Spirit of Radio BBS

Reposted from another radio-related board:

one point: when the most played song on CFNY is by nickelback and most played song on CHUM-FM is by bon jovi, you're going to have a harder time getting radioheads to tolerate these stations (which sell themselves as the two trendiest in town) ... in turn, less to squawk about in a forum.

*****

from All Music Guide
Nickelback \"All the Right Reasons\"
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

With their fourth album, All the Right Reasons, Nickelback ditches any pretense of being a grunge band and finally acknowledges they're a straight-up heavy rock band. Not that they've left the angst of grunge behind: they're a modern rock band living in a post-grunge world, so there's lots of tortured emotions threaded throughout the 11 songs here. But where their previous albums roiled with anger — their breakthrough \"How You Remind Me\" was not affectionate, it was snide and cynical — there's a surprisingly large sentimental streak running throughout All the Right Reasons, and it's not just limited to heart-on-sleeve power ballads like \"Far Away\" and \"Savin' Me,\" the latter being the latest entry in their soundalike sweepstakes. No, lead singer/songwriter Chad Kroeger is in a particularly pensive mood here, looking back fondly at his crazy times in high school on \"Photograph\" (\"Look at this photograph/Every time I do it makes me laugh/How did our eyes get so red?/And what the hell is on Joey's head?\"), lamenting the murder of Dimebag Darrell on \"Side of a Bullet\" (where a Dimebag solo is overdubbed), and, most touching of all, imagining \"the day when nobody died\" on \"If Everyone Cared\" (which would be brought about \"If everyone cared and nobody cried/If everyone loved and nobody lied\"). Appropriately enough for an album that finds Kroeger's emotional palette opening up, Nickelback try a few new things here, adding more pianos, keyboards, and acoustic guitars to not just their ballads, but a few of their big, anthemic rockers; they even sound a little bit light and limber on \"Someone That You're With,\" the fastest tune here and a bit of relief after all the heavy guitars. All this makes for a more varied Nickelback album, but it doesn't really change their essence. Sure, they stretch a little bit, but they still favor clumsy, plodding riffs, still incessantly rewrite the same chords and melody, still harmonize exactly the same way on every song, Kroeger still sounds as if he's singing with a hernia, he still writes shockingly stupid lines that make you long for the days of such subtle double-entendres as \"she's using her head again\" (such as \"She'd be pissed if she could see the parts of you that I've been kissing,\" \"It's just a little hard to leave/When you're going down on me\" — and, mind you, this album does not carry a Parental Advisory sticker, even though \"a**holes\" is prominently used in two songs), and despite the attempted sarcasm of \"Rockstar,\" he still shows no discernible sense of humor. Which means, despite all their newly developed relative nuances, Nickelback remain unchanged: they're still unspeakably awful.

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Does the Edge have any credibility left after playing this band over and over?
From NOW magazine:

Despite being one of the most contrived and unimaginative bands, like, maybe ever, Nickelback are still one of Canada's biggest exports. Mystifying? Yes. A cruel joke by God? Perhaps. But since this is their third album, it's unlikely that they'll just #### off any time soon. And so Chad Kroeger and company have written another bunch of songs that sound like all the other songs they've ever written. Perpetually stuck in a mid-90s grunge mindset, they go through the motions with a slew of dull and limp riffs over top of by-the-numbers \"modern\" rock. Factor in Kroeger's ridiculously comical singing voice and lyrics that would embarrass most 14-year-olds and you have one of the most forgettable albums of the year.

*****

broken social scene, evidently not being played on 102.1 (maybe featured now? i don't know) sold more in toronto last week than n-back (per soundscan) ... there's really no discussion to be had anymore.
instead of being something that would be pointed out in a newspaper, or discussed furiously amongst music fans (or, dare i say it, even mentioned on my website) it's just ... message board trivia, i guess.
Link: http://www.paved.ca/paved/2005/10/bss_meter.html

*****

They'll probably add [Broken Social Scene] now that they see there might be an appetite for it. It's how they operate these days...let other outlets break the artists, then play 'em when it's safe.

*****

Damn straight. CHUM FM had Arcade Fire in rotation before Edge.

I have yet to hear the new Broken Social Scene album on Sludge 102 at all, but they played You Forgot it in People fairly extensively.

Thank gawd for small mercies.

There's an interview with Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre in this weeks U of T paper The Varisty. Thought this was interesting:

NK: Canadian radio stations are bound by Canadian content rules; they’re supposed to be playing around 35% homegrown talent. Do you find any irony in the fact that U.S. and U.K. media are usually much quicker to discover more eclectic Canadian bands like yourselves?

SN: I’m no radio specialist, but from what I gather it’s just that Canadian radio is less developed, and there’s not a lot of good alternative radio stations. The States and the UK have a lot of great college radio stations that you can actually listen to! (UofT, take note!) Perhaps it’s because we only have generic top 40 radio stations over here…

So they had the CASBY awards last night, and the favourite \"new\" album was Funeral by Arcade Fire. Guess this is the definition of \"new\" by current 102.1 standards: an album that came out on September 14th, 2004. 2004! A year and 2 months ago. I guess it's new to them as it had already been discovered widely in the U.S. months before getting any notice in Toronto. Even more ironically, CHUM FM played it before the Edge. How times have changed.