Radio thoughts, related to boombox thoughts

Thinking more about that boombox we got out to look at its cassette deck and the feeling we were enjoying of having sound in our physical space from it instead of in our headphones, and we ended up having a couple more thoughts.

You know that Brian Eno quote? "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature"? I think one of those weird and uncomfortable things about radio is that you don't control what you listen to, when you listen to the radio - whatever the broadcaster decides you will hear, you either hear that or you don't listen to the station at all.

...and that can be fun? We have to be in the right mood for it, but it can be cool to make the soundtrack to our day be someone else's musical choices for a while. It ends up being surprising and novel, and encourages us to find what we appreciate in music we'd never've sought out.

(Admittedly we're currently listening to the web stream of WRUC 89.7 FM instead of a local station over the airwaves, but the principle applies.)