Los Angeles has been my home since the days even before Motley Crue, so I am beyond excited that 'The Side Show' has found a home on 98.7 FM. This is the station I listen to - my friends listen to it, my family listens to it. It's the station I wanted to be on, and I'm psyched to get started.
As a touring musician over the last 15 years, before streaming and iPods, you had to listen to terrestrial radio wherever you were. That's always been my way of connecting to a location. Turn on the radio, search through the dial.
The same music is playing on the radio in San Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Annapolis. Everywhere you go there's the same artists and same songs by them, over and over again. At some stations they play the same songs 50 to 60 times a week.
I got my group together when I was about thirteen. We had a local radio show, and then we started touring for the principal of the high school - he was in the Lions Club, and so we were the entertainment.
The very first time I ever heard anything of mine on the radio, I was in New Jersey, and I was in my teens. I did my first record, which was an old standard called 'My Mother's Eyes.' It was the old Georgie Jessel theme. I heard it on local radio out of Newark. And it was very exciting!
Indeed, the constellation of local radio was part of how America’s sense of itself emerged. Because listeners could sample the flavor of people in far-away states, they began to develop an understanding of the nation’s psyche. It was a way of imagining a country that you hadn’t seen. One station might be playing hillbilly music, one might be playing jazz. It was this really frothy brew of culture.
I listen to the Manchester news on local radio. It has helped me learn English. I have it on when I am driving to training in the morning.
As a radio DJ, I was on WRIN-WLQI. And even when I repeat it, it's horrifying. My morning sign-on, because it was in Rensselaer, Indiana, it'd be, 'You're on the air with Jim O'Heir in Rensselaer.' Ugh, oh my God, pathetic.
My local radio station, WHOC, Philadelphia, Mississippi - '1490 on your radio dial, a thousand watts of pure pleasure' - it was a beautiful station. And I loved everything I heard. But it was country music that touched my heart.
Too many radio stations, all they do is syndicated programming, it's just piped in from some satellite someplace, and they don't have much of a connection to the community.
