Homeless on the Range. One of my favorite Albuquer...

Homeless on the Range. One of my favorite Albuquerque radio station was 105.1 FM "The Range." I say was because once again the corporate suits have monkeyed with the radio dial and taken a great, unique station off the air and replaced it with something they deem more marketable. The Range was a "Classic Country" or "Country Oldies" station. It was refreshing to be able to hear "real country" music from Hank Williams, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, and Waylon Jennings without having to put up with the twangy overly sappy pop music that they call country nowadays. The Range also had a block of "Western" or "Cowboy" music shows on Sunday morning, one hosted by my friend Rick Huff.
How did I find out about this great loss to my community? It was weird to say the least. I have been without my car for the last two weeks, while it was in the shop getting the bumper replaced. So, I have not been listening to the Range in my car. Our bedside clock radio is one of these space age implements that takes a rocket scientist to program, and for unexplainable reasons, we wake up to the second best country station in town 107.1 FM. As I wake up this morning Tony Lynn, the morning jock, says he'd like to welcome all former Range listeners to the station. I immediately go, "What the...?" and jump out of bed and turn the living room radio on. Sure enough, there was some sort of Spanish language, morning zoo deal commencing on my beloved radio home. I felt cheated, I felt lost, I felt betrayed.
This isn’t the first time I have felt this way about Albuquerque Radio. This goes back to the early 1980s, when KRST dropped their great progressive rock format featuring everything from ZZ Top to Ian Drury and Blockheads, and such shows as the “National Lampoon Radio Hour.” This truly inspiring stuff was replaced by the bland “modern country” format it still has today. When alternative rock(actually that was before the term was popuar) station KBAC was changed to a blander classic rock format in the early 1990s, I was crushed. It eventually ran off to Santa Fe, became more folky and hard to pick up here, until it was given the 104.1 FM frequency. Finally, another great station. But that only lasted a couple years, eventually it was kicked back to Santa Fe, with a horribly weak Albuquerque translator, and 104.1 FM became “World Class Rock,” a bland adult alternative station. It lasted only about a year before it became yet another Spanish station. Oh and last but not least, Smooth Jazz 105.5 is now a Christian Contemporary station.
The Albuquerque Radio landscape now looks like this: with about 50 stations broadcasting, we have 11 religious stations, eight Spanish stations, seven news/talk or sports talk stations. Three formats dominate half the dial. The next category would be what I call “Old Music,” classic hits, be it rock, soul. disco or country from the 1950s through the 1990s. Most of these stations utilize the same short playlists repeatedly. Big Oldies and ED-FM seem to be exceptions, and ED-FM is especially innovative, with a huge playlist, incorporating about 35 years worth of music and every subgenre of popular music outside of country and jazz. With no DJs or talk, it is actually a joy to hear.
While I complain about the sameness and limited choices of commercially broadcast radio, I must take into account changing technology.
Radio is limited, but our music choices, through other venues, are becoming unlimited, or close to it. We have internet radio, satellite radio, and pay services like iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody. There are even forty channels of music on digital cable. Maybe these services are exactly why commericial radio sucks, the commercial stations are giving up trying to specialize at all. Appealling to the broadest numbers is now the name of the game. Maybe this is why ED-FM is so successful. Not everyone is going to like everything they play, but there is something for everyone on that channel.
Maybe I’m a traditionalist. Maybe it’s hard for me to accept change. Granted, I have dabbled in the online version of XM Radio, I subscribe to eMusic, and my TV is often tuned to the Music Choice Classic Soul, Classic Country and Americana stations. There is hope for those that like musical variety. But, I still like variety when I get into my car and flip on the radio. Thankfully, there’s still KUNM, where I can at least listen to a different kind of music on different evenings, but let’s face it, radio just isn’t as much fun anymore.

An Eventful Fortnight. A great deal has occurred in the couple weeks since my last post.

The trip to the Sierra Grande Lodge in Truth or Consequences was wonderful. We had two great hot spring soaks and we each got a massage. My massage therapist was an 81 year-old blind man named Ramon who was apparently the master masseuss in T or C. His massage was phenominal. The Lodge was a beautiful, friendly hotel with wonderful amenities, comfy southwest-style rooms and a great restaurant. We went ghost town hunting to and from T or C and visited Choride, Winston, Cuchillo and Engle. We were looking for a winery that was supposed to exist in Engle, but only found a dead end road with a sign that said "New Mexico Spaceport."

I got into a car wreck about a week ago, and for once, it wasn't the other guy's fault. I screwed up. I was trying to quickly get into a turn-off lane from Coors Road to Coors Bypass and did not see the guy in the far lane behind me. My right rear collided with his left front. We were on our way to a friend's birthday party and never made it because we waited for and hour and a half for the police, but they never showed. My car suffered less damage than the poor kid I ran into, but I just thank God for good insurance coverage.

The car accident triggered some sort of "machine rebellion" against me. In the last few days, our automatic garage door broke a spring, and our dryer started making horrible squeaking noises. My dad came over and repaired the dryer, which worked fine for two days, then developed a horrible rumble. We had a guy fix the garage door, but the dryer rumble needs to be fixed.

My tenure at Gorilla Tango Improv Comedy Theatre has ended. The last couple months, Ii have felt less comfortable there, not feeling like I was part of the group. I am nearly twice the age of most of the troupe members, for one. The other thing that made me uncomfortable was that our group line-up kept changing. It was just hard to get into a consistant groove. I had been thinking about leaving for a while, and I think that affected the level of my performance, which had declined over the last month. Well, my lack of enthusiasm was met with an email from Dan, the theatre owner, who said that he wanted to take me off of the regular roatation. I guess I got what I wanted in a weird self-fulfilling prophechy sort of way. But it is all good. I enjoyed improv while it lasted, and grew in my self-confidence and public performance abilities. Besides, there is now more time to devote to Susan and my writing, the two main focuses of my passion these days.

But the REALLY BIG NEWS is...I'm Engaged to be married! Last Tuesday was the one year anniversary of my first date with Susan. I decided it would be the perfect time to ask the woman of my dreams to marry me. I got down on my knee, presented her with a ring and popped the qestion. She said yes! We have not set a date yet, but it will probably be sometime in late May or early June of 2007, after Susan finishes her masters degree and after the school year ends. We are thinking about having a wedding somewhere in the nearby mountains, with our Unity ministers Judi and Ross doing the service and having one or two of our musician friends sing the great Carole King song "Loving You Forever." We are thinking about a European Honeymoon in Spain, Austria or Switzerland, or if money is a concern, Northern California will do. More details as they become available.

Movies and assorted nonsense. Went to see Eight Below. I have to admit it was pretty good. The dog footage was more interesting than the human story, but for a Disney "True Life Adventure" style movie it was fun.
The Oscars pretty much turned out as I wanted, with Crash winning best picture. I guess gay cowboys are still too much for the Academy to handle. The only disappointment was George Clooney cancelling out both Matt Dillon and Paul Giamatti for best supporting actor. I was thrilled that Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit won for best animated feature. But what was the deal with the "Pimp" song? What the hell was that?