Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes; Under the Pink
I used to buy a lot of records. Then I used to buy a lot of CD's. I also used to make a lot of cassettes, anthologies and dubs of albums. Now I just listen to the radio... but that's not as bad as it could be. When I lived in Fulton Missouri, while vaguely attending college, there was one station, KKCA ("Is Everywhere"). We are talking hog futures reports here folks, along with a nice healthy smattering of top 40 music. This is the kind of station that runs snippets of Rush Limbarge throughout the day now. Far off in the distance was St. Louis' KSHE, a Rock behemoth. Here in the seacoast of NH, there are some ghastly commercial stations which I am vaguely aware of... I may even once have accidentally programmed them on a radio tuner, but they would not have lasted long. These stations serve primarily to give local businesses a place to advertise and contribute to their fantasies of being part of the American Entrepreneurial Dream. I suppose once in a while they play listenable music, but the odds aren't good enough and the commercials make me psychotic. More psychotic, that is. All right, enough whining (already!), what is good? Here we have a college radio station, WUNH, which is a pillar of the broadcast community. DJ freedom, long term high quality shows, college student enthusiasm, and decent signal quality combine to make them the #1 button on all my radios. Some favorite shows include Larry Etscovitz Classical Connections (Tuesdays, 6-8 PM), the Mothership Connection, the Metal Storm (if it is still called that, Monday after 11 PM), Rock Is Dead (Weds. 6-8 PM) There must be a dozen various NPR, NHPR, and MPR stations within antenna-shot around here. While I get sick of the mini-news all afternoon (terrible programming to wake up to...), these stations run a fairly steady mix of jazz and classical music. The classical is a bit timid but still fun, the jazz is more adventurous. There are also two commercial classical stations, WCRB out of Waltham Massachusetts, and WBQQ in Maine. Nuts. The seacoast of New Hampshire is live music heaven. Consider that, for starters, we are only one hour from Boston, MA and Portland, ME. This means that just about any major touring act will come within easy range. Combined with a few medium size venues in Concord, NH we've got the big guys covered. The University of New Hampshire in Durham and the Music Hall in Portsmouth both run annual series of performances, typically by world renowned performers, ranging from guitar duets to full orchestra works. Just about every night of the week within twenty miles of here there are literally dozens of musicians plying their trade, from solo performers and bands banging out the "classics" to artists at many levels of accomplishment performing their original compositions. These folks range from people with day jobs earning a little spare change and having fun doing it, to serious unknown touring artists. Some are based here and some make a point of keeping our area on their schedules, having found appreciative audiences (drunk, but appreciative nonetheless!) in our local bars and clubs.
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