shoegaze

TMD is nothing but a 'car' station for me. In other words, I only bother with them when I'm in my car and don't feel like fiddling with my CDs or tapes. Local travel. Even then, as much as I hate channel switching, I'm constantly switching between WTMD and WRNR, both of which drive me crazy with their utter blandness and extreme center of the faux hipster mainstream offerings. Both play way too much Yacht Rock, Jam bands, safe Folk (ie: James Taylor and the like for the doctors who send in pledges), and the most mainstream of the mainstream faux Indies. Not even fair to call it Indie anymore! If we are very, very lucky, we 'might' get an old Catherine Wheel song but, other than that, you'll never, ever hear any Shoegaze at all. No real Psychedelic either. Both are too 'daring' for their boringness. The wildest they get is The White Stripes which they still play too much of. Jack White (whose ass they both kiss and I'm so sick to death of!) is the new Eddie Veder (another one I could never stand) from the old WHFS days. Another station I never really liked all that much.

One caveat is that TMD will often win out on Fridays. Don't know exactly why but they tend to play their better music on Fridays, especially in the late afternoons. I'll also give them credit for playing more local music lately. It's just that they tend to too often ignore the really good stuff in favor of the most boring middle C sounding crap around. (Seriously, most of the locals they select all sound alike!) Of course, Thrushes don't fit that description other than being local.

I really, really miss real college radio like the old WGTB (which was the very best!), WJHU, WAMU and WCVT (pre-WTMD before selling out to NPR). Now that was good radio! My mentors. WGTB, especially when they blew every other station on the planet away. Now they are so bad that you can't even call them a cheap imitation of what was.

I definitely agree with everything you said Jag. Especially the bit about the "indie rock". Major label backing and mainstream radio play does not make a band an indie band.

You guys listen to the (FM/AM) radio around here for even a minute? I cant stand radio. If i want music in my car, its going to be my ipod, or XM. At least their crappy music channels arent filled with commercials and they have some decent talk stuff to listen to. I mainly rock my ipod though. No radio stations play anything even close to what i would want to hear. The only local radio stations i ever listened to were the ones that played Howard Stern before he switched over, and then i would constantly have to switch to my ipod when a commericla came on, ever couple of minutes.

Also, anybody know how to get these live Thrushes tracks?