Happy New Year to all and congrats on surviving 2011. I hope everyone is starting the new year off better than the last.
Koz and effect
In 2009, WNWV (107.3-FM) the Wave concluded that the smooth jazz/adult contemporary/R&B format it rode for more than 20 years just wasn’t cutting it ratings wise. The station decided to switch to the Triple A (Adult Album Alternative) format, which mixed a sprinkling of classic rock (think Steely Dan not Black Sabbath) with 1990s alt-rock and more contemporary indie and alt-rock bands such as Coldplay and My Morning Jacket.
The switch drew outrage from smooth-jazz fans (that sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it?). I got calls and emails and an actual analog, handwritten letter from upset, angry and confused folks who were plenty heartbroken that they wouldn’t be able to get their daily fixes of Dave Koz and Michael Buble. I’m sure there were some doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms that were equally devastated.
Well, after two equally desultory years of spinning David Gray and Snow Patrol tunes, WNWV was sold by Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting Co. to Akron’s own Rubber City Radio Group, which already counts classic rock station WONE, country WQMX and sports/news talk station WAKR (Expansion in this economy? You go, RCRG!). And with a new owner comes a new, old format as RCRG decided to return 107.3 the Wave to its original smooth-jazz format Wednesday.
The smooth-jazz format isn’t as popular as it was back in the early part of the century. In the past five years, many stations around the nation have dropped the format. Country is the current king of terrestrial radio formats, according to Arbitron’s Radio Today 2011 report, which doesn’t even mention a specific smooth jazz format. But here in Northeast Ohio, smooth-jazz artists have long been a steady concert draw, and WNWV had many, many loyal listeners.
Rubber City Radio Group is essentially flouting a couple of years worth of national trends in the terrestrial radio industry to serve YOU, so here’s your chance to make your voices and listening preferences heard (smoothly, of course), Northeast Ohio smooth jazz/adult contemporary fans.
Epically awful honors
Congratulations to Cleveland metal band Alternate Reality for “winning” Yahoo! Music’s Most Epically Awful Video of 2011: Even Worse Than Rebecca Black for the video of its song The King That Never Was, beating other “epically awful” videos, including Black’s Friday, Tonje Langeteig’s I Don’t Wanna Be A Crappy Housewife and George Michael’s True Faith.
The video (http://youtu.be/ Nhq1uWY9wHg), a hilarious mix of Camelot-themed sword and sorcery with a healthy heaping of Spinal Tap and Tenacious D-like ridiculousness, is pretty darn awful but also wildly entertaining. The band, which features lawyer brothers Steve and Bob Delchin on vocals and guitar, respectively, along with Jon Engeman on bass and Bob “Savage” Schwartz on drums, appears to play it completely straight while raven-haired sorceresses and various dudes in knight costumes engage in sword fights and other visual silliness.
The video has more than 800,000 hits and Steve Delchin graciously accepted the award with a sensible sense of humor, according to a recent Cleveland Plain Dealer article.
For my money, the No. 2 video on the list, Popstar Trishii’s (aka crazy-eyed, over-tanned attention whore Trisha Paytas who appeared on MTV’s My Strange Addiction and Syfy’s Who Wants to Be a Superhero) truly awful sub-Ke$ha dance tune Kiss Kiss is much, much worse. Also George Michael’s egregiously molasses-paced, autotuned cover of New Order’s True Faith is also worse if only because the former pop star should know better.
Reggae interruptus
So my lovely wife and I attempted to witness some real live Jamaicans playing some real live contemporary reggae last Friday night at downtown nightspot Club Rose, but unfortunately never got the chance.
The “urban” nightclub (you know what that euphemism means, dontcha?) is a pretty nice-looking spot. It’s clean with a spacious dance floor, a decent bar and sound system and a VIP section (complete, with the requisite stripper pole). And, though there weren’t many people inside, it seemed like we were going to be treated to a good show.
But, just as the band was setting up (about 90 minutes later than the advertised start time, but it’s a reggae tour, so that wasn’t a big shock), four police cars suddenly appeared with a gaggle of officers who all entered the club with one offering those of us standing outside a curt, “random club check” as a reason.
I’ve worked in clubs for four years in Atlanta and when cops show up in bunches and park their cruisers at several different angles, it’s generally cause for worry and it’s never random.
A few minutes later, the show and the club were shut down for some … uh … inconsistencies with some of its licenses.
It was a big bummer, but to their credit, Club Rose did give refunds to us concertgoers with only a little bit of fuss. Hopefully, they’ll get their business worked out with the city and try again because it’s a good space to see live music to which folks will actually dance.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached by phone at 330-996-3758 or by email at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com. He can also be found on Facebook and he writes a blog on Ohio.com.
