DIALSCAN: DETROIT, APRIL 27, 2009

Were it not for the fact that the Yankees and Tigers played tonight’s game like their buses were double-parked, I would not have the time to while away sampling Motor City radio. I won’t use this space to enumerate or even regurgitate the problems Detroit has had in recent times. I will tell you that Detroit, more than most cities, has found a salve for its depression in sport. At various times over the past three years, Detroit has hosted the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup finals, and most recently, record-breaking crowds at college basketball’s Final Four. Hopefully, there’s a similar salve on the airwaves…

Rather than end at an oasis, why don’t we start at one this time? We’ll begin at WRCJ-FM 90.9, which does classical music by day and jazz by night. The jazz begins wafting lazily through my surround-sound headset, as welcome as the soft night air. In a moment, I’m told by the Announcer, a gent by the name of Tony Mowod, that this is “My Nightly Soundtrack.” The gentle piano is replaced by optimistic, upbeat trumpets and horns. The fact that the Yankees lost tonight is quickly pushed to the back of my mind, replaced by the carefree sounds of what they in the business call “West Coast Jazz.” I smile from ear to ear, the day’s cares all but nonsense now. I close my eyes for the briefest of moments, imagining this glory emanating from the stereos of Cadillacs and Lincolns and Chrysler 300’s up and down 9 Mile. My mind rides shotgun with sophisticated ladies in elegant black cocktail dresses and grinning gents in sharp suits. They don’t give jazz playlists on the website, it doesn’t appear, but the element of surprise works very much in WRJC’s favor. I’ll get back to this, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.

Aha! More jazz, this time over at WDET-FM 101.9, Detroit’s NPR station originating from Wayne State University. This has gotta be my lucky night. I come in just as Miles Davis’s So What is winding down. If this is what Detroit listens to at night, boy, have they got it made. I can only imagine what goes on while this music plays. Fittingly enough, I see that their Announcer tonight is a man called Ed Love, who has been kind enough to put on Miles’ marvelous All Blues, from Kind of Blue, the same album that contains So What. I have Kind of Blue in my remarkable CD collection. I sometimes put in the CD player and wake up to it, or try to at least. J God, I picked a good time to do the Dialscan. You should see the grin I’ve got on my face. Who needs that Twitter crap when I’ve got the power of stream-of-consciousness writing? Incidentally, I note that whenever I turn on WBGO in Newark or WUSF after 10:00PM in Tampa, Miles’ music never reaches my ears. Why is this? Is it just a matter of bad timing or is there something more to it? Whatever the case may be, anytime a radio station plays Miles Davis, you’re not catching lightning in a jar, you’re catching lightning bugs. Sooner or later, you gotta set them free.

Jesus, I’m having such fun with all this jazz music, I almost don’t want to leave either of these stations. I might just put it to coin-flip as to which of these stations I want to come back to. Everything from here on may seem like so much ennui, but out of fairness as much as anything else, I turn the dial anyway. But not before Ed Love turns up, his voice silky and arresting all at once. He asks me what I was doing when Kind of Blue first came out. My parents were in first grade, and I was between lives—I just know I was.

What’s in the news? WWJ-AM 950 will tell me. The UAW is voting to assume majority ownership of Chrysler Corporation; GM is discontinuing its Pontiac brand, which is a major shame; one of Detroit’s mayoral candidates is considering moving some of the slum-dwellers to less dangerous suburban areas and sealing off the slums entirely; according to WWJ’S website, there is an apparent case of Swine Flu, this year’s disease du jour, in Livingston County. By the way, just heard a fellow named Dave Bowers at Accu-Weather give the forecast for Detroit. I can’t help but notice that he does the same thing for 1010 WINS listeners back in New York. Apparently, so do Messrs. Eric Wilhelm, Carl Babinski, Kerry Scwindenhammer and Dr. Joe Sobel. I shan’t be the least bit surprised to hear the same guys reporting on weather in Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. Talent pool? Try wading pool.

Now my teeth are gnashing; the sports reporter just got cut off in mid-sentence. Doesn’t matter whether he was telling me to expect his reports at fifteen and forty-five after every hour or not, that shit doesn’t ride with me. So we press up the AM dial…

…to WDFN-AM 1130, a sports-talk station. More football talk. I guess it doesn’t matter what I say. People used to want their MTV, now they just want their NFL. And want, and want, and want some more, until they have wet dreams involving the league’s commissioner, and ever further beyond that. Meanwhile, baseball fans like me are left in the wilderness.

Some dummy on Air America Radio (WDTW-AM 1310) just called Rush Limbaugh a chickenhawk. Maybe so, but Rush Limbaugh has been on the air for twenty years, and this dummy, who apparently wants everyone in his listening audience to go meatless on Mondays, just lost me after less than two minutes. He will remain nameless, but he has the personality of a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera (in burnt umber, natch.)

As quickly as I come to WNZK 680 (or 690 in the daytime), that’s as fast as I leave, when a foreign troubadour turns up singing the same foreign troubadour song that’s been sung since there were such people as foreign troubadours.

I’ve hit rock bottom—attorney Mark Levin is on WJR-AM 760. I’m sure he’s pontificating about something and planning to sue the next person who so much as looks at him funny, so I don’t even bother listening. I’m going back to the jazz music. I was happier, you were happier, the antennae were happier.