The USS Quad Damage

I've been listening to a lot of 2MBS FM (102.5). Basically, this happens in the morning when I'm driving to work, and that's pretty much the only time I ever listen to the radio. In the evenings, for some reason, classical music doesn't sit well with me, so I listen to some metal that I have. In any case, I've been enjoying listening to 2MBS a fair bit.

One of the things I like about it is that the ads are not in your face. They're polite, quiet, and get to the point. They make it clear that they're advertising, who their audience is, and what they're selling. No made up stories, no bullshit, no loud crap in between. I quite like these ads.

Another benefit is that, unlike other radio stations, the songs don't repeat every day (or in the case of some radio stations, multiple times in a day). In fact, in the space of 3 or so months that I've been listening to them, I think I've only heard one song repeated, save for their CD of the week, and CD of the month.

Finally, the announcers are nice, and have real character. They're all volunteers, and they all know a fair bit about music, and either have funny accents, or are otherwise effervescent. One lady dropped something and took about a minute to find it again, with absolute silence on the air. That silence is comedy GOLD!

Of course, it's snooty. This is one of the bad things about it. Everyone has some sort of snooty accent, they occasionally play music which is supposed to be great, but I'm too stupid to understand why, etc. etc. Occasionally, they'll play plain old bad music. I can't go into further detail. In any case, these occurrences are few and far between. If you listen to it at the right times, it's brilliant. They also play wierd electronica at night (actually decent electronica).

Karl Haas deserves a post to his own, but I'm too damn lazy. Karl Haas is an American guy who presents shows with certain themes. 2MBS re-play his stuff, and he's simply brilliant. He loves his music, and he's old enough to have quite an in-depth knowledge into the lives of many famous composers, and talks fondly about his memories and childhood growing up with (and in) classical music. I learnt a lot about music through him.

He died in feb. this year, which sux because it's the exact time I started listening to him. Now they play archives of his stuff. Hopefully I'll be able to archive the whole set on mp3.