Radio Days
Sonido 89 was a popular radio station in Mexico City, back in the 1980s. They played hits in both English and Spanish, with artists such as Soda Stereo, U2, Genesis and Mecano. They also had a great question-and-answer show, aptly called Questions In The Air, in which the DJ would ask a question and listeners would call in the answer. This was before the Internet, of course, and if someone didn’t know something, they either had to look it up in whatever print resource they had, or have an encyclopedic knowledge. I got through the busy phone lines a few times. I remember that the question was, “Why are flea markets called flea markets?” Lo, I knew the answer to that one. The host, Jorge Zambrano, answered the phone himself, “Sonido 89, good afternoon.” “I know the answer,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“It’s called a flea market because of the French Marché aux Puces.”
I don’t remember what Zambrano said after that, or what I won by answering. I do remember that talking to him felt like talking to an old friend. He sounded youthful and sharp over the phone. In a way he was my everyday buddy, even though he was just a voice on the radio. Tuning in, listening, discovering new music and interacting with the radio personalities was magical. Radio was a part of your life, a good friend that accompanied you through the day.
If you were a kid growing up in the 80s your musical options were limited. Every so often a new song would come out, and if you liked it you had three choices: wait hours for the song to play again, buy the album, or call the radio station and request that it be played. That’s the way that songs emerged and rose in the pop charts. I’d call the station every so often and say something like, “Can you play Misfit by Curiosity Killed The Cat?” The station wouldn’t play the song just because you called; they had to get a number of request for a specific song and only then please the listeners. Misfit never quite went mainstream; it took me decades to find it again. Other songs, especially those used in movie soundtracks usually shot straight to the top.
But radio had its limitations. No matter how big the variety of songs at any particular station was, they always gravitated to the same 20 or 25 songs during peak hours. While Sonido 89 had a great selection, it behaved like a Top 40 station most of the time. Songs like U2’s With or Without You arrived to stay, and would get played 2 or 3 times per hour, until you were sick of them. After hearing With or Without You for the 10th time in a day, Bono’s angst didn’t sound like angst anymore, but like an annoying wail. It was time then to switch stations. That’s how I usually ended up on the oldies channels, discovering fantastic music from the likes of The Doors and CCR.
At the turn of the century I found myself a college senior with a spanking new Ford Escort. The car’s best feature was that it had a great sound system with a 6-CD changer in the trunk. I felt like my listening options had greatly expanded. I was no longer limited to whatever played on radio; I could load my CDs in the trunk’s magazine and comfortably shuffle them from the car’s dashboard. Progress! Problem was, 6 CDs only held some 72 songs. If you found yourself on a long trip, you’d be stuck with the same six CDs unless you stopped the car, got out, opened the trunk and reloaded the magazine with fresh CDs. More often though, I’d be too lazy to swap the selection, and I’d be stuck with the same songs playing over and over again. It was time to turn on the radio again, and try to find some good music buried somewhere in the cacophony of commercials.
Great promise came with the advent of the iPod. I had the U2 version, a black and red device with the capacity to hold 5,000 songs. I was never able to load that many. It took a while to rip a CD and transfer it to the iPod. Besides, my collection only amounted to hundreds of CDs, never over a thousand. Other options were to buy the mp3s (or to get pirated copies). I asked some friends to make me a CD with their catalogues, and a couple of them did. Even then, the most music my iPod ever held was about 2,600 songs. I thought that I’d greatly expand my music horizons then, but I only picked up a couple of new favorites from my friends’ collections, which contained obscure genres and artist that few people knew or cared about (The Woodentops, anyone?). Whilst listening to my iPod, I’d often find myself scrolling to the same known, comfortable tunes. Even though it was decent-sized music selection, it got old, too. It was time to listen to the radio again, and fish for some new music. That’s when I discovered classical music through university radio stations.
In the past few years I found myself adopting Spotify. It’s astonishing that you can listen to millions of songs from any decade and from all over the world. With Spotify I was really able expand my musical horizons. I got into music from the 1920s. I fell in love with Al Bowlly. I became big a fan Megan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa. And I also rediscovered and indulged in my New Wave roots (including Misfit). The problem with Spotify, though, is the algorithm. As soon as Spotify gets a whiff that you like something, it wants to play it to you over and over again. I Like the Beatles, and perhaps that’s why Spotify thinks that I’m into George Harrison. I enjoyed his music until the algorithm started playing me George Harrison every third song. It didn’t matter whether I was listening to Pachelbel or Joan Manuel Serrat; the third song would always be My sweet Lord by George Harrison. After a while his sweet riffs didn’t sound so sweet anymore; they started sounding like cats meowing. I had to block him from getting played again. The same happened with Al Bowlly. After listening to the lovely Midnight, The Stars and You for the 50th time, the song stopped sounding like dreamy nostalgia from a bygone era, and instead felt like I was stuck in a scene from The Shining. It was time to turn off Spotify for a while, tune in to the radio, and try to recapture the magic of my teenage radio days.
Radio, someone still loves you
