Sunday, April 13, 2014

The Freddy Mourns KXGO's Demise

All good things must come to an end but I still can't get used to radio station KXGO being gone. I enjoyed having it as an alternative when my usual stations, KHSU and KMUD, go on the geek. Both of them switch to goofy stuff at the same time on weekends so I'd usually switch to KXGO until Monday.

Been working the dial to find a suitable substitute. All the stations I've been finding just don't cut it. The wife listens to 95.5FM and suggested that one, but that's all San Francisco music. Hate that stuff.

Anyone have any suggestions?

12 Comments:

At 8:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What is San Francisco music?

 
At 8:42 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Kinda hard to explain in writing. Even hard to explain in person as the wife doesn't understand it, either.

It's the type of music you have in the back of your head when you have a bad hangover.

The kind of music that sounds like it came from The Borg- thousands of voices in the background singing to the thousands of Borg- like residents of the Bay Area.

I noticed it some years ago, while driving to San Francisco. Once you get past Cloverdale there isn't much in the way of good radio. I'd be all burned out from the long drive and the vast majority of the music I'd find made me feel as I was in the midst of a bad hangover. I was burned out and hearing that music again, but on the radio.

San Francisco Music. Hard to explain. I guess you just have to feel it.

 
At 9:34 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

1. Buy an Internet radio.

2. Open a free Pandora account.

3. Listen to music you like all of the time.

Here's the one I use. There are less expensive options. It also pulls the Internet feeds of radio stations, starting with the ones local to you. Pretty much every radio station is on the Internet today.

http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Digital-3-5-Inch-Display-GDI-IRC6000/dp/B004YI9NTS/

 
At 10:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think I kind of know what you mean. In a big market like that, the available frequencies are almost completely dominated by lowest-common-denominator commercialized crapola. Different genres, but each station only plays one genre, and mostly just the most currently popular stuff in each genre.

Now there are some radio stations down there that play a more interesting mix, but you have to wade through a lot more crap to find them. In Humboldt we are lucky in the sense that not only do we have some diverse, eclectic radio shows, we also have a whole lot fewer crappy stations to wade through in between.

 
At 11:07 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

I enjoy local radio with real people behind it that talk about local things at least some of the time. It's always a relief to get to the area around Hopland when heading north from S.F. where you can pick up Mendocino local radio. One of them is like a sister station to KMUD. KZYX?

But, truth be told, wasn't KXGO one of those syndicated stations? Not sure if that was the one that had the generic djs on it that would speak of generic things that anybody in the country could supposedly relate to, like the olympics and such.

I just appreciated the oldies they played- despite them playing some of the same stuff over and over- and it was nice to have available when KHSU and KMUD geek out with their weekend programming.

 
At 11:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If I don't hear anything I'm interested in listening to on KMUD or KHSU I check out KHUM. Usually one of the three will have something worth listening to, and since they all play a pretty wide variety of stuff, even if there's nothing great on any of them at a given moment, it won't be long before there is.

 
At 11:58 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

im with you. I miss kxgo it was my go to station. its country at work and im good with that. but at home it was kxgo. classic rock and im still trying to adjust.

 
At 12:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am a KMUD programmer who does the World Beat Show on Sunday afternoons. It's 2 1/2 hrs of dance music from Africa and Caribbean and beyond. Never have I or anyone I know consider this "goofy" music.......

 
At 1:06 PM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Leave it to me to be different then because I don't like it. And I didn't call it "goofy". I wrote, "on the geek".

Hey, at least I didn't call it San Francisco Music.

 
At 8:52 PM, Anonymous Ross Rowley said...

If you're looking for a Classic Rock format, You should tune in 100.3 The Point. It tends to lean toward artists who are Baby Boomer Rock that arrived in the 1960's and continued through the 80's like, say, Neil Young or Tom Petty, but they play more than just the hits with deeper album cuts at times. For instance, they may play Ted Nugent like KXGO, but will also play his earlier band, The Amboy Dukes. And, the DJ's are local and not syndicated like most of the KXGO personalities.

Yes, I miss KXGO, too. But, I'm guessing the listenership was too low to make advertising revenue worth paying for it.

 
At 6:32 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Thanks. I'll look up The Point. Seems to me I used to listen to that station years ago.

 
At 7:57 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Speaking of San Francisco Music, I stumbled on to a solid three hours of it yesterday afternoon.

Went out to the garage about 3:30pm, turned on the radio and right about where KXGO used to be I found KSLG. I decided I'd try that for a bit. Wow! SFM from the start. The first song I listened to, Hear Me, was classic SFM.

After that it was SFM over and over. I was fixated on it trying to come up with a description of SFM all could understand. I never got there.

I was fascinated at how listening to that music took me back to the fatigue and hangover feeling of driving through Santa Rosa on the way to San Francisco. I hoped the time would pass quickly so I could end the trip.

 

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