Friday night MULTIMEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA with R.E.M.!

Remember when radio used to be cool and you felt it had a connection to your town and the concerts you and your friends you saw? Growing up in Detroit Johnny was in a word blessed. For the top hits you had the world famous Big 8, CKLW, 800AM. For we FM connoisseurs there was the famed WWWW 106.7. Steve Dahl & Gary Meier in the morning, Howard Stern after the Dahl show then Sky Daniels to get you around at night.

Blessed.

Then slowly the radio became a corporate wasteland, void of anything good or worthwhile sans NPR. Payola not only became legal again but encouraged. You weren't served music because you called in and wanted it or even liked it but a record company was paying big to make sure that certain song made it on every 90 minutes. Local DJ's were replaced by canned showed taped elsewhere. Sure, XM and Sirius have brought back some of that DJ knowledge base and great stories and put music first but we put that on a credit card now don't we?

As we celebrate mediocrity all the boys upstairs want to see
How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free
 -- Tom Petty, 'The Last DJ'

So here's to old-style radio and the shortwave radio that hooked Johnny at age 7. Old-style radio, when the DJ could play what you asked for, what was new, or maybe an old song they liked and it didn't sound like Taylor Swift.

'Radio Free Europe from R.E.M. getting us started on 90 commercial free minutes on the Johnny Action Space Punk Radio Show