Music Matters – Really!

Fleetwood Mac’s multi-million selling 1977 album Rumours is excellent, but I am sick to death of it. Sick, sick, sick!  Tracks from the album can now be played on every radio format from oldies to classic rock and as a result, the songs are overplayed.  

But despite being of the same general era, a band like Led Zeppelin hasn’t lost its lustre and it’s a mainstay on my station, 98.1 Free-FM.   Now classified as “hard rock” there aren’t as many places where you can hear Jimmy Page wail on the guitar so the songs don’t have the same burnout factor.

Those of us who grew up listening to 1970’s radio remember when Kenny Rogers was played back-to-back with Aerosmith with a little Terry Jacks schmaltz thrown in for Canadian content.  It wasn’t unusual to hear Paul Anka ‘s 1974 hit (You’re) Having My Baby back to back with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama.  These days, a segue such as that would be called a “train wreck” and music isn’t appreciated for its own sake. At least not in most radio circles.

But something else Free-FM does that no one else is doing is break emerging, local artists.  We have a contest called Under the Covers.  Singers and bands submit a video – quality and production values don’t matter- of themselves performing a song by the artist of the month.  A committee chooses a winner who gets $4000 in professional studio time.  And then – this is the special part – we PLAY those songs!  It’s a to-the-core commitment to local talent that few commercial radio stations match.   Here’s a song by one of our recent winners that’s getting a lot of notice.  Black Pen by Jason Williams.  It’s a tribute to his Dad, who suffered from dementia.  I can’t stay dry-eyed when I hear it or watch the video.