Now and then I'll hear an old favorite on KTBZ. "Plush", maybe. I still remember the first time I ever heard that song, and it was on a very short lived station I used to pick up when I lived closer to Tomball. Back then it was called "Bob 105.3" or something like that, and I had just bought my first car. I wasn't really into music then, but this car, a scrappy little Cobalt, had a pretty good little radio in it, and I'd flip around, seeing who's broadcasting where, and I heard this song "Plush" for the first time. And this was 2007, you know, this was 15 years after the song came out, but it's the first time I'd ever heard it.
So of course they shut that station down, but I'd hear that song (Plush) elsewhere now and then, and eventually I figured out the name, and I bought it online, and later I got the album at a Half Price Books.
A few years later I was going to work one day, now I'm living closer to Bellaire, and my trusty GM radio was tuned to 103.7, KHJK. And I heard some song called "6 Underground". I knew that because I had an iPhone, and I had that Shazam app, and it kept saying the band was named "Sneaker Pimps", and I thought the app was having some kind of problem, so I kept redoing it, but it kept coming up the same name and all. And it was accurate, it was a strange band, with a strange name, but an amazing album.
So of course they shut that station down.
Before they shut down KHJK they flipped KHPT to The Zone. And here was a station that aired "Plush" plenty enough, and they spun "6 Underground" a LOT, and they even, one day, they had both of these songs back to back, and Katy Dempsey was the live DJ at the time, they had DJs by that point. The radio would lose stereo for a half second now and then, and the reception would fuzz out now and then, and none of that made any difference. I loved that little GM radio that day.
So of course they shut that station down, too.
Obsolescence claimed the GM radio, and a junkyard later claimed the GM car. Who will claim the last FM radio station? From what current or future medium will someone like myself come to understand and appreciate even one song, new or old? Will I have heard "Plush" or "6 Underground" through some other means by now, or would I still be living each day - mostly working by myself as a computer programmer - in silence?
I think that's the last thing I have to say ever about that whole debacle. I hope the bastards who listen to "The Eagle" are enjoying their "slightly clearer" reception on 106.9, but I hope everyone at Cox rots in hell, except for the old Zone PM, whose name escapes me at the moment.
