Kuunari

As a new feature, but really, what isn’t a new feature on this blog, I’m going to post links and reviews of some of my favorite radio stations from around the country.  As a child in 4th grade in my gifted and talented class I was exposed to a 20 something former student of my teacher, who had managed to drift around after graduating school two years early.  I was very jealous of him for getting to skip grades, and desperately wanted to as well, but sadly, or perhaps fortunately, my school district no longer allowed students to do so any more in my time there.

That wasn’t the only thing about him that fascinated me, of course.  He was a lover of radio.  He had a book that had maps of where every radio station broadcast originated and what the call letters and frequency were.  He had even submitted some to the book, one of which he suggested was likely a pirate radio station.  That weekend, I took out the old gray Zenith AM/FM/Radio/Tape Deck with build in microphone and went through every AM radio signal and recorded every frequency that had anything audible.  Living in Rochester, NY, I got a lot of interesting stations, french stations, canadian stations, stations from across the eastern seaboard.

This summer, I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around the northern states in my car, and have spent many an hour glued to a signal I’m picking up, bounced off the atmosphere, or one of the great lakes.  Even better, many radio stations and programs now are available in convenient iPhone apps, which means I don’t even need radio reception to listen to the programs.

These posts come from that guy.  The guy who would spend a Saturday as a kid listening to every end of the AM dial.  The guy who tries to find the most interesting, unique radio station on the dial in the middle of Ohio.

The first station is a local one for me here in Minnesota, 89.3 The Current.  It’s a great station, run by Minnesota Public Radio.  No commercials, although I have noticed the “thanks for the supports” have gotten longer. If you listen to it for a couple of hours you’ll notice you’ll here a lot of local bands, and a mix of mostly indie rock, with a focus on more roots rock like the Avett Brothers. They do a lot of great support in the community as well, as I’m sure you’d imagine they would, but if you’re not from Minnesota, you probably don’t care about that.  What you care about is the music.

Well, they have a live stream available from their website here.  They also have a whole slew of live performances archived on their website.  Some recent bands include locals like The Jayhawks, and touring bands like Spoon.  On work days at school, I often listen to 10 or so old performances and my recently purchased list on iTunes reads like their playlist. But perhaps the greatest thing they do is the The Current Song of the Day. This is a podcast that gives you a free song every day of the work week.  Most of the songs I end up deleting, but about once a week, they throw on something really great, like The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio.  They also have a great iPhone app for those of you with one of those fancy new phones that you can listen to the stream on.

They have some great programs.  Teenage Kicks is every 8 to 10 AM Central on Saturdays and plays great music from the 80’s and early nineties.  On their blog they mention some of their artists of the week, like Jesus and Mary Chain and Elvis Costello. Great music to listen to if you have something to get up and do on a Saturday.  There are also the obligatory local shows and a show by Rhymesayers Entertainment, the local label of Brother Ali and Atmosphere, every Saturday night at 11 PM CST.

A great radio station, and one that I will sorely miss listening to in my car if I ever have to move away from Minneapolis.