If You Want It Here It Is Come And Get It

Yesterday morning I received this email from a local friend of mine:


As I was driving home from a friend's house this evening after a lovely dinner and less than lovely movie, I was flicking thru the radio stations as I always do...

92.1 for my nostalgia
93.7 for all the good stuff
96x for my harder stuff
98.7 (FM 99) a classic and a must
104.5 to see what the kids are up to
106.9 the Fox to hear what's new in the greatest hits of the Eagles
103 JAMZ for my hip hop fix
107 for my secret love of easy listening...

then I decided I wanted to kick out rock and roll for my short journey home so I switched to 100.5. A sure fire place to find some straight up rock and roll.

Well, I hit the #5 preset button to take me directly there and I kept hitting it because I knew something was amiss.

It was all Chinese music. I mean, full-on Chinese instruments and chords and Star Trek episodes.....

When I got home I went to the web site and sure enough they have changed their format...to ALL CHINESE music.

I am not kidding. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone....

http://www.kungpao1005.com/index.php


And she wasn't kidding. Local rock station 100.5 FM has been playing traditional Chinese folk music since, well I'm not exactly sure, since I don't listen to radio. But I was cranking it yesterday on the drive to work and back just shaking my head and smiling the entire time. But my word... the bumpers in between songs are, um, perhaps a little bit "borderline", methinks. After every song you hear this synth blast and a guy using your typical macho rock radio inflection saying things like...

"Everybody's doing it! Jump on the rickshaw, it's KUNG PAO RADIO 100.5FM!"

"Everybody's talking about it down at the buffet... it's KUNG PAO RADIO 100.5FM!"

"Come on over to our house! But be sure to leave your shoes at the door... at KUNG PAO RADIO 100.5FM!"

I gotta admit, I kind of like the music. But of course, this is no doubt another punk'ing from a local radio station getting ready to change to some other kind of popular music format. The stations website cannot be possibly taken seriously. Although it is a mighty fine read:

"The preeminent club DJ in Cuba, Che's spun at some of the hottest discos in Venezuela, Kuala Lumpur, and Pyongyang"

Then again I would love to see DJ Che's rockin' North Korean collection of "The Greatest And Most Glorious Hits From Our Dear Leader Kim Jon-Il" Just picturing the cover right now.

Mike remembers the time when FM99, then our local AOR format station, went for 48 hours playing every available cover version of "Louie Louie" (Mike still has the promotional button from that time that has the words "Louie Louie" with the "NO" circle-and-cross over it). And I'll never forget New Years Eve 1993 when the same station played "Hey Jude" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" back-to-back for a day and a half with very little commercial interruption, and zero explanation until around noon the next day when they announced that they would stop being so predictably AOR-ish, or something like that. That night Joe, Goofy Steve and I stayed up playing board games (actually mixing various pieces from multiple board games to make up our own game) listening to those two songs play over and over again, thinking something was going to be revealed at midnight of the new year. See what people are willing to sit through to in order to get to the bottom of things? I think Kung Pao Radio is banking on stupid people like myself to go the distance for a repetitive joke. And here, sixteen years later, I'm still dumb enough to do it.

Haven't tuned in yet today, but the website is still going. I rather hope it sticks around. I just might start listening to radio again.

EDIT: Just talked to Big Kev on the phone this afternoon, and he saw in the trades that 100.5 is becoming a "classic rock" station come Monday. Should I start my own one-woman picket line in front of the station already?