I WAS 99x...

See, sometimes I promise a "Part 2" to a post and actually get around to writing it! (It was this or complain about the Radiohead pre-sale for Atlanta being over before I could buy some nice floor seats--this is a perk to having a "grown-up" job that I was not made aware of enough in High School. Probably because it's a tiny percent of people past regular college age--say 23 and up--that go to concerts outside of the occasional, lavish and expensive nostalgia tour de jour a la The Stones.)

96 Rock was actually the first radio station I ever wanted to turn a radio dial to growing up. I can't remember exactly how long ago this was--I was in elementary school--but it was before Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" took over the airwaves. I know that because I had 96 Rock on my parents' car's preset by that time. Didn't have any idea what the song was about, and probably took the title literally and thought the singer was a tad strange ("why would he want to have sugar poured on him? Won't that attract ants? Cool!") but damn it did rock hard.

But my loyalties would be tested soon after. Blame Tone Loc for that. I'm sure I heard Run DMC at some point, and I definitely remember L.L. Cool J's "I need love" (and even roller skated to it--yes readers, I was born when Jimmy Carter was president, in the 70s and when I realize stuff like this, I feel that age) but Tone Loc's "Wild Thing" was the first rap song I remember going nuts over. Throw in partial blame to MTV for this, as somehow, despite not having cable, I caught the video on MTV. The record scratching was what did it for me. I know this because about 7 years ago when my folks wanted to loan out their LP of The Jungle Book to own of my cousins to play for her kids, they discovered again the damage an aspiring ameteur record-scratcher can do to with a regular turntable and attempts at making "Big Beat Baloo".

(They don't look it, but they're B-Boys, makin' with the freak-freak.)

This was a problem for 96Rock and me. I suddenly liked rap (well, the sanitized, slow-flow rap getting airplay at the time). They didn't play rap. Enter Power 99.7.

They played rap, but they also played tons of other cool (to me at the time) stuff. I remember in particular a late 80s/early 90s Top 5 countdown that included Guns N' Roses and Sinead O'Connor. I also remember GnR's "Welcome to the Jungle" being the first song my folks didn't much like their young son really enjoying.

(I also highly recommend keeping his book away from young, impressionable youths.)

Then, about the same time as the Wayne's World soundtrack exposed a whole new generation to headbanging and the gloriousness that is Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" they started a nightly show called On The Edge with Will Pendarvis. It was beyond cool to me not only because of the music played, but hey, the DJ has the same first name as me! (Again, remember this is tail-end of elementary school/start of grade school me. I'm marginally more mature and grown-up now.)

Power 99 became 99X right as puberty hit me. Que the amateur psychologists with theories about how we could "change together" worked. And keep reading, because there may be something to that...

Seventh Grade was probably the year I first really started identifying with music, and defining myself by the bands I liked. I also got my first guitar then, and promptly went from being one of the smart kids to being the "hiding his smarts because he saw the smart kids get the shit kicked out of them and vainly trying to define himself as the edgy/arty musician/comic book artist-type". Without a love of music or playing guitar, I was just another skinny kid with braces and a burgeoning case of acne wondering when he'd get armpit hair.

With a love of music and playing guitar, all those things were still true, but I had something else to talk about. And when lunchroom discussions of how cool every track on Pearl Jam's Ten, or both Use Your Illusion albums ended, 99X was there to introduce new and cooler (or seemingly new and seemingly cooler) bands.

About a year later, I knew (at least in my head) I was kind of cool, because, thanks to 99X I listened to Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden, and that Danzig song "Mother", and Pearl Jam, and Nirvana was already too overhyped for me.

It was also entering the mid-90s, which is when 99X was really at their peak.

In Spring of '94 one of their DJs had traveled to Australia, either for vacation or to check out the Big Day Out festival there, I forget which. While there he heard a song called "Tomorrow" by a band of barely high school aged Aussie radio contest winners on Triple J (pretty much the Aussie equivalent of KROC, crossed with 99X at their peak, and still pretty cool today) called Silverchair.

(Given what I now know about Australian faunae, this little guy would probably kill you if you touched him barefoot.)

He got a hold of either their demo, or an EP, and started playing "Tomorrow" on 99X when he was back in the states. It blew up, and other songs from the EP (including "Blind" and "Acid Rain" neither of which made Frogstomp, and I paid some $20 to get on the imported four-song "Tomorrow" EP at Media Play or Tower Records). Not only was it a great moment of a DJ sharing some music he'd discovered and found cool, it hit me on another level: here was a band made up by kids only a year or two older than I was. They were on the radio, they had a major label album coming out, Daniel Johns was getting interviewed in guitar player. If he could do it: so could I! I hadn't been playing guitar for long, and wasn't yet ready to play anything like Pantera or Metallica, or copy Slash's guitar solos. But I could play Silverchair.

