My teenage years were deprived in an important way. While those living in many other places at that time–the late 1970’s and early 1980’s–heard a wide range of exciting new music on the radio, I was listening to the repetitive playlists of Twin Cities stations such as KQ92 (classic rock) and KDWB (top 40). So, while others elsewhere were learning about punk, obscure New Wave, early rap, and more, I listened mostly to older bands such as Led Zeppelin, Boston, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers, all for the umpteenth time. On the pop stations you had Hall and Oates, Whitney Houston, Prince, and, ahh, I forget the others.

As good as much of that music was, I got tired of hearing “Stairway to Heaven” for the thirtieth time. I knew the radio situation wasn’t good, but I didn’t go out of my way to find other ways to hear new music. Some people around me, however, were doing exactly that during my high school years. A guy named Todd Enge brought rap music into the locker room, probably around 1980. At the time, I thought he was rather nuts to like such strange stuff. Jeff Richter and his buddies were listening to Elvis Costello’s “Punch the Clock.” The really cool guys, like Ed O’Gara, were going to concerts and had discovered the B-52’s, the Replacements, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys. (I’ve still not explored the latter two). And my good friend Tom Harkins had delved deeply into David Bowie and the Talking Heads.

I don’t want to overstate my case here. There was some new music to hear on the radio. Once my brain had assimilated the playlists of KQ and KDWB, I was drawn to interruptions in the formats. And so, like many others, I was excited to hear U2, Blondie, the Go-go’s, Devo, Human League, the Police, the Thompson Twins, the Violent Femmes, Gary Neuman, Icehouse, A Flock of Seagulls, Berlin, the Motels, Depeche Mode, the Pretenders, Men Without Hats, and more. There was even some local music (besides Prince) that made it through my media filter: bands called the Phones and the Wallets, and especially the Suburbs, who hailed from my neck of the woods.

But there was only so much variety on these very commercial stations. The masses still had to be counted on for dough, they had to be given their repetitive playlists, and people like myself, who disliked the repetition but didn’t go to concerts and obscure record stores and trade lots of music with friends to escape it, just had to make do.

When I showed up for my freshman year at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1984, I learned of still more music that had not reached my particular province. Andrew Halpern, from Holyoke, Mass., had some great Smiths music. I can still hear that group’s mysterious rhythms and haunting lyrics in the dorm hallway: “I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does.” A guy named Ramon had an album titled “Murmur” from a band called REM; he had a cool REM t-shirt too (with a bicycle on it, if I remember right). Someone from DC told me that Husker Du, a Minneapolis band, was really good. Scott Durschlag, a young radical, liked to play Elvis Costello’s version of “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?” With the exception of Husker Du, of which I remain largely ignorant, all of those artists became an important part of my later youth.

I had heard none of that music at home. Looking back on it, it seems a damn shame that I didn’t have access to a more adventurous radio station. However, it’s also a damn shame that I didn’t go to some concerts and learn some more. I stayed close to my commercial media island, even while I suspected that exciting stuff existed far from the familiar shores of my surroundings.

Of course many people grow up in places much more musically isolated than the Twin Cities suburbs were in my youth. How well I remember traveling across the country on family trips and hearing rural radio stations that were years behind the times. The Internet and cable/satellite media are reducing much of that kind of regional isolation for kids who yearn to escape their own versions of commercial radio hell. However, it will always take some gumption and effort to reach beyond the deadening repetitiveness of the commercial airwaves.

Next week: 89.3 The Current brings a breath of fresh air to Twin Cities radio.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 15th, 2005 at 8:03 am and is filed under Autobiography, Minnesota, Music.