2000s Footnotes =============== **Albums that dropped off during the project** - You know, I feel like I was always trying to convince myself that I liked **At The Drive In** and **The Mars Volta**. They made the images for 2000, 2003, and 2005, but didn't make the cut as I really tried to engage with those records. I think it is the kind of music I like, but executed in a way that I don't really care for. Too screamo for me. Always with an Eye to the Past ------------------------------ When the decade started, I was still mostly looking into the music of the past. As the years went on I continued to explore decades gone by, but simultaneous to many artists and albums of the current age. In many cases there was a lot of crossover between the two threads. - **Genesis/Prog** - For most of my young life the early **Genesis** was as mysterious thing. I had often heard whispers of a very different band led by **Peter Gabriel** that was far more experimental than the 80s version I knew well. In the late 90s my brother had acquired a compilation of the band that included a couple songs from this era, and I was intrigued by the version of "The Carpet Crawlers" that closed out that record. In 2022 I would finally take the plunge and buy *The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway* knowing only "Crawlers" and the title song. It would open the door to one of my favorite bands. With the aid of Columbia House, I would go from zero to almost the entire catalog within a matter of months. Fourteen of these records make my list of all-time favorites, third most among all artists. In the early 2000s I kept my latest purchases in one of those leather bound CD wallets. I remember leafing through the book and showing my girlfriend what I was listening to, and her making fun of me mercilessly for all the **Genesis** records. Progressive rock will never be cool, but Genesis was my point of entry into the genre of **Rush**, **Yes**, **King Crimson** and many of my other favorite bands. It also was the purview of one of my favorite artists of the time **Porcupine Tree** / **Steven Wilson**. - **UK Artists/The Kinks/The Jam/Blur** - It was a common thing for 90s teenagers to be Anglophiles, obsessed with UK music and culture. Much of this was centered around 60s bands like **The Beatles**. I was very much of this disposition and the interest continued and grew in my 20s. Early in the decade I had heard a sampling of **Kinks** tracks from the early "All Day, and All of the Night" (in a TV commercial) to "Lola" (a staple of classic rock radio) and I wanted to hear more. I remember an extensive search to find a comprehensive compilation that finally resulted in a two disc import collection that I found at the State College Circuit City around 2002. That disc provided me more enjoyment that I ever could have imagined and would be highly influential in my tastes going forward. A couple years later I heard the **Jam** track "Thats Entertainment" when streaming UK Virgin radio in my grad student office. I was intrigued that there was another band that like **The Kinks** were much more popular in the UK and had a mysterious catalog that I needed to know more about. Almost simultaneously, I had acquired a greatest hits compilation for the more contemporary band **Blur**, who also seemed defined by their "Britishness". This trilogy of "very English bands" would become central in my listening interests through the decade, and throughout my life since. These classic UK bands were obviously highly influential on the UK indie acts of the early 2000s like **Franz Ferdinand** and the **Kaiser Chiefs**. - **XTC** - I was tempted to lump these guys into the very UK bands above, but it didn't feel quite right. They have always been a cult band on both sides of the Atlantic. I heard the song "Dear God" on Sirius First Wave (a channel that plays classic 80s alternative) in the summer of 2004, after which I sought out **Skylarking**. After getting my first real job, I quickly bought the entire catalog that was available at that time. Late in the decade, they would reissue the difficult to find "Apple Venus" records. I don't know that any band exemplifies the kind of intricate pop music that I love. All twelve of their studio albums make my list of favorites, and there is no other artist I can say anything like that about. I also think they were one of the primary influences on the indie-pop movement that was a major part of my early 2000s listening habits. - **Eno/Roxy Music** - When I was a kid, I had the Microsoft Encarta digital encyclopedia on CD ROM, and it provided the kind of information that I would soon be seeking out on the internet but in a kind of larval form. I remember reading the article for **David Bowie** many times. Even before he was my favorite artist, the way the article described the artist intrigued me, and after I started exploring his music, it gave me ideas on where to go next. In addition to hearing about things like "the thin white duke" and the "Glass Spider Tour" the article called