Two good music stories this morning.
One is the "Jack" format. I feel every so slightly ahead of the curve on this one. Last year, while riding the subway in Toronto, I saw a poster advertising JACK radio with all sorts of artists swirling around demonstrating what a darn eclectic format it was. I missed the point and thought J-A-C-K were the call letters for the station and tried to figure out what the naming protocol was for Canadian broadcasters.
Nope, "JACK" (which American stations are importing from Canada) means eclectic, broad playlists. The country version is called "HANK". The Chicago Tribune thoughtfully published a playlist:
The Doors, ''Love Me Two Times''
Switchfoot, ''Dare You to Move''
Sonny and Cher, ''I Got You Babe''
a-ha, ''Take on Me''
Toad the Wet Sprocket, ''All I Want''
Manfred Mann's Earth Band, ''Blinded by the Light''
Del Amitri, ''Roll to Me''
Tom Petty, ''I Won't Back Down''
Five for Fighting, ''Superman''
The Pretenders, ''Back on the Chain Gang''
Cracker, ''Low''
Boz Scaggs, ''Lowdown''
Prince, ''1999''
Cheap Trick, ''Don't Be Cruel''
So far, this seems like it might be Jean Teasdale's ipod but I'm willing to give it some time. Hard to argue against radio broadening playlists, even if it does mean adding that fucking Del Amitri song.
A great, great story in Slate by Jody Rosen about the musical genre "chill". An NYC radio station has changed its format from "smooth jazz" to "chill" and the helpful press release has described chill thusly:
It's an "attitude," a "lifestyle," an "audio aphrodisiac" whose "smooth hypnotic texture" enables listeners to "transcend from stress."
Which means what exactly? The story is great and well worth reading but I've pulled out a large chunk below.
Pop genres are famously nebulous things—just corner a music critic and ask him to explain postpunk or microhouse—but chillout may well be the most elastic category of them all, encompassing virtually any moderately laid-back music you can name.
Chillout really is just the latest brand name for easy listening, a genre that gets reinvented every decade or so. Lounge, soft rock, adult contemporary ballads, smooth jazz: As successive pop generations have rounded the corner toward age 30, each has lowered the volume, embracing music geared toward relaxation in the home. (Nineteenth-century parlor songs were the easy listening of their day—chillout for Victorians.) The current boom market in chill music is an indication that many former ravers now have jobs and mortgages and children, and have traded in nightlife for bourgeois domesticity. Sooner or later, every club kid has to grow up and make peace with dinner music.
But the genius of chillout is how it plays it both ways. The sounds are mellow, perfect for folding laundry to, but the sleek album-cover graphics, which could be on a club flyer, and the images of young bodies splayed on Balearic beaches, insist that the party's not really over. Your hairline may be receding, the baby might be screaming; but stick a Hotel Costes CD on the stereo, and your living room becomes the Chillout Room. As altered states of coolness and hipness go, it's hard to beat incipient middle age. For millions of record buyers, chillout offers an antidote.
Indeed.
