...and the band played on

First off Happy New Year!

This year taught me that some folks should really consider retirement. Among those on the list, I include Brett Favre and Dick Clark. Good old Dick Clark may have a Rockin' New Years special, but it has been many years since the man has done any rockin' whatsoever. I don't dislike the guy, and he is the spirit of the televised new year but it's hard to watch him struggle through another new years and then have the camera cut away to an idiotically grinning Ryan Seacrest surrounded with miscellaneous pop stars and about 50,000 shit-faced New Yorkers. It may be time to pass the torch.

But I digress.

Most peroidicals are welcoming the new year by first posting the rememberances of those lost in 2008. Well, TWIS too has a member of the Spokane community I'd like to mourn, one who's end came much too soon. As of 2009, Spokane has lost its only hip-hop radio station.

Sure it's no Edmund Hillary, or Tim Russert, but to the average joe a radio station is a big deal. Back in the big town, there has been at least one or two proud stations airing the phat beats. Why I remember the good ol' days switching the home radio presets to KPLZ and KUBE when my parents weren't home so I could hear the latest Boyz II Men track. And here too in Spokane, we had a station that I would settle on when I had my fill of Classic Rock, Country or Christian Babbling.

I sensed the end was near when over the holiday season, the station temporarily switched to a "holiday music" only format. That's right, obnoxious christmas music 24 hours a day pumped right into your ears over the air. There are only so many times you can play the Chipmunks christmas special. I kept the station on my preset list, hoping that by the 26th, this would all blow over and I could continue to count on the radio to provide me with the latest from TI and Lil' Wayne.

But alas, it is no more.

Instead, the station has become 96.9 Howling Coyote Country. That's right, insult to injury. Country music has assimiliated my only refuge; destroyed my only oasis of civilization in the desert. Country music has grown from the folksy songs of women singing of cheating men, and men of cheating cards into a monstrous multimedia juggernaut. It's no longer the Grand Ol' Opry, it's now the Grand Ol' CMT. Granted, most of the hip-hop produced today is mindless drivel and I have a hard time defending most of it. But it would be nice to judge for myself how badly written the new Jay-Z lyrics are or how horribly over produced the new Kanye West song is. Instead I can now press scan on the car radio and run the entire spectrum without so much as a snippet of a sprinkler high-hat beat.

So those of you blessed to be a in a musically diverse area, don't take this for granted! Embrace every day with a helping of Akon, or Method Man. Cherish each moment of hip-hopness like it was your last before we are consumed in the apocaplypse caused by Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney. As for me, I'm going to go through my CD's and make sure the car is stocked with Wu-Tang, Outkast, Tribe and Common. It's a sad state of affairs, but hopefully an enterprising young man with a few bucks in his pocket will decide that Spokane is big-city enough to deserve some funky fresh beats. I'll hunker down until that day comes.

I think my pal Biz Markie said it best:

This is another hit from Biz Markie
Dedicated to the radio, not he or she
Be-cause it's time for them to get recognized
This is my version of the Nobel Peace Prize
That's why I'm comin out my face like this
Far as negativity, you never get dissed
If it wasn't for you, nobody would know
That's why this is something for the radiohhhh