugs along in denial of its own demise, but in truth, the landscape couldn’t resemble the 1990’s less. I couldn’t be more grateful. In the last decade it has grown infinitely easier to discover an amazing band or performer on our own or through our personal online networks. New artists aim to create viral online content as opposed to pursuing record-label signing advances. This formula makes for fewer aspiring rock-stars and a greater focus on making compelling things to listen to and watch.

To be fair, the concept of radio may have a (temporarily awkward) place in our future. Genome-based Pandora and Slacker show signs of longevity, which suggests music-fans are as much seekers as ever before. Social networking helps. If Facebook is to be believed, people talk about bands and forward MP3s and videos to each other. They invite each other to shows. In radio times, such things were unnecessary. Everybody heard the same songs on the same station and music-fandom meant bragging about how we slept out all night for Journey tickets. Its likely community-based radio will adopt a new, non-regional face, with happy dimples, worry lines and a farmer tan but I’d be surprised if it took less than a lifetime.

All Photos by Merkley???

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