American terrestrial radio, as opposed to satellite or internet radio, sucks. Louisville-area radio is especially lame. The main choices around here are Country, Christian, Top 40, and Dinosaur Rock. The only time I listen to the radio is on relatively short trips, usually to Shepherdsville and back. I especially hate having to listen to the radio while at work. Being forced to listen to music I don't like seems to taint my memories of working at places that were otherwise somewhat pleasant to work at. I think I was one of the only people who cheered when Main ex-Employer decided to no longer let us have radios in the warehouse.
The only station that I really wanted to hear all day at Main ex-Employer was 91.9 WFPK, a public station, but we couldn't pick it up.
Top 40 stations were the worst because they play the same songs EVERY HOUR! KISS 98.9 had a much heavier emphasis on Urban hits than 99.7 DJX did. For some parts of 2005, 98.9 felt almost like "All 50 Cent, All the time", since you could hear as many as five songs featuring 50 Cent every hour, namely three of his own singles and two of The Game's singles that he guested on. One day in particular that was really annoying was when we listened to 98.9 for a couple of hours, then I turned it over to something different for the sake of hearing something different, then this girl from the weekend shift who was there for overtime turned it back over to KISS. After a while, I changed the channel again, then after a short period of time the same girl turned it back over to KISS.
Being forced to listen to one of the Country stations was even worse because I don't like new mainstream Country at all. For some perspective, I still consider any Country going back to 1990 "new Country". I don't like '80s Country either, but I'll save a Country rant for some other day. One of the last times I was forced to listen to a Country station at work was in October 2009. I ended up hearing Carrie Underwood's then-new song, "Cowboy Casanova", twice, and found it so irritating that I (figuratively, almost) wanted to kill myself.
Classic Rock is also pretty horrible because I've been so burned out on it for so long. Hearing the openings to some songs, especially "Turn The Page" by Bob Seger, makes me want to go postal. Louisville has two Classic Rock stations. The worst of the two is 107.7 SFR because they seem to play the same five songs from any particular artist/band, and is mostly '70s-centric. It's like their playlist consists of a 20-CD changer filled with those Millenium Collection CDs, and a CD-R of one-hit wonders (ex. "Never Been Any Reason" by Head East or "Jackie Blue" by Ozark Mountain Daredevils) and single tracks from major artists, like maybe one song each from AC/DC and George Harrison ("You Shook Me All Night Long" and "My Sweet Lord" respectively). 95.7 WQMF is the better of the two because they have more of a variety from across the decades, and deeper cuts than SFR. The sad thing is that what QMF now refers to as "Deep Cuts" is stuff that they used to play regularly 20 years ago when they were an AOR station.
Now on to the stations that played newer Rock in 2004/05. The station that I preferred was 105.1 WLRS. The LRS letters had a long history, but from 1997 through 2008 it was a half assed Modern Rock station, mostly playing harder '90s stuff, Pop-Punk and Emo type crap, a lot of Post-Grunge, and occasionally some Alternative Rock. The Rock station that most people preferred was The Fox (first at 100.5, then 93.1), which was more of an Active/Mainstream Rock channel, mostly a lot of post-Grunge/Nu-Metal with some '90s Megadeth, Pantera, or C.O.C. thrown in, and of course the harder overplayed '90s stuff. While I said that I preferred LRS, asking me which channel was better was like asking me which pile of shit smelled better. I remember one time, "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction came on, one of only two Jane's Addiction songs that get played regularly on the radio. Some kid asked me, Who's this?", and I told him Jane's Addiction. I can't remember exactly, but I think he asked me what else they sang, and I told him they were the same band that did "Been Caught Stealing". The kid said, "Man, they're horrible!" You wouldn't believe how fucking pissed I was, and I explained to him that those songs are neither their best songs, nor representative of them. Later on, the kid asked me about some Crossfade song, and I was like, "Man, fuck Crossfade!" Crossfade ultimately had one hit and faded into obscurity, while Jane's Addiction live on as legends. I thought they also had one of the absolute best singles of the 2000s, "Just Because", which like many of the great Modern Rock singles got played for a while, then disappeared.
The only station we could pick up at Main ex-Employer that I could tolerate listening to all day was the oldies station, WASE 103.5 from Elizabethtown, mostly because you were guaranteed not to hear a song more than once throughout the day, and they played only a little of the '70s Rock that was the main focus of the Classic Rock stations. There was another oldies station around at that time, 103.1 WRKA, but I didn't like it as much for some reason. The two stations just seemed to have different vibes, and 103.5 had the better vibe.
The last job where I had to listen to the radio was last Summer at a warehouse in Cecilia, on the very west side of Elizabethtown. I didn't have to listen to the radio all the time, just occasionally, and the main channel they listened to was 98.3 WQXE, I think the best way to describe it would be MOR (Middle Of the Road). I remember walking by this one woman's work area and hearing the chorus to "All The Right Moves" by One Republic. I kind of thought to myself, "Oh shit, this moment is going to haunt me for the rest of my life." What made it even odder was that I thought the line went "They've got all the right friends in all the right places, who cares, we're going down!", and thinking it made no sense, especially since I didn't know how the rest of the song went. BTW, it turns out he's not saying "Who cares, we're going down," but "So yeah, we're going down." And while I can't say I "like" one Republic, I don't dislike them, and I think they have an interesting sound, especially that ridiculously huge John Bonham-esque drum sound. Another story from that same job: The radio wasn't on, but I was trying to explain to these two girls about how I like music, but hate radio, and I also said that I liked Rock, but I didn't feel like explaining that I only liked certain types of Rock. The radio was eventually turned on. I got back to the work area after a break or lunch sooner than most of the people. The radio was on WQXE, and at one point they played "A Little Respect" by Erasure, a song that I actually like. The girls get back from the break, one of the girls hears "A Little Respect", turns the radio off, and says "It's got to be to EVERYBODY's taste. That makes me want to go to church." To which I responded, "There's really no such thing." I don't know if she mistook it for a Rock song and thought I had turned it over to a Rock station or what, but I thought that was ignorant. That pissed me off almost as the time I mentioned earlier about the boy saying that Jane's Addiction was horrible. But seriously, WQXE was about the closest thing to "everybody's taste" as you're going to get. I think the radio ended up getting turned on later anyway.
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