Silverchair and 99X combined forces to put together an Atlanta Big Day Out in fall of '94 as well: it was my second ever concert (I'd seen the odd bill of Candlebox opening for Metallica the summer before I started high school) and it was my first "festival show." In addition to Silverchair, we got to see The Ramones, it was the last tour appearance for Shannon Hoon and Blind Mellon, and I'm pretty sure some other cool bands were on the bill too.

It was also the first show where the fun and social experience of a large concert--and the joys of lawn seats--really hit me. I went with a group of about four kids, all of us freshmen, who would eventually get together and form a lousy garage band. But while wandering around the lawn we ran into a bunch of other familiar faces--including this older girl in my chemistry class I had a bit of a thing for, who I talked into sharing her beer with me--and even some of my old neighbors I hadn't seen in years. In the years since I was a mainstay at Big Day Outs, and would insist on lawn seats for almost any show at Lakewood.

Best time had at a Big Day Out: a rainy afternoon in the later 90s, in which my skinny ass, with lots of help, did a decent job in a large, muddy mosh pit to the unlikely musical backdrop of Poe, and later, the Replacements...followed by great sets from the headliners: Beck and 311. The whole thing probably cost all of $15 bucks.

Best line-up: While I dug that Beck/311 double bill, the best line-up I saw was years later, when Big Day Out moved back from the Conyers Horse Park to Lakewood--but with a locals only stage and side stage. They had David Ryan Harris's new (at the time) band Brand New Immortals, and my future buddies Left Front Tire on the local stage, Deftones and Incubus on the side stage, and Green Day and Stone Temple Pilots on the main stage.

The downside to that massive thing was I was struck by how it didn't feel as fun as the earlier big day outs. My group kept getting split up, and while I ran into some other familiar faces, the Huge Group Getting Together and Having Fun vibe ended for me with the 98 Big Day Out over in Conyers.

(And I was primarily in Conyers to see these guys play this song, which the the soundtrack to my picking which college to attend.)

And if I couldn't make it out to a show, or, my folks wouldn't let me (this happened more in the middle school years), or if I couldn't get time off from work, 99X broadcast a lot of these shows live (sometimes even with cursing, and without commercials.)

For years I treasured the two cassette tapes I recorded Pearl Jam's summer '94 show at the Fox Theater on. Years later, when they gathered a ton of bands (including Collective Soul and Marvelous 3) at the Atlanta Raceway for a huge show, I was able to at least hear on the radio the great cover of "I will follow" with Butch Walker and the dude from Eve 6 helping out Collective Soul on vocals. (By the way, I highly recommend all old-school fans head over to Marvieworld.com and check out the live audio they have of this, and other shows.)

(And in this photo, Mr. Walker gives a lesson in stage presence while Tobias Funke hides in the lower righthand corner.)

Every Sunday around 9 or 10 they'd have a Live X and we'd get at least an hour of live music from some cool band. And if I plugged my headphones in (so the folks couldn't hear) later on I could listen to the Pleasure Dome (and now we get back to the whole puberty thing). It was like a local version of the Dr. Drew show more or less. They had Yvonne Monet (who was best known for playing dance music on Saturday nights) and Dr. Roger Libby, and, as public school sex education was teaching me nothing beyond "when the teacher asks for any questions, it doesn't mean she'll actually answer any of them" it was this one radio show that helped me realize "wait, you won't go blind if you do that," and "wait, sex isn't necessarily bad or evil outside of marriage," and "wait, girls are horny too?"

The glory days of 99X for me were a lot like the stories above: I slowly learned to be less of a conservative headcase, and got to rock out to some great music (plus some music that hasn't aged as well, but I can say I never saw Limp Bizkit live in my defense.)

I saw Silverchair and wanted to be them. I felt very cool seeing a local metal band called Sevendust tear up the local stage at Music Midtown before they'd blow up nationally. And I remember Butch Walker inviting 20,000 people to come by Smith's Olde Bar after he was done playing--and Butch and several hundred people doing just that (including yours truly.)
In short: 99X cared, 99X was worth listening to, 99x Rocked. And the will be missed.

Apparently "No Longer On The Air" Also Means "Everything Alternative."

