On the Radio

Channel surfing for an identity

Published in

From the Diaries of John Henry

11 min readAug 27, 2021

Something that has become the new normal for me in these working from home pandemic times is that my rush hour commutes are blessedly no more. One of the few consolations for those long wasted hours accumulating to days and weeks with hands at ten and two were the distraction free half hour blocks for podcasts and CD’s (yes I still drive a car with a CD player, not sure what that says about me :). In the new normal, most of my driving is for running errands, picking up takeout, and weekends with the family crew — so basically am very rarely behind the wheel for more than 5–10 minutes at a time. (Jealous?)

This leaves me with something of a predicament. 5–10 minutes is way too short to devote to a podcast — by the time you get caught up with the conversation is time to hit pause again. I could turn to the trusty CD player, but having played and replayed all of my albums so many times practically know them by heart — not to mention the wear and tear to a CD collection from being exposed to dramatic temperature swings from alternating between air conditioned drives and baking in the hot Florida sun. So am left with two options: I could go digital, or rough it in the wasteland of broadcast radio.

I really wish I could just go digital and be done with radio altogether. That would be the perfect world. But my experience with streaming platform recommendation algorithms has been somewhat unfulfilling to say the least. I think part of it is overfit, it’s just the same songs from the same artists played over and over. One contributor might be that I stream the same album every night as drift to sleep, and so perhaps the recommendations are operating on the premise that I dislike new music. Nothing could be further form the truth. I literally consume up to an hour of new music every day, mostly by working my way sight reading through books of piano sheet music. So have grown this appetite for new music and novelty, which I only try to turn off when relying on the background music to sleep, which helps with insomnia.

(Oh and as an aside, if you’re a smartphone manufacturer reading this, these devices could really benefit by some increased granularity at the lowest end of the volume spectrum for this use case, would be a really simple software fix I expect. The difference between volume 0 and 1 is too large. Some streaming apps don’t include a volume adjust in their phone interface.)

These playlists that the streaming platform has been feeding I think are a better measuring stick of how poorly the algorithms are interpreting my tastes than any actual reflection of my interests. I wish there was a mute button for particular songs. At times it feels like the recommendations are meant for someone else. But the worst part is there are practically no new artist suggestions. What’s the point of having a catalog of most songs published if you only serve the same dozen artists on loop?

And thus it was that I held my nose and began populating these short drives with snippets of broadcast radio shuffled between six station presets. My options were selected for diversity, as was trying to hone in on which channel might be more suitable as a default, so ended up with stations broadly specializing in country, news radio, classic rock, alternative rock, club music, and top 40.

I really wanted to prefer the country music. The song writers seem like really nice people. Down home, salt of the earth kind of folk. I didn’t mind that half of the songs were about getting drunk, it’s part of their culture, but wasn’t exactly a selling point. I think what really kept me from settling on this station was so little musical novelty. Almost every band plays the same instruments, the songs structured the same, with lyrics forcing you into a single interpretation, and every chorus a redundant restatement of the tag line for the tune drilling into your subconscious. It’s like reading a book of poetry where every chapter presents ten copies of a haiku printed in the same font with a few lines of story scattered in between. I think that’s what I love about the Grateful Dead, every performance they’ve ever recorded has had some distinct flavor, every guitar solo some new improvisation. Sure for each decade they played many of the same songs at each concert, but they always sounded new.

The news station I considered was the public radio option, not like AM talk radio or anything. And had hoped this could be the mature solution. Keeping up with current events, following politics, that sort of thing. What really turned me off was just how much was presented with an editorial lens. The propagandistic elements were certainly more subtle than what have seen in right wing media, but they were still there in a different form. From story selections to painting so many circumstances as a matter of racial or gender bias or some such. I don’t think these issues should be ignored, but building a whole political platform around them might be taking a little too far. It’s certainly clear that public radio has tended to follow the lead of left wing politicians, perhaps this is a symptom of leaders setting agendas based on polling.

Classic rock is a dependable genre. The electric guitar is an amazing instrument, so much diversity in sound is possible. I mean there are a few songs where would literally mute the singing and ramp up for the solos, but you know that’s what sells records so there’s no getting around. I think the reason I couldn’t settle on this option is because have been listening to classic rock on and off for so long, it has become too predictable. There are still some anthems that raise goose bumps, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that there’ll never be another Beatles song, there’ll never be another Led Zeppelin song. They’re all already written, already sung. It’s a book that have read and reread and the pages are starting to brown a little, the spine starting to get a few cracks.

Alternative rock is past its peak, not really much interesting going on in this arena in last decade, so the playlists also have kind of coalesced to a certain limited range of standards. I enjoy how modern rock has really extended the guitars into wall of sound territory. It’s like every wavelength frequency is accounted for. Granted in many cases this is realized from players alternating through strumming three chords, but you know still sounds cool. One thing I dislike is when people say heavy metal is just like Beethoven music since they use the same major chord structures. I think a more appropriate description would be that a heavy metal song is just like one measure composed by Beethoven stretched out through repetition over three and a half minutes while holding the right foot pedal down the whole way making all the notes bleed into each other. I think what keeps me from over listening to alternative rock is just how much of the material celebrates self destruction. I get it, it’s music for male teenagers, teenagers have angst, teenagers are drawn to whatever their parents forbid, etc. I think in many cases classic rock artists were able to transcend recording songs for young people to making timeless music, the compositions were more sophisticated, the melodies more distinct. A lot of modern rock just kind of layers shout singing onto whatever is that track’s guitar gimmick, or in the language of the artists, the hook.

