Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll… - Starship, “We Built This City”
By the time I turned 40, I hadn’t thought about the radio in years, at least 2 decades actually.
Not really, anyhow.
It had become rare for me to hear it as the years marched on, as the world swiftly changed and advanced, becoming sleeker, smarter, more tailored… the radio was just background buzz lurking in the shadows. Something playing softly through the tinny speakers inside an elevator, a half familiar tune at the gas pump or drifting down from the ceiling of my favorite fluorescent-lit Goodwill. Spotify, audio books and podcasts had, by in large, stolen my love and attention; Spotify knows what I want before I do. Algorithms are at attention to serve up perfect playlists for any shade of my mood, every hour of every day. Audiobooks accompany me through chores. Podcasts fill the long drives. My tastes are catered to with uncanny precision. Every skip and like teaches the machine a little more about who I am.
But does any of that shit really mean anything? I’m not really sure it does.
It’s all too controlled now. Too curated. Always on demand. Nothing surprises. Nothing interrupts.
The radio was a wild animal.
It didn’t care what mood you were in or what genre you preferred. It didn’t wait for your permission. It could slap you in the face with a song you hadn’t heard in twenty years or introduce you to something you’d never think to search for. It was kind of unpredictable. There was a certain magic in that chaos. Like sometimes it was pulling songs from the sky just for you, just then, just when you needed them and other times it didn’t give a fuck about you or what you liked. Fucking 20 minute block of Steely Dan, bitch.