Ok, so I've not exactly been the biggest supporter of Atlanta's "only alternative" station, 99X, in the recent past, but I didn't want to see the station totally disappear from the airwaves.

By the end of next week, if I turn to 99.7 on my car radio, I'll get the station formerly known as Q100, and the same crappy playlist.

Now, 99X's playlist of late has been pretty poor, and had been terrible for a while (though I am apparently in the minority at finding Fred Toucher's wannabe Howard Stern shtick tiresome, they did have Butch Walker in for great and hilarious in-studio appearances--particularly the morning Butch cleaned house on Rock-And-Roll Jeopardy--which is far better than much of what they've trotted out lately) but to kick the whole station off the air to compete with the the All T-Pain, All the Time stylings of 95.5 The Beat?

Well, let's break this down, pseudo-Julius Caesar-style: First I will bury 99X--or at least point out the many ways they went wrong--then transition into some things they didn't have control playing a factor. And then grab your hankies because there'll be some nostalgic praise for the "good ol' days."

First, let's go back to that morning show. Now maybe I'm alone in this, but when I turn to an FM station billed as playing music, what I most want to hear is: music. Politics? Well there's WSB and NPR for that. Sports? 680 The Fan and 790 the Zone have that covered. What I don't really give much of a crap about in the morning:
Whether or not Crash Clark contracted any number of sexual diseases from desperate women at American Pie.
Hearing some potentially abused-in-her-childhood wanna-be softcore porn starlet kiss up to Fred Toucher while desperate guys called into a half-ass version of the Dating Game.
Hearing clips and commentary from the crappy shows watched by the guy who sounded like Jimmy but was actually Jenner's wife.
Reading the headlines off TMZ.com and passing them off as "Celebrity Sleaze" in between what this past fall was near constant plugging for the website's pseudo-ET show on Fox.

I remember the original Morning X (the Barnes, Leslie, and Jimmy version) being better, but that could just be because it was years and years ago...and the Big Day Outs then were massively better. When you can see a show with Beck and 311 for under $20, you tend to care less when Barnes spends half an hour talking about his tennis game.

But overall...I'd like to just hear music in the morning. 95.5 does sort of grasp this concept, as the few times I've been bored enough by other stations on the dial they seem to almost always have music on. Downside: they seem to have a 10-songs maximum playlist and since summer at least 30% must have T-Pain involved in some way (it used to be Akon.)

But it's not as simple as "play more music, less talk." The playlist for 99X is probably the largest factor in their demise. It can't look good to either advertisers or listeners with any functioning memory when the promo announces "99X: NEW MUSIC" and then starts playing "Come as you are" (a song now over 15 years old) or something by The Cure (which in some cases would be more than two decades old.)

Trying to have it both ways playlist-wise seems to lead to death for rock stations in Atlanta. How do you play to the nostalgia for the music you started out on, and play new artists or new songs?

The easy answer is to blame Cumulus Media for being to hard-headed, compared to the relative open-mindness of Susquehana (the previous station owners). But the playlist started turning at least semi-sour long before Cumulus came along in 2005-2006. Remember, they were the station that kept playing Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit (and worse, Creed) long after most of the music-listening world realized what massive tools Durst and Scott Stapp were.

(By the way, I'm not doing all of this from memory--much of the info here is coming from the 99X Wikipedia page, which I highly recommend, if only to take a nice guided jog down memory lane.)

Perhaps 99X's problem is merely synecdochic of larger problems--in the major label music industry, and in so-called "modern rock" radio in particular. Overall, the trends in album sales across the board point down. Music execs would be best served to quickly forget those heady days of the late 90s/early 2000s when a #1 release would move enough copies to be certified platinum after one week's time. Now if you can sell 30,000 copies of an artist's new CD in a week: welcome to the Billboard Top 10. Now the potential reasons for this (blame piracy--no blame the recession--no blame the fact that many of the CDs released and hyped just aren't that good) deserve there own post, so I won't get into them further. But people are buying less CDs, and in particular, there haven't been any real new "rock" artists to break through at all in the past few years.