I tried a station that specializes in what I’ll refer to as club music. You know dance tracks, party anthems, things like that. Having spent several years in my twenties spinning vinyl, I’d grown a real soft spot for deep bass and elaborate rhythms. There’s something really hypnotic about a well engineered drum loop that you just don’t get in blues rock. It’s like notes on a different scale. Granted those aspects are pretty much the limit to song complexity, but the simplicity of dance music really helped me to better intuit song structure and compositions when was younger. When you start playing piano everyone learns Heart and Soul. It’s a very simple song, and a very simple melody, but the simplicity makes duets possible even for beginners. That’s what club music is for, it’s enables dancing between partners possible even when you only get out on the floor every few months. The rhythm is unmistakable, at the forefront. The tradeoff is that in other contexts (such as when you’re driving your car), the music can be, hope I don’t offend anyone here, well kind of boring. When the composer Philip Glass crafts his songs of repetition, every phrase, every eight bars, has some new variation, new twist, a tweak on the melody or the rhythm, some subtle and some much more elaborate. The progression follows an arc. I think this is what is missing for most dance music that would help it transcend the club genre.

Looking back on these months of channel surfing, the station I spent the most time with was probably pop, aka “Top 40”. This station had tradeoffs just like the others. There was a lot of what I would refer to as bubble gum pop, you know you take a few bites and get a quick rush of sugar, then chew for a little while until the taste gets stale. A steady diet of sugar is not exactly what most doctors would recommend, but these are short drives so kind of just went with it, after all in some cases the songs had great production value, with interesting beats and arrangements. I like a good bass line and I like how pop musicians often engineer new sounds and forms of instrumentation. Paul McCartney ruined a generation of musicians by giving them the impression that a bass guitar was sufficient for the lower clef. He eventually absolved himself when finding way into the studio, it took another twenty years for the rest of the industry to catch up. People who are young or foolish often write poetry about being young or foolish. I usually don’t hold that against them if they have something interesting to say musically. Singing is as much about how you are saying something as it is about what you are saying.

My life is missing a resource for discovering new music. I used to follow a few music blogs back when blogging was a thing and haven’t found anything of the like since. Generally have more luck with sheet music. This might be God telling me to try composing something myself :). Part of issue is probably that I avoid over listening to recorded classical and jazz since detracts from the fun of playing them myself, and so have eliminated whole genres that otherwise would serve as good background music. Streaming algorithms don’t see this side of my tastes.

I sometimes catch myself being a little too, not sure if this is right word, snobbish in how I talk about some music genres. I think there’s a place for all from bubble gum to metal. For some people it’s just different kinds that speak to them or they can relate to. Every song has something unique to say about the human condition. In some cases it may be ugly, childish, or even obscene. But that doesn’t detract from the reflection of the composer in revealing their truth. There are some cities I wouldn’t want to live in, but still may visit.

I’m not sure if music recommendation engines are yet sophisticated enough to distinguish between literal interpretations and metaphors found in lyrics. Like if am reading a Ben Horowitz blog post that includes gangster rap lyrics, can the language model recognize that these are to be interpreted as an adjacent concept written in a different language and from a different reality of “street talk”? In some ways like the board room. Just because an artist has a different moral code and vocabulary does not mean that it’s not possible to learn something from them. In some cases that lesson might even be “do the exact opposite”. By shutting out different voices and different perspectives you risk tunnel vision.

The real risk to be cognitive of is that there are subconscious factors at play. If you mostly surround yourself with broadcasts celebrating moral failings, anger, or etc, you risk internalizing those values, normalizing them. Repetition can be a suggestive influence. When you pick out a new book, you are inviting the author to share a little space in your mind. They now have a presence in your thoughts. Who would you rather have as a house guest, Kurt Cobain or Darius Rucker?

One thing that made Ray Charles great was his willingness to separate the musical style from the lyrical conventions of the genre. He took gospel music and turned into love songs and party anthems. I don’t see why the same principle couldn’t work in both directions. Don’t judge people on what books they read, judge them on what books they wrote.

My musical preferences are albums over songs, novelty over formulaic, and when possible, timeless.

A Pirate Looks at Forty — Nicholas Teague

I’m writing this in the context of the recent departure of a close family member, my uncle Tim who succumbed eight years into an ALS diagnosis having reached a state of difficulty communicating and eventually breathing. I owe a lot to Tim for his influences to my musical tastes, from the Eagles, Little Feat, and more.

If you knew Tim you knew that behind his first religion of Christianity, he was also a devout Parrothead, what us Jimmy Buffett fans affectionately call each other. I think it was because Buffett romanticized the idea that life can be a never ending vacation. That we all are young at heart and could hear the calling of a Keys state of mind, where your clock is set by high and low tides, where your dinner is waiting for you in the water, and where you may find at the next bar stool the bartender / mayor of town or the love of your life waiting for you to take her on the dance floor.

The Buffett concerts were a constant for Tim and Carla through their entire marriage, and he lent that tradition to our family as well. I’ll never forget the beach balls, the congo lines, arms on each other’s shoulder as we sang about the coming Monday, mingling with other fans during parking lot festivities, and the final encore’s applause.

This was the energy that Tim brought to our family. He was dependable and helpful and could fix anything, and never failed to ensure that everyone surrounding him was having a good time. That’s how I’ll remember Tim, and I think that is how he would want to be remembered.