I'm looking forward to trying some of these links.
If you have reasonable Real Player or Windows Media Player capability, I highly reccommend a quite new station from the BBC called 6music. It's the nearest thing I've found to the old days of the spirit. You can go there at:
www.bbc.co.uk/6music
I know Ivar's a big fan too.
It's one of a few newly launched Internet radio stations launched by the BBC (also available by satellite and DAB within the UK only).
It's a real 24-hour real time radio station, with real deejays and real shows. Some of the shows are archived and for these playlists are available. It's squarely aimed at our demographic playing lots of old Jam, Boomtown Rats, Talking Heads etc. but lots of new stuff too like The Strokes, Radiohead (Radiohead are going to program all the music on the station for Christmas week!!!!) Colddplay etc. I'm listening to it right now and in the past hour I've heard Kraftwerk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Chemical Brothers and Suede. They also chuck in the odd James Brown, Bob Dylan or a bit of techno.
Just like the Spirit days the deejays all have their own biases and you get used to their quirks. I don't care much for Bob Harris' show, but I love Liz Kershaw, Steve Lamaq and Andrew Collins. They're some famous old names like Tom Robinson, Suggs (of Madness fame) and Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf fame) who all have shows too. I think Lemmy still has a heavy metal show too. Not my bag but - hey it's Lemmy!
Because it's the BBC it all sounds very professional and there are no ads (thankyou British TV licence payers!) and they have their own awesome archives to trawl from. Most importantly people talk about music and sound like human beings, not robots.
You may also want to wander over to Radio 1, the BBC's mainstream pop station. There's an alternative section that's also good and still features the legendary John Peel, still going in his sixties and helpfully archived by the website.
The only drawbacks are: the deejays talk a bit more than North American radio. It's obviously very biased towards British music and British things which some people might find a bit parochial. It's also wierd hearing their morning show at 2:00 in the morning and their all night show in prime time.
This reccommendation has absolutely nothing to with the fact I work for the BBC these days. I'm a news correspondent - completely different field.
Nice to meet some of you at the reunion!!