Dispatch from Hollywoodland

A photo taken inside the Amoeba music store on Sunset, one of the best music stores we’ve ever seen. Via Flickr.com


Now we know why there are so many cool record stores in LA. It’s because the radio stations here suck. LA radio is simply awful. We are at a loss to understand how they program their song selection. It is not unusual for a Coldplay song to be followed by by a Sinatra song, then followed by New Edition. On the same station. Among the songs we’ve heard so far:

• I Wanna Sex You up, Color me Bad.

• Hello, Lionel Richie

• Every Little Step I Take, New Edition.

And these are all on mainstream, popular music stations, not those Mike FM or 80’s stations.

Usually, when driving thru a new city, it takes about 15 minutes to find 1 or 2 radio stations that will carry you through your journey. It’s been 20 days, and we still haven’t found a go-to FM station. Instead, we're using all 6 presets on our car radio, and it’s not unheard of for us to cycle through all of them 11 times before finding a song that is acceptable. Is there an LA equivalent of BCN or FNX? Nope. It's more like a collection of all those college radio stations we hated back in the day, where the DJ’s would play anything that strikes them as cool or ironic.

The sports radio isn’t that much better either. You don’t know what Hell is until you've been forced to listen to two hours of Padres baseball talk.