Radioreview
Can you imagine life without internet streaming? Can you remember the days before you watched videos and listened to radio on your computer? That was like, what, last year? The internet is rapidly changing the way we live. More importantly, for a middle-aged fart like me, the internet is starting to peel away the world that I have constructed over time, a world based on place. Place matters very little on the world wide web. The web is the #1 tool for the globalization movement. It doesn’t matter where you are physically any longer. You can get what you want, when you want it from the internet. Want to eat some Louisiana crawfish? You used to have to be there to do that. Now you can order boiled crawfish on the internet and have them shipped directly to your house thousands of miles away. I know, it’s kind of cool that this is even possible (and convenient) but I feel a little bit cheated by the process. What about the experience of being there? The memories? Where are the memories of a meal born on the internet? I damn sure remember eating some fabulous meals in the bayous of Louisiana: long lines of wooden tables covered in newspaper, surly waitresses carrying ice buckets of Abita Springs beer in sweaty bottles, a live band blaring Cajun music. Somehow a box of seafood delivered by FedEx straight to the kitchen table doesn’t quite measure up.
The same is true for me of internet radio. I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, just out of reach of the fabled radio stations of Philadelphia. Philly has always been a rockin’ radio town. But all I ever heard from my home town was the screechy static of the FM waves that wheezed their way up the mountain to my car radio. I could hear just enough to know what I was missing. Oh, man, how I used to look forward to trips to Philadelphia just so that I could get an extended dose of some really great radio.
Lately, I have been streaming radio from a site called Radioreview. The website is run by David Plumer who is a reader of this blog. Of all the stations he has links to, I especially enjoy WXPN, an eclectic and extraordinarily likeable station from, you guessed it, Philadelphia. Despite having listened to WXPN hundreds of times on my computer, I just can’t shake the fact that I am in Virginia and the signal is coming from Pennsylvania, 150 miles away. Shortwave radio has, of course, been around for a long time. So, real radio buffs will argue that there’s nothing new about listening to broadcasts from anywhere on the planet. But it’s different with FM. The wavelengths just don’t travel that far. So to be listening to an FM radio station on my computer from a city hundreds of miles away and hearing the traffic (Schuylkill Expressway jammed again) and weather (crappy), well, it just feels weird. Then there’s the loss of that special feeling I used to get driving to Philadelphia on Route 95 and coming into car radio range of WXPN. It’s just not a big deal any more. I can listen on the computer any old time.
The bottom line is it’s still enjoyable to listen to good radio no matter how you get to it. So, drop by Radioreview and check out the many interesting stations that you can stream from there. Write a review of your favorite station. David will be pleased. Radio streaming: It’s almost like being there. Sort of.
6:01:27 PM  Stories
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