Straight Outta Frogtown

Becky Lourey for Governor of Minnesota

Becky Lourey rocks hard.

www.beckylourey.org

on MPR now: listen to audio of Becky Lourey on MPR's Midday here

Day To Day? WTF?

What the hell?  So, what, we only get half of Talk of the Nation now?  I know it started last week, but it didn't have an impact on my life until today... TotN is a 2 hour long program, running from 1pm to 3pm here in Minnesota, according to NPR.  Surprise!  Now Day To Day, a product of Slate magazine and NPR News, runs from 2pm to 3pm on those same stations.  Is MPR only paying for half of Talk of the Nation?  Because they're only running half of it.  Bunk.  Seriously.

"Fresh Air"

Listening now:
Fresh Air with Tommy Chong, followed by the DOJ Attorney who prosecuted him during John Ashcroft's Operation Pipe Dreams.

Listening earlier: 
Freshly circulated, some of the best sounding live Stereolab recordings I've heard to date. [torrent here] The last 5 tracks on this are from the ABC Music (BBC) discs which you should purchase and not just download.  It'll probably get pulled, which is too bad because the show is really good.

Reading now:  St. Paul blog Funky Chickens and Dancing Mangos. 

Sound Salvation!

So, the other day, Maggie and I are heading out for a few hours on the town. The CD in the player had been in there through countless repeats, so we flip on the radio. Of course, being that it was the weekend, Speaking Of Faith was on, so we scan up the dial (Maggie on KQ92: "Who listens to that??"). The only remotely acceptable stopping point is a Men At Work tune on the '80s station. I comment that I don't listen to much broadcast music radio and haven't listened to any in a long time. The subject of the new KCMP 89.3 "The Current" comes up... I am somewhere inbetween slightly dubious and cautiously optimistic. Is the Twin Cities (not to mention Roch) really going to accept what sounds like it might be the audio equivalent of a hipster VH-1? Judging by what I heard on "Ask the President Day" with Bill Kling on Midday last week, MPR is obviously committed to putting some serious effort into backing this thing up, but as a number of callers brought up, traditionally, as well as logistically, this is not really the kind of thing that public radio does. I decide to keep an open mind, and then I pretty much forget about it until this morning.

It went on the air at 9 am. I wasn't able to tune in until about 10. They got me all the way towards the cautiously optimistic side in a matter of minutes. I caught a little over 4 hours worth today, and I'll just say that I was impressed. It is just their first day, and I don't want to gush, but really, this thing might just be it. A turn it on, leave it on, all day on the weekend at home, all the time in the car kind of station. I only know of a couple others like that out there, but even their programming can be kind of segmented and inconsistent ...and neither of them are around here. By the way, I'm looking forward to the "CD-quality aacPlus" streaming option, which either isn't working right now, or is totally max0rzed. So what, though. You know you have a radio around somewhere, so quit that Windows Media Player and kick it old school, yo.

Anyway, check it out.

And to the folks at 89.3, thanks and keep it up!