STORY OF MY LIFE - Chicago's Alternative

This past week marked the end of a long running hometown FM radio station, Chicago's Alternative: Q101... and I for one couldn't give a rat's ass.

Now don't get it twisted... 101.1 on the dial & I have had some glorious times, Christ, we practically came up together. Can you imagine actually listening to that station when Nine Inch Nails was something no one else knew about? When not only did they play Nirvana on the hour as if they're the next hot thing, but they actually were...

shit, I can't remember exactly, but something like 5-6pm on Q101 in the mid '90s was dubbed “Pearl-Jam-O-Rama” and I damn near crashed the brakeless Ace Hardware delivery van during this hour on SERVERAL late autumn afternoons belting Not For You at the top of my lungs scorched from the ditch weed exhaust of toxic homemade plumbing bowls. Giant plumes of smoke & teary eyes, hacking and tearing up more at every failed attempt to nail Eddie Vedder's grueling howl with my crackling adolescent voice-box...

With that said, for a very long time now my fondness towards Q101 has revolved in the distant past... back to when the music they played most was as fresh & uncertain as the first dates it soundtracked... when gas & cigarettes were actually affordable to kids with nothing to do but drive in circles and dream big. It reminds me of high school football games and lots of laughs... Smashing Pumpkins concerts & Mancow's Morning Madhouse.

But like everything that was once on the pulse of now, now nonchalantly becomes yesterday and all those yesterdays quickly become a decade and counting... And if I had to guess, I'm fairly sure that's how long it's been since Q101 has meant anything to me besides being a surefire way to hear everything in my iTunes collection that I played to its grave, 15 years ago.

And speaking of iTunes collections, I also lost that last week. Well, not completely, it's backed up... but the hurricane we awoke to in Chicago last Monday morning destroyed the hard drive that boasted my 30,000+ song labyrinth and as of right now I have no intentions of restoring.

In my endless pursuit to streamline my life, I realize that mp3s are the one entity that I still hoard... and why? If I have any interest continuing my music evolution it's fairly easy to see the tags on the crumbling wall which suggest that much like porn, internet music is going the way of streaming.

There's damn near nothing that I can't find on the internet and legally stream for free right now via sites like Pandora, Slacker, Grooveshark, Spotify, Bandcamp, Hype Machine and Soundcloud... just to name a few. shit, even if you insist on someone else doing all the work, then just aim your browsers towards something like turntable.fm or KCRW's 24 hour music stream.

But if five years ago is a tad too close to the future for you and you're still under the impression that Q101 was the bees knees in 2011, then take your ass to KROQ.com and stream Los Angeles' significantly superior version of the same shit... hell, you can even get a free smart phone app to push it right through your car stereo if you're not borderline retarded. Just kick back, relax in your traffic jam & pretend it's the mighty Pacific right out there to the left instead of a clan of welfare babies preparing to jack the brand new iPod you like to pull out on public transportation like a beacon of cool.

So, for all you sad saps torn up over the death of your FM radio god, I say, quit'cher bitchin'.

But SYFFAL aren't a bunch of snobs, so as a gesture of good faith, Joel & I have recognized the gloom on a lot of old faces around Chicagoland since the signal died as an opportunity to not only lend a hand but also capitalize on you pitiful Fucks misfortune.

We will be hosting a worst of the '90s / best of Q101 cassette tape sale in Yorkville this Saturday afternoon... just follow the giant flannel flown at half-mast and the yard signs that say, “Mike & Joe fucking suck!"

See ya there shitheads.