About five years ago, I wrote a long history of our little mutant radio show. The specifics are ours, but the sentiment is shared by so many radio shows, blogs, podcasts, fanzines, and other efforts to raise the flag on behalf of music, on behalf of the love of music. Enthusiasm is its own reward, and it is worth the effort to make it happen.
This is our last regular show of 2024, as special programming will take us through the calendar's final crumpled page. As we get set to start crumpling, I look back at a few things I wrote in that history of TIRnRR:
Music has power. It doesn't have unlimited power; it can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, and it can't heal the sick or balance your checkbook. It can't mend broken bones or broken hearts, and it can't persuade a soon-to-be-former soulmate to please, please give us one more chance. It can't buy us love. It can't even buy us lunch.
But music does have power. It can offer comfort, validation, inspiration. Catharsis. Companionship of a sort. Maybe it can't dry our tears, but it can grant us the freedom to weep without shame, to dance away the heartache, to twist and shout, to do the freakin' Freddie when only the Freddie will do. Music is there for us when we need it. I can't imagine a time when we don't need it.
The need to play music--to share music--lives and breathes at the core of any pop (or soul, or rock, or country, or jazz, or classical) radio show programmed by any music fan. This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio is but one of thousands of shows that have embraced that ideal. We are legion, even if each of us feels like a lone voice wailing Turn it UP! The power of music connects us. The beat goes on.
Is that the power of music? Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's also the power of friendship, the power of belief, the power of radio. The joy of radio.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Music can be absolute, but its power doesn't corrupt; it redeems. It can be a shared experience, a solitary experience, something as unique or as universal as our needs dictate. The power is sublime. The power is ours.
And Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, we get to call on that power, and make it shine. Sight gags on the radio. The Greatest Record Ever Made. The American Beatles, Her Majesty's Ramones, our designated House Band the Kinks, and some unfamiliar but irresistible reminder that radio's job is to sell records. All of it, and more.
Feel the power; it belongs to you, too.
This is our story. Maybe it's your story, too. This is what rock 'n' roll radio sounded like on another Sunday night in Syracuse this week.
NEXT WEEK: The 26th Annual THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO Christmas Show. And IN TWO WEEKS: THE COUNTDOWN!!
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream, and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio
You can read all about this show's long and weird history here: Boppin' The Whole Friggin' Planet (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO).
TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS are always welcome.
Carl's new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get Carl's previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.
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