out several artists that were contemporaries of or inspired by Bowie, and in that list was Roxy music and the two Brians, Ferry and Eno. In 2004 I would finally hear **Roxy Music** on Sirius First Wave. This led me to their classic record **Country Life** which I picked up used at a CD & Tape exchange in Cleveland, OH. Interestingly, I have been slowly exploring the **Roxy Music** catalog up to the day that I write this. I finally purchased a vinyl copy of the last remaining studio LP *Manifesto* in September of 2022. Six of their records are now in my top favorites. **Brian Eno** was something I sought out purely on the reputation of his early records, and my fuzzy memories of that Encarta article. When I started to explore his music in 2005, he was in the midst of a major CD reissue program, and I bought the whole lot. His four initial pop records, and one of his early ambient works make my list. - **Live Aid/Ultravox/Style Council** - Also in 2004 (this was obviously a year when I really started to research the musical past) I purchased a newly released DVD box set of the 1985 Live Aid concerts. Those performances had always been a bit mysterious to me as they were seldom shown on TV (outside of the famous **Queen** set) and I also had the unique situation of having been right next to the Philadelphia event while it was going on. On that famous day in July 1985 I was with my family at a religious convention in the next stadium over. I was only five, but my older brothers definitely wanted to be over in JFK stadium for the show instead of sweating their butts off in a suit listening to religious propaganda. The DVDs reconnected me with a lot of pop music of that day that I had forgotten about (**Paul Young**, **Nik Kershaw**), gave me a greater appreciation of acts I had never given proper attention (**Madonna**, **Judas Priest**, **Hall and Oates**), and helped me discover a few new favorites. I had never heard of **Ultravox** until I watched those DVDs for the first time, but immediately after listening, I sought out a collection of their Midge Ure era records. I'm still mystified why this wonderful and influential new wave act has never gotten any mainstream attention in the US. I have to admit that the first time I watched the UK portion of the Live Aid show, I thought that **The Style Council** were mostly hilarious. I had a hard time taking them too seriously with their aggressively 80s style and blued eyed soul music. After I learned to enjoy the last record by Paul Weller's first band **The Jam** I started to understand what the **Style** were about, and had a new found appreciation. In the last years of the decade I even sought out their most famous records. Greg at City Lights records always told me he would make me a great deal on the comprehensive box set he had kept in stock a decade plus past its cultural relevance. I never took him up on his offer, but I did go back and buy it at Chronic Town in State College where he was selling some of his remaining stock by consignment. I like these guys enough now that I have re-bought their entire catalog (minus the crap last record) on vinyl. I had a strange holiday tradition where I watched the Live Aid DVDs every Christmas season from 2004 until 2020, and I pretty much have the concert memorized at this point. - **Post-Rock** - On a couple occasions I bought records purely because they seemed so disproportionately loved on RateYourMusic, and such was the case with *Spirit of Eden* by **Talk Talk**. This 2006 purchase led me into the now much maligned genre of Post Rock, which at the time was still one of the most active and loved genres of the day. This was also the exact time when I started to use eMusic to download indie label MP3s. Post Rock was a good choice of genre for this service since most of the artists were on indie labels and the abundance of long tracks made the pay per download model a great value. In addition to buying the popular works in the genre from the 2000s, I dug back into the 90s originals like **Mogwai**, **Bark Psychosis**, and **Slint**. This would lead me to my favorite album of all time: *Spiderland*. - **Elephant 6** - Another thing I was very interested in around 2006 was this Athens GA based collective. They were also a great target for eMusic purchase and I was able to get roughly half the important releases that way. The others were hunted down as cheap used CD purchases on Amazon. This exploration was highly coupled with my interest in the E6 related bands that were still very active in the 2000s like **Of Montreal** and **The Apples In Stereo**. I had the opportunity to see two E6 related shows in the last year of the decade: a performance by **Circulatory System** at SUNY Geneseo and the entire cast of principles playing an ensemble holiday show at Soundlab in Buffalo. - **Red House Painters** - In the early years of the decade I would use the AllMusicGuide to do genre studies and download the top tracks using the "MP3 services of the era". Later, my eMusic subscription gave me a legit way