Seattle's radio dial is dominated by a few big stations. Just like radio dials across the US. Fortunately, we have a rather gentle, mostly good-mannered, usually interesting-enough giant in KEXP. While the playlist seems to be more and more condensed and less and less eclectic in the daytime hours, we are lucky to be able to share in John in the morning's strategized playlists and the various nighttime DJs' genre shows without being chained to a PC. We get to have John in the morning in our cars! Lucky folks.
But once John signs off for the day, I'm done with KEXP. How many times can one man listen to the eels for god's sake?
So I flip my dial over to the AM side of things and settle in with the strangest, most eclectic mix of commercial music on our airwaves: KIXI AM 880. Unlike KEXP and the other giants, KIXI will surprise you as the songs stream out of a past that never really existed but you wish did.
Its slogan is "Great Songs, Great Memories" but so many of the tunes are tiny little gems from great artists that are either dead and gone or slugging it out on the riverboat casino and county fair circuit. The fascination, I'm sure, is driven by this strange serendipity. I admit there is a kitsch factor -- so uncool it's cool. But kitsch is only part of the equation. Serendipity and timelessness make KIXI great. I don't know if the format is working from a revenue standpoint -- the commercials are dominated by advertising for the geriatric set (assisted living facility ads are such a downer!) -- and radio as an industry has a lot of change coming. But when it comes to the alchemy of forming brilliant playlists and entertaining human beings with sequences of songs, the giants could all learn something from sweet little KIXI.
KIXI on the Web (no online stream :( yet!)
-J
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