radio

Changing the radio, surfing the channels, is like having access to a representative sampling of the wide and strange vista of late 20th-and-early-21st-century popular culture - the country western lament, the political discussions, the throb of "urban" basslines and 808 kicks, a sampling of rock subcultures - classic, oldies, corporate alternative, as well as late-night rambles, consumerist come-ons, saccharine, nostalgia for an age that never was, and then in but one or two solitary stations, classical radio as a lone voice of pre-modern high art faltering in a vast sea of sound.