to check out the whole albums in the middle years of the decade. That is how it was with Mark Kozelek's first project **Red House Painters**. The AllMusicGuide pointed me to slowcore, and I found a scattershot collection of tunes on the sharing services of the day, but never really did a deep dive on the records until around 2006. This would yield three of my favorite albums of all time. - **Frank Zappa/Jazz Fusion** - Weirdly, the last major artist of the past that eMusic connected me to was Frank Zappa. I had been hearing his stuff on Sirius The Vault for some time, and multiple friends had tried to get me into him over the years. Emusic has a single compilation called *Strictly Commercial* which gave me a taste of his career. It focused mostly on the jokey pop songs, which have never really been my thing, but there were a few things I really liked. I especially enjoyed the jazzy stuff like "Peaches En Regalia". This would kick off both a study of **Zappa** and jazz fusion artists like: **Return to Forever**, **The Mahavishnu Orchestra** and **Weather Report**. The XM radio channel "Beyond Jazz" would then connect me with more classic jazz fusion and the contemporary fusion artists of the early to mid 2000s. - **Goth/Dark Punk & New Wave/Wire** - If there was a single theme that ran through the decade for me, it was 80s goth and the various goth adjacent forms of music. **Joy Division** was a name I kept hearing as I explored the music of the past. I think it was when someone accused one of my recent favorites **Interpol** from copying them (not true by the way) that I finally looked into *Unknown Pleasures*. Around the same time (c. 2002) I was getting very into the early **Cure**. Then led by their quieter more ambient project **Delerium** I started to listen to industrial electro-goth favorites **Front Line Assembly**. There was one band in particular from the 80s goth scene that would pull me into the genre. Around 2003 they released one of my favorite 80s shows, "Miami Vice" on DVD. There is an episode that features a mostly instrumental version of the **Damned** song "In Dulce Decorum" which reminded me of how much I loved that song on the *Miami Vice II Soundtrack* Album. I downloaded the original version from iTunes, and it was a great point of entry to the world of 80s goth. I would gradually build a collection of all the **Damned** records and other leading acts in the genre like **Bauhaus**, **Christian Death**, and **Echo and the Bunnymen**. My earlier interest in **Joy Division** would lead me to the 4AD label a different kind of dark music that was more subdued and melodic with bands like **Cocteau Twins**, **This Mortal Coil**, and especially the fantastic **Dead Can Dance**. Around 2007, I bought the Rhino collection **A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box** and I became fully immersed in the genre. Shortly after, when I started to collect vinyl records, goth would be a cornerstone of my collection, and I would buy the most famous records by acts like **Sisters of Mercy**, **The Mission**, and **The Cult** on reputation alone. Towards the end of the decade I would explore the much celebrated, first three records of the band **Wire**. While all three are based in dark minimalist punk and new wave, their third, *154* might be the finest goth record ever made. Other Ways That I found Things ------------------------------ There were other ways that I was hearing music in the 2000s and there was music outside of the range that I feel like I can include in the main list here for some reason. - **Party Hip Hop / Rap** - In the year 2000, I moved to State College PA to attend Penn State Main Campus. Like most students, I went to parties. The party music of the day was the latest hip-hop and rap hits. I especially remember hearing "Party Up" by **DMX**, "Big Pimpin'" by **Jay-Z**, and "Still D.R.E." by **Dr. Dre**. As someone who was raised in a fairly conservative religious movement in white middle America, I was getting exposed to a whole new scene through these parties and the music that was featured. It led me to tune into MTV for the first time in half a decade where I found out about artists like **Ludicris** ("Rollout"), **Missy Elliot** ("Gossip Folks"), and **Outkast** (many songs, but initially **Mrs. Jackson**, and **Killer Mike** ("A.D.I.D.A.S."). I did stay in contact with this music, mostly at parties in my student days, but generally speaking it hasn't followed me into adult life. This music doesn't make much sense to me outside of the context I discovered it. I do have a playlist I put on every now and then when I want to feel young. - **Classical Music** - Around the turn of the millennium, my favorite store to hang out in was Borders Books, Movies and Music. There was a location very close to the Penn State satellite campus I was attending, and I spent a lot of time there, particularly in the music section. That location was almost always playing what I now know to be baroque music, particularly **J.S. Bach**. The staff were happy to