Quote:
Well, it's not genre-less, is it? It's all rock.

You clearly misunderstand the American musical landscape. For example, I seriously doubt that there is a commercial radio station in the US that plays more than a few hours of electronic music a week. (Well, discounting the possibility of a house station or two somewhere.) And I can't imagine a station with a different format playing all of those songs. There are several different types of rock stations in the US: the modern rock station, that plays stuff that appears on the current rock Billboard charts, the "classic rock" station that plays old rock hits from the late 60s thru the early 90s, and, uh.... Well, that may be it. Of course, that's better than the country stations, of which there is one type, which plays modern "country" hits plus a smattering of older hits, plus a smattering of "keeping up our cred" Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash tracks. Same with the "urban contemporary" (that is rap/hip-hop) stations, except they don't seem to play anything but current hits. You find that the Jazz and Classical stations are better, but they're seldom commercial, and when there is a commercial "Jazz" station, it's elevator music.

The Jack stations I've experienced do include a little more pop than that one seems to, although you might count American-style pop as being a subcategory of rock, too, except for the pop-rap. (Hip-pop?) But they certainly wouldn't play any electronica or classical or jazz or blues or country.

Basically it's like a bookstore. You go into your mega-bookstore and there are sections for Horror and SciFi and Mystery and Romance, but then there's one big section for "Fiction". As if the rest of the books in the genre-specific sections weren't also fiction. But then you go looking for "Slaughterhouse Five". Is it in "SciFi" or "Fiction"? (Of course, the real answer is that it's in "Literature".) Jack is the "Fiction" section of the bookstore. It's middle of the road crap, plus the occasional good middle of the road thing, plus the occasional mainstreamed genre find.


Edited by wfaulk (16/01/2007 13:23)
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Bitt Faulk