Disagree? Well take a look at the current Modern Rock charts. A good 3/4ths of that list is artists who were around when I was in college (dating myself note: I'm class of 2003--so five years ago) and standbys like the Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been around for even longer. The list of "new rock" grows slimmer still when you realize that some of these bands are just leftovers of late-90s acts (Angels and Airwaves and +44 are remnants of Blink 182.) Maybe the likes of Pitchfork's favorites and "blog bands" are too esoteric (or in the case of some blog bands, just plain shitty) to play on the air. But why did Modest Mouse suddenly get radio airplay 4 years ago and I've never heard 99X play The Arcade Fire? What chance does an "alternative" station have when the OC soundtracks were far more eclectic and interesting? And most of these songs can't be dismissed on bad production values or length either. Songs I'd classify as "alternative" that I thing should be on a radio somewhere right now, off the top of my head:
Athlete - "Airport Disco" (Coldplay if they remembered how to occasionally rock out, and were a lot sexier, musically.)
Augie March - "One Crowded Hour" (it was the song of the year for Triple J in Australia and their musical tastes aren't that different from our own.)
Dredg - "Zebraskin"
Devin Townsend Band - "Vampira" (well, really better around halloween).
The Bastard Suns - "My Pint"
Groove Stain - "With You" (gotta give props to some neglected local rock bands...99X should've played more Trances Arc and Second Shift as well.)
Dragonforce - "through fire and flames" (thousands of Guitar Hero 3 fans would like it anway.)
Butch Walker - and song of "The Rise and Fall Of..." off 1969's website, or the demos off his myspace. 99X and The Marvelous 3 used to be like this, and unlike the station, Butch is still kicking it as hard as he ever did.
Pure Reason Revolution - "Nimos and Tambos" killer male-female harmonies

Anything by Ryan Adams or Rilo Kiley (sorry, was cheating a bit and scanning my iTunes list...but the I can't recall either being played on 99X, and for that matter I don't remember hearing Damien Rice since Cumulus bought the station and ended the iPod weekends.)

In short: it looks to me (and the folks at Idolator) that modern rock is dying as it breaks no new artists, ticks off listeners looking for something new by going down the nostalgia road, and generally limiting its potentially vast playlist for the same ready-made mix of Foo Fighters and VH1-Classic approved tracks off Nirvana's Nevermind. Maybe the "internet only" 99x will learn something from this.

(And now I look up and see things are getting a bit unwieldy here, so come back later for the happy and nostalgic part 2.)

99X: You Call That Big?

Since I misplaced my CD case in the middle of last week, and as I'm possible the only liberal-leaning, college-degree-holding twentysomething in all of Georgia that doesn't own an iPod, I spent an inordinate amount of commute- and lunch time listening to the radio.

The first thing that struck me is that there is a cosmetic surgery center that specializes in varicose vein reduction/elimination. They're called Vein Solutions and this name is spoken without a hint of irony or shame or anything on their radio ads.

The second, and larger point, is that I think 99X, the station that was #1 on my radio preset (kids, ask your parents/older siblings) throughout high school (and its predecessor Power 99 before it), well, WNNX seems to not have the pull it once did.

Why?

Check out the line-up for the reconstituted Big Day Out.

Needless to say, it's not on my list of concerts to attend.

I remember attending the last Big Day Out I attended, back in the fall of 1998, at the Conyers Horse Park, and it had multiple stages and included everything from radio-friendly (and still played even on Star94) fare like the Goo-Goo Dolls to underground-faves-turned-one-hit-wonders like The Urge, and of course Fuel, which it should be noted to any budding biographers was my favorite band at the time (pretty much from the first time I heard the demo/Porcelain version of "Shimmer" on).

Other years included big-time names like Beck and 311 (on the same bill no less, and after Odelay had been released), and the last Big Out I attended, while back at lakewood, still had a second stage (Linkin Park and Incubus and Disturbed all played the second stage) while Green Day and Stone Temple Pilots hit the main stage.

So color me underwhelmed with Chris Cornell and Interpol and...who cares really. I keep hoping at least a side stage will be added (side note: my first time seeing LFT live was at that massive two-stage Lakewood BDO.)

I guess I'm a bit sad too. I had many great times (not all of which I can easily remember) at BDOs of years past. The whole thing started after 99X more or less broke Silverchair to US audiences (one of the DJs picked up an EP with "Tomorrow" on it in Austrailia and played it.) I don't think Silverchair's US live debut was at the first American Big Day Out (it's been the Coachella/Lollapallooza of the outback for years and years), but that first BDO, waaaay back in 1995 was my first festival show. It was good. The other BDOs were good. The current one...well...maybe cutting ties with Clear Channel has drawbacks beyond the freedom to replace Jimmy Baron with a clone that sounds just like him and the freedom to old Nirvana songs at a frequency dangerously approaching 96 Rock's tendancies towards old Ozzy songs...