direct me to a 2 disc compilation of his work that would become the first entry into my classical music collection. Shortly after I found a discount box set collection of classical piano favorites at best buy on deep discount. The recordings are awful, and I would never listen to this box now, but it led me to several pieces that would become lifetime favorites particularly "Piano Concerto No. 2" by **Sergei Rachmaninoff**. My friends who were in music school at the time tried to talk me out of it because **Rachmaninoff** will never be cool, but I didn't care then and I don't care now. Around 2001 I heard a MIDI file play in a 3D virtual space in the larval metaverse app called "Active Worlds". It was a striking piece of music that I discovered to be the slow movement from **Beethoven**'s "Second Symphony". That remarkable discovery led to buy a large, expensive box set of all nine of his symphonies. At this point I was hooked. On my first trip to London in early 2007 I was able to see a live orchestra for the first time. I went to a concert in their main series that featured the works of **Janacek** and **Brahms**. I would discover two of my favorites at this concert. **Leos Janacek** is my favorite composer, and the piece I heard that evening "Taras Bulba" is one of my absolute favorites. This would be the first time I heard **Brahms** "Violin Concerto", but I liked it so much I would attend a concert less than a year later to hear the Colorado symphony perform it as well. Around this same time I saw the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the first time as an adult. It was a frequent part of the HDNet Movies programming, and it was a striking film to see and hear in the new higher resolution. I particularly connected with the music of **Gyorgy Ligeti** which would be my entry into the very modern sounds of the mid-20th century. I arrived in Rochester, NY a big fan of classical music, and ready to consume all that town and its conservatory had to offer. - **Game Music** - The late 90s, and early 2000s was the dawn of the "video games as art" movement. One area where innovation and sophistication was being felt strongly was the music in the games. The first game where I really noticed the music was *Final Fantasy VIII*. In many ways this game is mostly remembered for its score by **Nobuo Uematsu** today. I was so struck by it, the first thing I ever bought off of ebay back in 2001 was a black market Hong Kong produced four CD set of the score. The scores would become more symphonic in the PS2 era and the melodramatic, anime style music for *Final Fantasy X* (again by **Uematsu**) and *Xenosaga* (by **Yasunori Mitsuda**) were high points. In many ways the track "Zanarkand" from *FFX* is the high point for the genre of game music in general. By the end of the decade orchestral tours would travel internationally to play this material in front of packed houses. Simultaneously to this, there was a growing appreciation for the music of the 16-bit era of the early to mid 90s. While the tools artists had available to them was limited there was a lot to like about the core melodies and themes of these now ancient scores. Remix sites were created (most noteworthy "OCRemix" still exists today) where the music of that era were expanded upon and developed in a variety of styles. It was there that the raw scores from classics like *F-Zero*, *Megaman X*, and *Castlevania* reached their full potential. Of particular note for me is the classic "Filmore" theme ("Filmoa" in the Japanese version), and the fact that remixes are still being made of this funky track show how much good there is in the 16-bit original. The ultimate statement from this time is probably still *Final Fantasy VI* and the key tracks from that score, including the opera (?) that somehow was pulled off convincingly on SNES hardware are still impressive today. The 90s and 2000s were the golden age of game music, and I was a big fan in my early 20s. The Record Stores of my Young Adulthood --------------------------------------- - **CDNow/Amazon.com** - All of a sudden we had something that was even more impressive than Tower Records. They also had samples of pretty much everything they sold. Even better, you could use those samples, even if you didn't buy the record from them. I probably bought less than 5 Albums from CDNow, but I made extensive use of their samples to try out new things, and find that track that I couldn't quite place (in the days before Shazam). After the business was transferred to Amazon I used it more, particularly to import rare discs from the UK. - **Best Buy/Circuit City** (State College, PA) - I was still frequenting the two big box electronics retailers to avail myself of their loss leader media deals. Circuit City continued to regularly run the buy 2 get 3, and buy 3 get 4 deals that they had always used to bring people into the store. Best Buy would continue to downsize the selection in their media section as the digital distribution model started to dominate. I bought a lot of CDs at the