"A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio" - Goo Goo Dolls -
Remember when radio meant something? This was before it devolved into a prepackaged product consisting of second-rate personalities/disc jockeys peddling a preordained, rigidly adhered to finite selection of diluted songs. Believe it or not, there was a time not too long ago when terrestrial radio offered you the world when it came to music. It provided substance, discovery, and adventure with no extra cost to the listener.
Radio could take you places you'd never visit in person and allow you to hear voices share their secrets, dilemmas, and desires to the backdrop of music. Radio held your hand in the dark and sang you to sleep when you were alone and needed companionship. It kept you awake and invited you to the dance if you weren't quite ready to settle in for the night. It made you feel alive and included as you waited for those songs to dance magically out of distant skies through that tiny mystery box and give life some semblance of meaning and purpose.
The medium may be gone as it was known, but the music is still out there in the skies waiting to be heard. Technology and profit motive may have retained the box in some form or another, but there's no mystery to the music and the message it delivers anymore. You have to create your own mystery box now and protect it and nurture it with your heart and soul. However, all is not lost. A few places that continue to believe in the mystery box where you can find songs dancing magically out of the sky (including two of the songs below) are:
The Bob Cesca Show Indie Music Countdown - A celebration of indie artists and their music submitted by the artists themselves in an old-school disc jockey countdown format by a host who is genuinely excited by good music)
Welcome to Night Vale (The Weather) - An offbeat podcast that's like a David Lynch version of Lake Wobegon Days where on each episode, the Weather report is a single song you may have never heard but will probably add to your playlist and share with others
Radio Paradise - A listener-sponsored, commercial-free, mom-and-pop internet radio station playing a continuous, unbridled selection of eclectic songs you may have heard before or have never heard at all but want to. It encapsulates the concept of the mystery box.
To get you started on the creation of your own mystery box and subsequent playlist, here are five songs that have come dancing out of the sky.*
Ticking Bomb by Aloe Blacc
Civil by Flying Jacob (Discovered on the Bob Cesca Indie Music Countdown)
Revolution by Heartless Bastards
It's OK by Nightbirde
Team The Best Team by Doomtree (Discovered on Welcome to Night Vale Weather)
*As always, music is subjective and songs don't have the same impact on everyone. Hopefully, you will like these selections and share them with others. If they aren't for you, take this as a wake-up call or an invitation, depending on where music fits in the hierarchy of your life, to search out new and hidden songs from the past and present in order to create your own mystery box.
-Bobman