Music: January 2009 Archives

I don't often scan the FM dial, but I was in the car last night, and the two talk stations were in the middle of basketball games, and I wasn't in the mood to hear 10 minutes of the middle of a ball game.

There's a new station -- new to me anyway -- called Chrome 93.5, and it plays music from the '50s and '60s. When oldies radio started it was '50s and '60s, but somewhere along the way oldies crept up to the '70s and '80s, when I was in high school and college, and that is just wrong.

The station doesn't seem to have a web presence. It shows up on the FCC database as K228BR, a translator, broadcasting with a whole 250 watts of power from a 58m tower at the Clear Channel megaplex (formerly Oertle's) at 26th and Memorial. The service area has a radius of about five miles.

I'm happy to hear real oldies -- doowop, rockabilly, Motown, British Invasion -- on the radio again. Driving around town this evening we heard "Stop in the Name of Love" (Supremes, 1965), "Look through Any Window" (Hollies, 1965), "Teen Angel" (Mark Dinning, 1959), "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" (Stevie Wonder, 1965), "One Fine Day" (Chiffons, 1963), "Since I Don't Have You" (Skyliners, 1958).

Because I was singing along to some of the music, my 12-year-old said, "So... this is the music you listened to when you were in high school and college?" No, son, this is music your grandparents would have listened to in high school, college, and young adulthood. But it's better than the stuff we had 20 years later.