Tuesday, March 23, 2010

More on WOXY's Shutdown

An excellent article on the latest situation and some words from Mike Taylor here:

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=169548183

As someone said on woxy.com's discussion board, "I was ready (for them to go off the air) in 2004 and 2006. I wasn't ready today". The difference of course being that there was warning both on both previous occasions - sometimes months. Not so with today's abrupt silence.

Well Crap - WOXY is Silenced - Again

In the latest in a series ups and downs since they ended their terrestrial reign at 97.7 FM here in Cincinnati in 2004, WOXY (Bam! The future of rock and roll!) is off the air (internet) again, just six months after they moved to Austin, to be "closer to the music":

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100323/ENT03/100323004/1055/NEWS/WOXY.com+shutting+down

I'd like to say I was shocked, but as I said, things have been rocky for WOXY for the last six years. It seems it's very difficult to be a viable commercial concern at the cutting edge of music, sad as it is to say that.
I hope this isn't the really real final farewell this time.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

RIP, Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton, the most influential musician whose name nobody recognized, passed away last night.
Chilton scored his first hit (at 16!) with the Boxtops' "The Letter", and later went on to further acclaim, if not much fame, with Big Star. Never heard of Big Star? If you ever watched "That 70's Show", their song "In the Street" was re-made for the theme of that show, and those of you who are long time alterna pop fans will know that the Replacements immortalized Alex Chilton in their song of the same name.
Alex and a reformed Big Star, now featuring Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from The Posies, had been gigging recently, and were supposed to play at this year's SXSW festival in Austin, TX.
Here's a link to a report from SXSW which discusses the impact of Alex's life, and death. Lots of good clips and info here:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/popcandy/post/2010/03/rip-alex-chilton/1

To quote Paul Westerberg, "I never travel far without a little Big Star".