December 2008 update

In South Africa, quality radio programming is a problem. Maybe it’s because we live in such a culturally diverse country, but radio station wise, it is very difficult to tune into some good quality rock.

 

This does not always have to be a huge issue since I now have my Squeezebox ( see www.slimdevices.com) and can therefore tune into radio stations around the world via the internet at home. The huge issue relates to what to listen to when I am driving.

 

I have blogged before on the college radio station UJFM that can be picked up in the Johannesburg area, and they have been a bit of a life-saver in this regard. You cannot begin to describe my joy in turning on the radio at 6:45 a.m. on my way to work and hearing the new AC/DC, Kings of Leon, Killers or Metallica song. Sometimes even an old classic comes on that leaves me overjoyed. This radio station can really be a life-saver sometimes.

 

There are slots in their programming where it all goes horribly wrong for me. They do have times that they play more of the commercial type industry bubble-gum. They also have some DJ’s who are abysmal. Some of these guys cannot even pronounce the street names around Johannesburg when providing traffic updates. That kind of makes the whole point of a traffic update redundant.

 

But on the whole, this is still a great station to listen to when looking for some good rock music.

 

A few weeks ago I even entered a competition on a Sunday afternoon whereby I won the new Kings of Leon album – how cool is that? For the record, it is a very good album. I had my reservations about this album and that is why I had not already bought it, but it certainly holds up as a strong offering from a really talented band.

 

Other news for December is that most magazines on the web have got their ‘Best of 2008’ lists out. Have a browse on NME.com (there is even a blog on NME.com that tries to compile results from all over), rollingstone.com and popmatters.com for a view on what people are rating for the year. For a South African flavour check out www.isolation.tv for Lloyd Gedye’s best of 2008 summary. My favourite South African rock offering is the new one (EP only unfortunately) from Foto Na Dans. They are an incredible band doing very fresh stuff. In terms of my favourites for 2008, what is new to me may even actually be a couple of years old.

 

What I can commit to however, is that the greatest musical experience I had this year was seeing Muse live in Johannesburg! Truly truly incredible. I am not sure that I will ever get to see something like this in South Africa again.

 

In terms of albums, Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago is my recommendation for 2008 in terms of what I have heard of all the offerings out there, which probably is not much.

 

The best music related DVD that I bought this year is Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Runnin’ Down a Dream by Peter Bogdanovich.

 

Albums that I listened to a lot this year regardless of when they were released are:

 

Rodriguez – ‘Cold Fact’,

Radiohead – ‘In Rainbows’,

Muse – ‘HAARP’,

AC/DC – ‘Black Ice’.

 

All in all I thought that 2008 has been a great year for music! Let’s see what 2009 has to offer….

September update

Well, August has come and gone without me posting a single thing. I apologise to my numerous readers. There are reasons for the slowness of pace in August, none of them very pleasant, and I will not be going into them here.

 

I have not been idle, however, and have been doing a lot of reading, listening and playing around with my new toy. Having recently acquired a Squeezebox, I can only rave. What a really cool device for bringing your computer-residing music collection back into you hifi (check the following link - http://www.slimdevices.com) I love it. I also spent a lot of time re-discovering Fleetwood Mac which traced my involvement from being too young to understand that it was not considered cool to really dig them (my favourite album at the age of 11 was ‘Tusk’), to being slightly embarrassed that I was the only guy in my peer group into ‘Mirage’ and ‘Tango in the Night’, to now understanding that its OK to have the occasional guilty pleasure as long as no-one else is harmed.

 

Uncut magazine is polling their readers for their favourite Pink Floyd song, use this link

http://www.uncut.co.uk/news/pink_floyd/news/12126 to go there and nominate yours.

There is also some good news out there. First AC/DC have completed their new album and it is due out soon. It is called 'Black Ice', and the first single from it is called 'Rock 'n Roll Train'. I was fortunate enough to hear it this morning on UJFM on the way to work, and it definitely improved my Monday for me a lot.

Secondly, Metallica are also ready with their new album called 'Death Magnetic'. It have not heard it yet, but review on my favourite music web-sites are good. Admittedly after 'St. Anger' I remain sceptical, especially since I noticed on Uncut's web-site they give it four stars and going back to their review of 'St. Anger' I saw that they gave that one four stars too. I'll decide for myself, and let you guys know what I think.

Recommended Radio Station in Johannesburg

Okay, You may or may not know, but traffic in Johannesburg (that's the biggest city in South Africa in case you don't know) has become something of a nightmare. Without much in the way of alternative safe public transport systems, this leaves you sitting in your car for fairly long periods of time. Not a problem if you have some decent rock music to listen to during the ordeal. But sometimes things go wrong i.e. your CD player is empty, you have listened to Radioheads 'In Rainbows' twice already during this trip or some type of malfunction takes place. This should not be a big problem, as there is always the radio. Having travelled to a lot of the big cities in the world, I have found that you can always tune into something rocking on the radio.

Not here in Johannesburg! Or at least not until recently......

It was not always like this. A decade ago 5FM played some good rock music. Even earlier than that they played some excellent rock music. We had the likes of Chris Prior, Rafe Lavine and Barney Simon laying down some brilliant sessions. Rafe did the Heavy Rock late at night. A classmate of mine reported that he had to do pushups all night to try and keep awake waiting for Rafes show to start (it did not show - he was the skinniest guy I knew). Well those days are gone. 5FM now is strictly Pop and Hip hop, I suppose their target market likes it... Then we have 94.7 or Highveld radio, they seem to specialise in Wimp-rock. And that's about it for Rock music.

There are of course some good stations, but just not delivering the rock I need. Classic FM delivers a quality classical music format. Kaya FM delivers solidly in the Soul and RnB categories (http://www.kayafm.co.za/frontpage.php) . But that is generally not what I want.

Well ...... now we have UJFM. This is the local 'College radio' station. The DJs are kids from the University and the music is mainly Rock. Their accents tend to be great, the punchline for the station is 'Your Noise of Choice' but when they say it it comes out ' Your Norz of Chorz'. Even better, there are not many advertisements. In an hour you could hear anything from Slipknot, to Snow Patrol. In fact it was the first place that I heard the excellent Wolfmother single 'Woman'. On top of this they have a solid representation of local music too.

All is not rosy, as their signal is not that strong, and I tend to lose it for the part of my trip to and from work that passes through a dip, but such is the lack of quality rock on any other station, I sometimes prefer to listen to something like the Queens of the Stone Age's 'Little Sister' through an exreme static hiss rather than change that dial. Check out more about the station at this website: http://www.ujfm.co.za/