going out of business sale for the State College Circuit City in 2009. I don't remember the last disc that I bought at Best Buy, but it wasn't long after that. - **Mike's Movies and Music** (State College, PA) - I was in their downtown location perhaps once in the ten years I lived in State College, it closed sometime around 2005. I spent a lot of time in their North Atherton location, which was by far the biggest record store in the area. I had always resisted going to independent record shops with their giant selection and full prices. Emboldened by the money I was making at my new job, I started shopping at Mike's around 2006. It too would close less than a year later. - **City Lights Records** (State College, PA) - The last record store to survive in State College, while it did have a selection of used vinyl in the back, this was primarily a place to buy new releases on CD. I spent a lot of time talking to the owner Greg and his lone employee Jenn. They did a great job stocking all the indie releases I cared about from 2007 until I moved away in 2009. I remember trying hard to get them to realize that vinyl was the future. They did buy a few of the items for the first Record Store Day, but they were never really able to make that shift, either due to a lack of desire or capital to make it happen. I feel like Greg may have made the worst sin a record store owner could make and started to believe he was cooler than the kids who shopped there. I remember that I started to show an interest in the very uncool, **Style Council**. Greg was a big **Paul Weller** fan and had ordered in a copy of their comprehensive box set. It sat in his shop for years and he always tried to make me a deal on it. It would pass on into the new store "Chronic Town" that would open a few years after City Lights eventually finally shut down in 2010. When I returned to State College in 2014 for a visit, I would finally buy the box set and the person running the counter at that store took my picture for Greg. Chronic Town closed in 2022, and the last place left to buy records in State College is a pretty great used shop in the Webster's Bookstore complex. - **Lake Shore Record Exchange** (Rochester, NY) - When I moved away from State College (and City Lights Records) I discovered that I lived two blocks from the hippest independent record shop in town. They were an old school business that traced there history to the 80s/90s and they identified strongly with the term "Alternative Music". They also stocked that kind of "indie"...but not "too indie" music that fits into that ambiguous category. For some reason this was the best smelling record store I have ever been to. The Rise of Legal Downloads and Early Streaming ----------------------------------------------- In 2003 I made the decision to "go legit". I remember sitting in my rented room in Cleveland and realizing that I had purchased most of what I cared about, and that I could make a short list of the tracks I lacked and find a way to add them to my physical collection. By this time, I already had my first Nike MP3 player, and had burned my CD collection. In the summer of 2002, my internship had ended abruptly due to financial challenges at the company I worked for. I took that opportunity to save all of the first 400, and the next 50 or so CDs to 128k MP3s. The industry was also starting to go the way of downloads. - **Sony Connect** - My first downloads would be from the Sony Connect store in an annoying DRM laden format. I didn't choose this to be my first digital music format, it was chosen for me by the McDonald's Monopoly game. They had a second chance game where you could play online to win small prizes with each non-winning game piece. I would get a couple dozen free track downloads this way. I would free them from DRM by burning them to CD and re-ripping them. I don't remember all the songs I got this way, but I know it included the *Marvelous Things* EP by **Eisley**, "You'll Never Walk Alone" by **Gerry and the Pacemakers**, and "Judith" by **A Perfect Circle**. This service lasted barely a year after I made these downloads. - **iTunes** - The next summer, the McDonald's game moved its second chance over to Apple iTunes. This time it netted me about 10 free track downloads and several hundred free digital prints from Snapfish (some of which I still have 22 years later). Back then, this still meant DRM, but it was with a store that had a definite future. What songs I bought with those downloads are lost to time. However, it would lead me to move from WinAmp to iTunes for my daily use MP3 player. The superior features for organizing a large MP3 collection were too hard to turn down. A few years later it would lead me to buy my first (and only) iPod, the first gen nano. I would buy very limited tracks from the iTunes store, but used the application for years. I did take advantage of the monthly free downloads they offered. It was how I discovered **The Arcade Fire** when Apple offered "Neighborhood 1: Tunnels" as a free download in 2004. - **In