At 12:33 PM 4/6/2004 -0400, Josh Chasin wrote: >Why do so many of you listen to the radio? How often are you trapped in >places that lack CD players or mp3 players? Honestly; I'm legitimately >curious. Surely you folks must be the kind of music junkies I am; I've >always got a stack of CDs to listen to, either retail or bootleg, and I >never catch up. I can't imagine a situation where I'd want to hear music >and think "radio." Car included. Maybe not everyone has the luxury of a CD >player in the car? Or maybe -- and I realize that this is a stretch -- we just happen to LIKE LISTENING TO THE RADIO. I don't actually know where you live, Josh, but there are still cities out there that have good-to-great radio stations. Boston is one of them, and not even solely due to college stations like WMBR (where, incidentally, my wife and I are going to be guest-hosting an hour of Breakfast of Champions this Friday between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m.) and WERS. WFNX has within the last year reinvented itself as a proper "alternative" radio station, dumping the Limp Creed of Mudd in favor of a playlist that's about half college radio oldies and half current stuff ranging from the Polyphonic Spree to the D4 to the Shins to several of the Saddle Creek bands. The River is that rarity, a AAA station that's not just All Sheryl Crow All The Time. There's even a half-decent oldies station, and best of all, WGBH plays jazz -- by which I mean proper jazz, not Kenny G and Wynton Marsalis -- every night from 7 p.m. until Morning Edition starts at 5 a.m. So yeah. I've always got a stack of CDs to get through, both for work and for pleasure. There's about half a dozen CD players in the house and car, and I'm rarely without my iPod. And I still listen to the radio at least six or seven hours a week, even more if you count NPR. Now why is that so weird? S