Thread: KEXP is keeping me from going postal

Benny... I actually do give the KEXP DJs the benefit of the doubt and believe they are at KEXP because they want to be. I think KEXP is successful because the people there really love what they're doing, and I am enough of an idealist to think that most of their big talent would hang around as long as they were making a reasonably liveable wage. Don't get me wrong, I like KEXP, and I am not calling for it's downfall or trying to expose it as a fraud. I just think $120k is too much, and I choose not to contribute to that.

Tipp... The terrible state of radio aside and in particular reference to KEXP, just this morning I listened to both the morning and afternoon host talking about how they personally select stacks of CD's before each show and rarely get the time to get through them all. (Another reason why KEXP is indeed special.) Of course those are chosen within guidelines, but that comes with the liability of being publicly broadcasted.

Nice to know there are still some stations out there that allow that. Too many are now all hard drive driven preselected BS where nothing is spontaneous except the occasional request line tunes, and even those get vetted by the music director.

When I was a jock in Vail, KSKE, back in the early 90's we had one format - "The Classics and Today's Best Rock" - which left a whole lot of room for interpretation. Even so we still had certain song/style groupings we had to play at specific times in the hour (like a "new" song, a Power Hit, a Deep Track, etc.) that we had to pick from a stack, notating when they were played so we wouldn't repeat them too often/play them at all, so that a somewhat marketable uniformity was at least hinted at. Naturally my friend, who had the 8-12 shift, and I (Overnights, then Afternoon Drive time) totally blew that off to play the new Nirvana, Smiths, Sonic Youth, Dave Matthews, Phish, whatever we wanted as well as the old stuff WE liked, not the Fleetwood Mac lovin' Music Director.

I quit radio when they told me my job was to introduce the next canned song that I had no control over, or to merely read the news/produce the next cheesy commercial.

So, KEXP fans, do you listen to any other comparable streaming radio stations?

I lived in Seatown for 7 years and have listened to at least a dozen other public stations with the same format. KEXP blows them all away. That station is beautiful. I heard so many bands for the first time on KEXP that I otherwise probably wouldn't have heard about for another couple years, if ever...and John Richards rules...he has my tastes in music and always plays great shit.