Yesterday while Emm and I were on our way to St. Helena and stuck in heavy traffic, most of it going to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom up in Vallejo, we found ourselves listening to a good number of radio stations. We usually listen to
Live 105, which is our alternative rock station (for those of you in the Boston area, think WFNX), which is currently having a retro 90s show going this weekend, fittingly titled "Smells Like the 90s". ;) However, they have a penchant for playing the same Smashing Pumpkins and Rage Against the Machine songs--"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" and "Renegades of Funk", respectively--and with disturbing frequency. So off to the different stations we went!
We're finding our other favorite station is
Alice 97.3. It's an Adult Alternative station, but they play some pretty damn cool music when need be...and their Sunday morning ambient techno show is quite teh awesome. :)
And when those stations failed, I remembered--
finally--that our local NPR station
KQED has the two shows I used to love listening to on Saturday mornings back east--
Car Talk and
Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. So finally yesterday we listened to the last half of
Wait Wait while literally waiting in traffic. It was fun (Emm was answering most of the questions as they were being asked!) and I really think we should listen to those shows more often!
-----------
For quite awhile on Saturdays I would jump in the car and drive either up to Keene or up to Winchester NH and then down to Shop 'n Save for stuff, all while listening to these two shows. And then in the evenings, if I was heading back from a B&N trip to Leominster, I'd be listening to
Prairie Home Companion. I miss listening to weekend radio, but we hardly have time to enjoy it, since we're either going on road trips, going shopping, or watching stuff on TV. If I can squeeze it back into my schedule again, though, I should. I've already checked to see when those three shows are on KQED, I just have to find the time to listen!
-----------
Another thing I miss is listening to college radio on weekends. When I was a senior in high school, it was part of my weekend routine--listening to WAMH while doing homework or waiting for the school week to start. Once I moved to Boston and went to college, ironically enough the college station I listened to
wasn't Emerson's, but Boston College's,
WZBC. And after moving back home, it was back to WAMH again. It wasn't the same as the old days (college stations nowadays seem to go for as many different genre shows as possible, which is a bit irritating, but what can you do?), but I made do. Either way, however, one of the weird side effects of listening to college radio on the weekends was that I found an unexpected appreciation for college sports, specifically basketball and
especially football. I keep telling myself I should go to some college football games (UC Berkley and Stanford are both within driving distance, I see no reason why I shouldn't go), and eventually I'll make good on that plan. But until then, I should find when the games are on the station and give them a listen!
Now that we're in SF, I haven't gotten around to finding a good college station here, although I hear that UC Berkeley's station
KALX and University of San Francisco's
KUSF are quite the subversive station catering to my tastes. Perhaps this coming season/semester I'll do some research to see which stations are where, what they're playing, and go from there. I think Emm and I have both been watching TV too much (and I've been goofing on the internet too much), and both of us feel we should be listening to more radio. Especially when we're whining that nothing's on! :p
More on this later...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
