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The Sound Spinning All Vinyl Every Wednesday

Finally this floundering station hits upon something interesting. "Album Side Wednesday." Wall to wall album sides, and played entirely on vinyl, complete with pops and clicks.

I can say that hearing Stevie Wonder's Innervisions Side 1 was enough to keep me glued for 20 minutes driving this evening.

Now, if they can just think of a gimmick for the other six days of the week to get me to tune in.....
 
Scooty, I heard Andy start that Stevie Innervisions side 1 while I was driving the 5 south. They actually raised the volume so you could hear the needle hitting the lead grooves of the vinyl. That was a great LP. That said, they need more help with the rest of the playlist but we all know that. They also need to finish their website update. Its been almost two weeks I think.
 
SRF, Joe here...I noticed they were going to be updating the site 'any day now' - ummm, how many weeks ago was that?? :eek: Joe
 
This is actually nothing new. Their sister outlet in Chicago (WDRV 'The Drive') also does a full day of album sides on a semi-regular basis.
 
This promotion is a loser. All I get from this is that CD's do sound better than vinyl even on standard issue car radios. Their choice of albums, made this station sound like KLOS on a Sunday night, with clicks and pops! Just what this town needs, another classic rock block. (sarc off).

EZ
 
I caught side one of REM's Murmur on the way to work and side two of Bob Marley's Exodus on the way home. Both sounded great and I listened all the way through. The needle drop sfx can go however, that is obviously a sound effect or else no one remembers how to properly cue a record.

As for the vinyl vs CD argument, it all depends on the mastering. A great example was Nirvana's Nevermind which followed Exodus. Not mastered for vinyl, it sounded flat and lifeless on the air. I wound up punching out. When I came back however, they were cueing up a 30-year anniversary pressing of Dark Side of the Moon which sounded really good!

All in all I found the feature compelling enough to listen for over an hour, but should an artist that you're not crazy about come up, I doubt you're sticking around. Good effort though. I will definately be checking back in next Wednesday
 
Wow, what feeling everyone has!

I concur that nothing the Sound has done up till now has been interesting or effective, nor is spinning records an original idea. I'd also agree that the Sound is basically KLOS with a lighter touch.

However, these album sides were interesting to me, for whatever reason. I wanted to hear them and stayed tuned in, even during Rumors! I did, though, bail out during Bangladesh. Can't stand that muddy album! (But I came back later.)

By the way, KLOS would never play Exodus, Murmur, Innervisions, Bangladesh, or Costello's debut on its Sunday night show. So hearing these albums on the air is pretty rare.
 
This is a mark of a radio station that is lost in the forrest and can't find its way out. The problem is actually the dearth of talent in the AAA format.

If either the station or the format worked, they would have a new batch of artists that they would play in heavy rotation so they could become known commodities, and hopefully, a select few would become recognizable stars that can carry the banner of the format. Sheryl Crowe and Bonnie Raitt were examples of this when AAA started to come into its own in the mid-nineties. Of course Raitt was not a newcomer, but her career was comotose until the AAA format rescued it.

Most of the new artists on the Sound seem to be trying to make "cool music" as opposed to good music and, for me at least, it is not resonating. Based on the performance of the format nationally (mostly failures with a few notable exceptions that are extremely well programmed to their home market like KFOG) I think most other listeners feel similarly, or at least have the same response. Thus, instead of providing us new product that is really worth investing and marketing, they are recycling old product to keep us tuned in for just a bit longer. It is a failing strategy.

So far, the station has done nothing to keep me from thinking that all of the naysayers on this board (including me) at the station's inception were correct about its lifespan. And I am one of a small number of people that actually want the station to be good and succeed. If they can't keep someone like me, one who is on their side, it is definitely going to be hard to get others to come on board.
 
Playing the vinyl instead of the CD version? is that really going to appeal to anybody younger than 40?

Are people over 40 supposed to be tuning into station so thy can get the old ambience of clicks and hisses of the needle and the record? And if the sound effects are fake, don't you think your target audience is smart enough to figure this out?

This promotion is so lame on so many levels.
 
Well.....there is a certain hip component to vinyl. Many current artists like Radiohead or Weezer issue vinyl versions of their LPs, young people know vinyl from hip hop, and some audiophiles still claim it has a warmer and truer sound than CDs. (Ask Neil Young, for instance.)

I was mostly surprised they actually had a functioning turntable.

