I Wasn't Listening

Last weekend, my wife and I were in the car and said, "Have you heard?"
I waited, then it became apparent with her faint gesture that I should be paying attention to what was coming out of the radio. It was sports-talk. Odd, since that's one of the formats my wife tends to eschew almost completely, but perhaps she was hoping to catch me up on some late-breaking sports news to which only she had been privy up until that moment. She was patient with my confusion, then she finally broke the news. It wasn't about sports, exactly. "It's KFOG."
The FM dial was on the frequency for World Class Rock, but the sounds were scratchy voices calling in to complain about the starting lineup. Where were the album-oriented sounds I had become accustomed to over the past twenty-six years?
KFOG was one of the balms to ease my longing for my home in Boulder. It was a radio station that sounded like home to me. On this blog you may have read about my love affair with this institution. Because that's what it was. For thirty-six years, it was the free-form source for music that sounded like someone was putting it together on the fly.
That's a compliment.
The disc jockeys, because they were still moving around vinyl and compact discs back in those days, were picking music and responding to what listeners wanted to hear. The inklings of what became a mass marketed phenomenon, "World Class Rock," had its roots in Boulder at KBCO and found its way much in the same way I did to the Bay Area. It sounded like someone was playing music for me. And my friends. It was the sound of my mornings. It was the sound of my weekends.
I resented any and all attempts to mess with the format of my friends playing music for me. I loved that I made a mild habit out of calling in to win tickets to concerts. And this wasn't the "lucky tenth caller" stuff either. This was the "can you answer this question about" deal.
And now all that music and fun is gone. Replaced by sports-talk radio. Because it's business. I know that every one of those attempts to bring in personalities and sounds that didn't exactly fit the mold was a business decision. Putting on a radio show isn't free. Advertising pays for those folks to sit and spin discs. When I drifted away from my morning ritual after some high-level tinkering with the morning show, I fell out of touch with KFOG. It was still a button on our car radio, where I could find some soothing tunes to make those trips across town a little less like trips across town and more like sitting in my living room.
Listening to CDs. Or Spotify. Or some other radio station that sounds like where I live.
My home doesn't sound like sports-talk. Most of the time.
Aloha, KFOG. Thanks for all that beautiful noise.