Wow, it's been a while. I'm sure it's been a long winter for the two of you who actually read this. If my phone and/or phoneblog hadn't been acting up, there would have been pictures from the 35-hour cross-country journey a week ago, but no such luck. Audioblog updates, too, but that wasn't working either. So what you get is me, now, home in Georgia for the holidays, for the next few days at least. I always seem to revert to 10th-Grade Gardner when I'm at home (a little surlier, given to both locking myself in my room and driving around town aimlessly), and this year that regression has been even more pronounced thanks to 99x's recent format change. For those of you who didn't grow up in Georgia, 99x is Atlanta's "New Rock" radio station (WNNX, 99.7 FM)--or at least it has been since 1992 or '93, when it changed over from "Power 99" as grunge and alt-rock was sending Posion, Motley Crue et al packing. The birth of 99x coincided neatly with my early teenage years and fueled my musical education. They played Pearl Jam, Nirvana and R.E.M. incessantly, as well as their many shorter-lived imitators. I remember hearing Violent Femmes' "Add It Up" late one night on 99x and wondering just what the hell kind of strange world I had entered into (yes, I was a bit sheltered). It's no exaggeration to say 99x was the soundtrack of my youth. And though it was never the greatest radio station in the world (though thankfully not a ClearChannel station, it's still pretty corporate), it's miles better than KROQ out in Los Angeles (the worst radio station that I will actually listen to).
So now I'm driving around town in my parents' car listening to "New Rock--99x" in December 2003, only it's no longer "New Rock--99x." It's "99x--New Rock and Nineties Alternative." They've always continued to play Pearl Jam, Nirvana, R.E.M. and other circa-1994 favorites incessantly, but now they play even more of it. And it's mandated from on high. And they have really annoying ads in which the program director plays voicemail messages from irate listeners who want to hear more of the 90s hits they love. (These voicemail messages are all from redneck grunge fans--just imagine a guy with a camouflage cap and a chaw of Skoal saying "Why don't you play some goddamn Alice in Chains, motherfuckers?") So, according to Program Director, that's what they're gonna do. My favorite of these ads is the one where an obviously drunk caller asks for them to play some Pearl Jam stuff that's not "Jeremy;" not three hours later, the first Pearl Jam song I hear on the radio is "Jeremy."
What's interesting about this for me is not the (mild) format change--that happens all the time--but what it means. While 99x still plays what passes for "alt-rock" in 2003 (who or what the hell are Chevelle and Three Days Grace?), this shift in programming philosophy seems to be a clear indication that whatever alt-rock is or was is nearly dead. 99x's core listeners were, like me, teenagers when they started, and now they're in their mid-twenties. They don't want to hear Evanescence; they want to hear "Jeremy," and maybe, if you're feeling adventuous, "Yellow Ledbetter." The nineties are only four years gone, and 99x has already taken the first giant step toward becoming a nineties nostalgia station. Though it's not entirely unexpected; a few years ago, their mid-day "House of Retro Pleasure" 80s show became the "Retroplex," playing songs of the eighties and "early nineties." How soon is it gonna be before there's a "Hits of the early 2000's" show? Next year? A better question is: when will 99x realize that any fifteen-year-old who wants to listen to Chevelle probably also wants to listen to 50 Cent? Probably prefers to listen to 50 Cent? As much as I like to drive around my hometown listening to the same songs I listened to when I drove around my hometown eight years ago, I still find it kind of sad that "New Rock" has turned into oldies in so short a time. But as long as they're gonna party like it's 1994, would it kill them to play Morrisey's "The More You Ignore Me?" There's a prime early-90s moping-around-the-house song if there ever was one.
posted by Gardner at 9:29 PM
The RIAA, fighting the good fightAmong the RIAA's recent targets is retiree Ernest Brenot, 79, of Ridgefield, Washington, who wrote in a handwritten note to a federal judge that he does not own a computer nor can he operate one.
Brenot was accused of illegally offering for download 774 songs by artists including Vanilla Ice, U2, Creed, Linkin Park and Guns N' Roses.
Brenot's wife, Dorothy, said she and her husband were stunned by the claims,
offended at the suggestion they listened to such music.
posted by Gardner at 10:36 AM 