But it isn't so much whether it's vinyl or not.....if you're playing 30 year old records, then you're obviously appealing to older people. Rumors is a 31 year old record. You are right....there is not enough good new music to sustain this format.

They should go for something like "Deep Tracks" on XM, but with a playlist that goes from 50s to 00s. (Deep Tracks is very much late 60s/early 70s.) Something for true music fans who are bored and like good music. (In other words, what they promised us!)
 
After giving them a chance at the outset, I haven't listened to The Sound for a few months now. I came across "vinyl day" by chance in the car and it was mildly interesting, but really seems like an act of desperation on their part (the fake hisses and pops don't help matters, either - do they think we're morons?) They also made it seem like such a big deal...one of the DJs, for example, was explaining how difficult it was to decide which side of Led Zeppelin IV to play. I guess maybe that is a big decision when you don't get to choose any of the other music played there all day long.

Anyhow, here they are doing something different, and their web site discussion forum has been down for a couple of weeks now (supposedly being revamped, but no indication of when it will return). The forum would have been a great place to announce the promotion (lame as it may be, IMHO) and generate some discussion, but they messed up that opportunity. It makes you wonder what's going on over there.
 
JPT said:
After giving them a chance at the outset, I haven't listened to The Sound for a few months now. I came across "vinyl day" by chance in the car and it was mildly interesting, but really seems like an act of desperation on their part (the fake hisses and pops don't help matters, either - do they think we're morons?) They also made it seem like such a big deal...one of the DJs, for example, was explaining how difficult it was to decide which side of Led Zeppelin IV to play. I guess maybe that is a big decision when you don't get to choose any of the other music played there all day long.

Anyhow, here they are doing something different, and their web site discussion forum has been down for a couple of weeks now (supposedly being revamped, but no indication of when it will return). The forum would have been a great place to announce the promotion (lame as it may be, IMHO) and generate some discussion, but they messed up that opportunity. It makes you wonder what's going on over there.
I'm with you and channel flipper... I basically gave up a few months ago as well. Good point about the lack of "publicizing" this with the forum down. LOL ... I've been listening to KINK-FM and WXPK 107.1 The Peak at work and in the car. (I burn CDs of them to make them 'portable') KINK especially has a better variety and much much less attention paid to classic rock tracks. Plus they play a lot of current tracks that are missing from The Sound. Can't figure that out??
 
SuperRadioFan said:
I'm with you and channel flipper... I basically gave up a few months ago as well. Good point about the lack of "publicizing" this with the forum down. LOL ... I've been listening to KINK-FM and WXPK 107.1 The Peak at work and in the car. (I burn CDs of them to make them 'portable') KINK especially has a better variety and much much less attention paid to classic rock tracks. Plus they play a lot of current tracks that are missing from The Sound. Can't figure that out??

KINK is very cool! Thanks again, SRF, for recommending them a while back. By the way, it's really odd The Sound forum has been down for so long...from a business perspective, even if they were revamping their site, they could have simply made the changeover when the new site/forum was ready - really no need for anything to be "down" at all. Instead, they've probably lost some forum contributors who may think the forum isn't coming back for a while - not a good PR move, in my opinion.

I'm wondering if they were getting tired of the mostly negative posts about their fledgling format - seems like the positive posts were few and far between, and the understandably critical ones were always front and center. I'm curious to see what happens when the new forum emerges.

Take care SRF - JP
 
JPT said:
KINK is very cool! Thanks again, SRF, for recommending them a while back. By the way, it's really odd The Sound forum has been down for so long...from a business perspective, even if they were revamping their site, they could have simply made the changeover when the new site/forum was ready - really no need for anything to be "down" at all. Instead, they've probably lost some forum contributors who may think the forum isn't coming back for a while - not a good PR move, in my opinion.

I'm wondering if they were getting tired of the mostly negative posts about their fledgling format - seems like the positive posts were few and far between, and the understandably critical ones were always front and center. I'm curious to see what happens when the new forum emerges.

Take care SRF - JP

Hey my friend, I was in a hurry replying last night and didn't realize it was you!! Yes the posts in the forum were typical of what we've seen since maybe June when us original listeners started realizing the format wasn't going to get better! Recently what typically happened was a newbee would post thrilled about discovering The Sound and was all ga-ga over them. Then a month or two later that same poster, now a "veteran listener" would admit the repetition and burn-out factor got to them. A few actually posted that The Sound was the best Classic Rock station in LA!! :D See ya!!
 
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