When Hot 98 Went Cold

Here on Saipan, we’re used to spontaneous interruptions of electrical service. Ditto for water, which isn’t drinkable anyway, so why worry?

What unhinged me, though, was the recent shortage of: music.

Rock-n-roll station “Hot 98” went dead after lightening zapped it and fried some kind of critical component. The necessary replacement part took the slow boat from the states to get here. I’m happy to report that things are evidently up and running, and I merrily typed the last sentence while Hendrix blared from the radio.

But the silence over the past couple of weeks was deafening. It’s one of those “you don’t know what you’re got til it’s gone” deals. If I wanted tunage with my morning coffee, I was stuck with either the Sniveling British Twit of the Hour show on public radio, or commercial stations that just don’t happen to mesh with my particular eardrums.

The Internet helped remedy the classic rock shortage. KLOS, a Los Angeles station, is available over the Internet. It filled the gap sometimes, when I was in my office, but in the car or bouncing around the homestead, I was still grappling with the sounds of silence.

I’ve always been a radio buff. I like the sound of familiar voices when I’m lonely. I was once stationed in rural Florida where the only humanity available was toothless, inbred trailer trash. On Saturdays–seeking deliverance from Deliverance, as it were,– I’d drive to the Popeye’s fried chicken place, which took about an hour to reach, and I’d scarf my drumsticks in the car while listening to the Prairie Home Companion radio show.

That television surpassed radio as the mass medium of choice shows that the vulgarians determine the markets. But radio ain’t dead yet, though a semi-ironic twist is that the vulgar rhythms of “urban music” have helped keep it afloat. Whoda’ thunk that commercial crudeness could be a lucrative industry? Did any economists predict that as an upshot of the Great Society? How many radios can a welfare check buy? Was Sony a contributor to Lyndon Johnson’s campaign fund?

The proles aren’t solely to blame for the ills of the radio industry, though. About a decade ago the yuppies in California discovered a particularly vapid type of pseuo-jazz, a mutant strain of electronically synthesized Muzak. It was called “new age” music, the aural equivalent of Wonder Bread, produced for the human equivalent of Wonder Bread. New-age schlock is mercifully absent from the scene in here in Saipan. Heck, I’ll take rap music over new age music if I was forced into a choice. Even rap has some creativity to it.

But I’m not forced to make a choice. The classic rock stations have dialed in my demographic– which is scientifically described as “middle aged guys who enjoy listening to the songs they used to vomit to at drunken frat parties.” Ah, memories. Ah, music. Ah, welcome back, Hot 98. Rock on.