Highway songs, and road songs, and leaving songs. That's the theme tonight. The dog on the left, Rowdy the Rescue Critter, has nothing to with this post, he's just along for the ride.I've been doing themes the last several nights on TwangCity. Last night was whiskey. I did one about memory recently. It's a cool way to mix up the music a little differently. I hope you enjoy these sets.
No, I'm not necessarily drinking when I play a set of drinking songs. I just love country drinking songs. And train songs. And songs about old dogs, and broken hearts. You get the idea.
Back in the days when I did free-form radio for a living, we did a lot of theme sets. Sometimes a bunch of us would hang out in the studio, and take turns coming up with the next song in the long theme set, digging it out of the library and cuing it up. That lead to some classic DJ anxiety dreams . . . the song is running out, and you can't find the next record. Whew!
Then the library got locked up, and we had to follow a list. So I embraced it. I got all excited about the "science" of radio programming, and research, and ratings. I got really good at manipulating the bad research that passes for radio ratings. I got quite cynical there for a while, playing the radio game.
Funny thing is, I came back the other direction again. I ended up working with a guy who reminded me that you really CAN build a successful radio station around ears, around respect for listeners, and respect for music. We did it, and topped the ratings here in town until the evil empire bought us and my boss jumped off a roof. The guy who eventually replaced him, after a short-tenured interim dude, was a major asshole idiot, so I told him off and bailed, and went into the Internet thing full-time.
Hmmm . . . songs about asshole bosses? Know any? Know enough for a theme set?
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