WCBN’s worst and best

I’m not a radio listener very regularly, but occasionally I do still drive around either on my own time or at work. When I do, I’ve always got the radio on 88.3, the U of M’s own college radio station. The music’s good, the DJ interruptions are inept but infrequent, and the commercials…

Well, the commericals aren’t always so good. Of course, as a public station, WCBN doesn’t air “commercial” spots, but it does promote the hell out of itself. Or so it intends to do. Readers, I present to you the thirty-second spot that has done more to marginalize all the decent stuff the station has to offer than any self-indulgent Wolf Eyes track spun at 4am. I paraphrase:

Mind. Body. Spirit. Action. Reaction. Progression. Regression. Language. Feeling. Culture. [the string of section headings from your Anthro 101 book continues for maybe thirty seconds. Then:] I’m Greg Kress. Join me and ride along side me on the Neon Jazz Train. Mondays from noon to three.

That’s all there is. It’s too bad, but there’s not a trace of irony. Just a really serious hep cat. Fortunately, it’s not all bad at WCBN. There’s also The Pirate Commercial.

This one is pretty rough too, don’t get me wrong. The premise, if you can follow me here, is that a pirate captain and maybe his first mate or something are on a pirate ship. The mate is tuning the ship’s radio, trying to find something nice to accompany the filthy-lucre-gathering. Apparently his radio was made in the UK, though, since it only tunes in even-numbered frequencies. “88.2, no… 88.4, no…” This drags out just long enough for the listener to pick up on the fact that never until this very blog post, no not even during its actual filming, was any sort of script ever put to paper.

Finally, though, the pirates settle on 88.3. The one non sequiturs the other, “This music truly soothes th’ soul. Mayhaps we should give up our piratin’ lives,” &c. &c. Cue the voice-over: “If you’d like help abandoning piracy or any other form of antiquated evil, listen to WCBN.”

“Antiquated evil!” Love it!

What a silly blog post.