Category Archives: TSR

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It’s been nine months now since the job moved into the merger-driven two-person airport office I’m in now – and among the many adjustments has been exposure to lots of commercial FM radio.

Depending on who’s occupying the chair next to me, the radio is either turned off or set to one of a few stations occupying frequencies to the right of the midway point on the dial.

My newness to the environs means I’m not the one choosing the station.

This past weekend, I worked a couple 10-hour shifts backed by the sounds of “Q100,” New York’s top-40 station. Owned and operated by Clear Channel, WHTZ-FM (100.3 FM) plays the “hits.”

The station’s playlist doesn’t stray much from the top ten. Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” was spun at least twice an hour over the two days the station filled my ears. Same song. Twice an hour. That’s forty times in two days I heard Trouble. I know it inside out now.

It’s the number-one ranked pop song in the land based on airplay on US stations like Z100 and has been on the charts for four months. Why isn’t there listener fatigue from such bombardment? What do I know other than what I hear. It’s catchy. The sentiment expressed by Swift (who is listed as one of three co-writers on the tune) is about a common human inclination to dismiss obvious, immediate red flags before launching a relationship that ends predictably sour. In Swift’s case, she ends up “lying on the cold, hard ground” before it’s all over. Dubstep fills holes between acoustic strums and cotton-candy vocals. I hear what sounds like the whoosh of Ratatat’s electronic keyboard.

Other days I have a co-worker who punches up WBLS-FM which is the city’s leading “urban adult contemporary” station. The syndicated host Steve Harvey does morning drive and it’s not the most enlightening radio although the First Lady came on out of the blue a few weeks before the 2012 general election. Late at night, ‘BLS gets about as free-form as a commercial station allows and it’s kind of interesting. The Caribbean influence is pronounced and you get a mix of levity, creativity and even some political including an occasionally disturbing trace of homophobia.

-With the weekly neighborhood greenmarket stuck in a winter rut for a few more weeks, I’ve had unexpected access to a good multi-week run of cheap, imported blueberries at the local produce stand. All of the tasty ones are coming from Chile. They come in containers of different shapes and with different producer labels. I pop the lid to inspect for softies but have seen nothing but a good month’s worth of nice ones. I rinse ’em and load them in a small Tupperware container for use with the morning oatmeal or as a snack at work. I don’t remember having this kind of steady supply of blueberries with flavor. And that includes the local ones you get in the summer.

-The only mayoral candidate to openly support Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to ban the sale of jumbo sodas is Bill deBlasio, considered to be the lone authentic liberal in the race. It seems like the small minority of regular citizens and elected leaders who are firmly on Mayor Mike’s side on the soda ban are those who believe government should have the power to impose reasonable limits on products that harm public health. I’m in that camp. Few are. I get a lot of slippery slope arguments from rational people who say the Mayor is going too far. A judge this week at least temporarily blocked the big soda ban, calling the law “arbitrary and capricious.” It is neither, although Mayor Mike bypassed the city council to gain the ban largely because the soda lobby has significant influence on that legislative body.

-He won’t overturn the church’s stubbornly outdated opposition to married and/or female priests – nor will he preach about God’s love for gay couples or women who choose to end a pregnancy, but I do have a somewhat positive first impression of the new Pope. At least he seems to have a pulse. And he’ll put a huge charge of energy in the massive flock of church-goers (more than one-third of the total) who speak Spanish. Imagine when Francis the First comes to New York City and says mass in Espanol? Hispanics never stopped going to Catholic mass while many of the rest of us in this country threw hands up in the air at the sound of a sermon disconnected from values that prioritize community harmony and peace over rigid doctrine. Francis will answer to the institution and won’t be a reformer. But unlike Benedict, he’ll at least reward some of the most fiercely loyal Catholics in this hemisphere with a geographic background that breaks the rigid hold on the papacy by the same old, same old.

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Almost all of the indie rock bands I’ve become attached to over the last 30 years have gravitated towards performance venues that are warm and welcoming to the unique crowd that supports the genre.

I’ve been real lucky to live in places where patron-friendly barrooms operated by the likes of Richard King (Columbia, Mo), Bruce Finkelman and Sue Miller (Chicago) and Todd Patrick (here in New York) could be counted on for their trick-free door policy. The aforementioned show organizers and/or bar owners all cultivated vibrant scenes in their towns in part because of fairness applied to entry requirements at their establishments. For music fans who circle dates on their calendars to see a favored performer, the most crucial planning component before hitting the rock and roll show is determining how they’ll get in the door.

You either get a ticket or you don’t. It’s made clear in advance of some shows that you won’t need one.

I bring this up because my favorite band The Babies headlined a clusterfuck of a show Wednesday night at Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. It was a rare booking misstep by a band that has played dozens of local gigs at joints unencumbered by corporate involvement and even the slightest whiff of bullshit.

Billed as a celebration of area “bicycle builders,” I got word of the performance (sponsored by the whiskey-maker Jack Daniels) via the band’s Twitter page on 2-27-13. Fans interested in attending the free show were pointed to the web site “My Social List” to “RSVP.” A few days after expressing my firm intention to attend, I received an e-mail confirmation from L Magazine asking me to “join” them for the show.

Not having seen the band since their record release party and tour opener last November, I was excited as the night approached. I jumped on the train a little after 7 PM Wednesday and arrived in Williamsburg a few minutes before 8 PM. Still a full two hours before The Babies were scheduled to take the stage, a large crowd outside the Knit was lined up as I reached the venue so I had a quick cold one at the bar across the street with the idea it would thin out after the doors opened.

With the sidewalk still full in front of the venue about 8:15 PM, I dashed over to Trash for their special shot/beer combo and returned to the Knit. Signs taped to the door proclaimed the event “sold out” so I went to the box office only to be told the number of accepted RSVP’s had vastly outnumbered capacity. Entry to the show was denied. A genial bouncer forced into the role of diplomat told me overflow attendees could watch the performance from behind a near-soundproof glass partition in the outer bar. The opener Nude Beach was playing at this point. I tried for a few minutes to get in a frame of mind that would accept the limitation of watching a rock show this way but it didn’t work. I thought of good friends adept at the art of the persuasive schmooze and considered going that route but observed others trying that strategy without success.

To be fair, a second e-mail invitation delivered by L Magazine on the day of the gig included the disclaimer that “entry is not guaranteed.”

Also in fairness, Babies publicist Force Field made no advance mention of the gig. The band probably got paid a good guaranteed number and for that I’m happy. But part of what makes The Babies so lovable is the choices they’ve made along their creative expedition and the good will they build with their most loyal followers. Some of those folks were standing on the sidewalk Wednesday night looking in on a crowd lured by free whiskey and a deceptive invitation based on the possibility more people would show up than space would allow.

After stewing outside the Knit for a few minutes with a few dozen others, I gave up in a huff and walked down Metropolitan back to the G. I got home in time to see Carcillo score the game-winner for the Blackhawks.