And play David Bowie 12 times a fucking day

Justin Bieber for girls who think they're too sophisticated for Justin Bieber, presumably. You don't have a house in Budapest with a bunch of expensive shit in it!

I imagine all of the songs mentioned in this thread, along with "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers, "Take a Walk" by Passion Pit, and "From A Window Seat" by Dawes, all being played for the crowd waiting to get in to see The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

"How amazing would it be to see Jimmy and Lena Dunham sing 'From a Window Seat' together!?!?!"

Maybe he's in town for someone's birthday...

I imagine all of the songs mentioned in this thread, along with "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers, "Take a Walk" by Passion Pit, and "From A Window Seat" by Dawes, all being played for the crowd waiting to get in to see The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

"How amazing would it be to see Jimmy and Lena Dunham sing 'From a Window Seat' together!?!?!"

Maybe he's in town for someone's birthday...

I put the stream on this morning; the new music director was sitting in for whoever does Sunday mornings (Norm? maybe it's just her shift?). I heard two of my favorite songs of all time back-to-back: "You Get What You Give" by New Radicals and "This Must Be The Place" by Talking Heads. It was great.

The next song was "Budapest." No one's safe.

Vance Joy, James Bay, George Ezra, what is this wallpaper shit? music for people who think cuts off The Joshua Tree might make office workers stop and enjoy the music? Good God, these guys have less edge than a butter knife. You could replace every single instance of their songs with "Back on the Chain Gang" and only "Back on the Chain Gang" and somehow it would make the station less repetitive.

Death Cab For Cutie, a/k/a Baby's First Indie Band, can go away forever too.

But haven't those songs you like been on the XRT playlist since they were released? And is the new music director, Kelly Ransford, really all that new? Hasn't she been at the station since early January?

Someone needs to clean house at that station. Frankly, I'm surprised XRT didn't offer a management position to James Van Osdol. Surely they pay more than what he's earning in his current position at Rivet Radio, where he basically creates insipid podcasting material for monumental morons. Then again, it looks like Van Osdol is trying to position himself for a talk radio spot rather than something in music radio. Still, the guy would probably do a much better job of restoring the station to relevance than Ransford will. The only problem is that he's largely an insufferable egomaniac.

P.S. - Dawes and Passion Pit are both pretty great, The Lumineers can go fuck off somewhere with that fat fuck from Of Monsters And Men.

It's funny you mention that! I just got off a flight from Boston-via-WPB, where I listened to SiriusXM most of the way up. There's a channel called The Spectrum which overlaps a good portion of the XRT library/rotation. They play all the same good stuff, but sure enough, all the same George Ezra/James Bay/Vance Joy white-boy slop that makes XRT boring. It's either comforting or not comforting that it's not just them: Really Smart People somewhere are deciding that what album-alternative radio all across America needs is Vance Joy by the barrelful. I wish the program director and jocks who have all been at this station for 20 to 30 years could be trusted to think for themselves on this, but thaaaaaaaaaaat's radio. The good thing is that when you hit a bump like that on The Spectrum, you can just flip to 1st Wave and be guaranteed good '80s alternative.

yep that's exactly what i mean. i have the spectrum on my fav's in my car. that, 1st wave, alt nation, lithium, the bridge, 80's on 8, 90's on 9, it's all great to be able to just flip around when the channel starts sucking. programmed music is always bound to suck at some point. Sirius does provide a lot of variety. i even have some stuff like Chill--mostly ambient/electronica/trip hop/trance--on my dial as well. i haven't listened to terrestrial radio outside of sports AM since having it.

In general, I find Sirius pretty bad. No decent alt country channel. The 1st wave channel seems to have a playlist of fewer than 150 songs. And the alt rock channels are more miss than hit. That said, my main problem with Sirius is its irrelevance as a source of community. That used to be the strength of broadcast radio before Clinton destroyed the industry in the mid-1990s. People say the internet killed FM radio and most of the formerly great rock stations across the country, but it was really deregulation and monopoly capitalism that did them in.

In general, I find Sirius pretty bad. No decent alt country channel. The 1st wave channel seems to have a playlist of fewer than 150 songs. And the alt rock channels are more miss than hit.

Tall Midget is a country fan?

Outlaw Country is solid at times. I agree on that Alt-Rock Channels, lots of misses there.

I'm a bigfan of Underground Garage. It's a great assortment of music from 50's to Present Day, and features styles like Rock & Roll, Punk, Soul, Garage Rock, Rockabilly, etc... The only thing I don't like on the station is that they plug new music from Little Steven's record label from time to time, which is mostly garbage.