Rainbows/Feed the Animals** - I continued to prefer physical media, and some of my first digital music purchases were because it was the only way the album was sold. Both **Radiohead** and **Girl Talk** would adopt the self-release, pay what you can digital download model for their releases in 2007/08. Both of these records are still on my list of favorites today. - **Pandora** - The "Music Genome Project" was a the quirky start to online streaming for me and many others. The early Pandora was far different than the commercial interest it has become today. I have a lot of happy memories listening to my station that I spawned from **The Kinks**, my favorite band at the time. It was how I discovered **Lilys** and several other favorites. - **Emusic** - What would really get me into downloads was the low price, indie service Emusic. You subscribed at a given level that netted you a number of downloads to use as you saw fit for the month. Pretty quickly I was on the top tier that gave me upwards of 70 tracks a month for 20 bucks. This made a typical album around 3 dollars. I got the all-time classic *Reach Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven* for less than a buck fifty. The prices would eventually go up a bit, but this was always the best deal in legit downloads. It also introduced me to the world of indie music, both of the past and the present day. This was the place I discovered a wide range of artists from **St. Vincent** to **Victoire**. A few of the rarer things I bought there have never even made it to streaming. - **AllofMP3.com** - A shady Russian site that exploited some loophole of local broadcasting rights to sell grey market downloads. I stayed away, except for the **Porcupine Tree** rarity *Recordings* which was only available at this site back then. - **Important Music Discovery Service I Can't Remember the Name Of** - I wish I could remember the name of this site. I feel like the name had something to do with fruit? Regardless the idea was music discovery, and they had various curated playlists with various themes. It was how I heard about the hot new genre "chillwave" and found out about artists like **Memory Tapes** and **Mercury Rev**. A more personal forerunner of Spotify Radio and the latter day Pandora. - **Vinyl CD Downloads** - Around 2009 the indie record labels started putting download cards into vinyl records to help accelerate the re-adoption of the format. Consumers like myself had gotten used to ripping CDs after purchase to obtain a legal copy for play on PC and portable units. This definitely worked for me and what was what finally made me move over to a vinyl/digital only ac acquisition plan going forward. - **Amazon Music and AutoRip** - Eventually the biggest company of all became the biggest player in music downloads. Once they were the market leader, they also started a convenience service where most physical releases on their site also granted a digital download as unprotected MP3 files or FLAC. This service continues until the current day, but I like most folks make little use of it. Satellite radio --------------- State College, PA had mostly terrible radio stations, and I was overjoyed when Sirius/XM radio became an option in the early 2000s. I signed up for Sirius in 2003 and immediately found a lot to like in the service. It expanded my musical horizons and became the primary way I learned about music for several years. In early 2006 I visited Miami for the Rose Bowl and I discovered the expanded playlist of XM which was played in the lobby of our hotel. In 2008, two would become one and the dueling services became SiriusXM. I was upset that the combined service was more Sirius than XM, and soon I would have access to the excellent Rochester terrestrial radio. There would be a decade where I lived without satellite radio, and it would be a pandemic era preview that would eventually bring me back into the fold. The experience of listening to Satellite radio in the first decade of its existence was interesting. A few had satellite ready car stereos, but most of us had an external radio tuner that connected via analog input or RF modulator. I remember my first Sirius radio was a giant blocky box that came with a suction mount that I could stick to my dash. I started with the RF modulator, but quickly figured out how to get to the back of my car radio and connect via the RCA jacks there. I also bought a home adapter that allowed me to hook it up to my home stereo. I would later buy a second one so I could use it downstairs with some PC speakers. I even brought a dock with me on my first summer in Cleveland, OH so I could listen there. The tuner had some neat options like the ability to not only see the song and artist that was playing, but an on board memory so you could save and refer back to what you heard. I remember that I saved the songs "Beware Of Darkness" by **George Harrison** and "The Black Page" by **Frank Zappa** in that memory for several years. I still love both of those songs. You could also set alerts so that it told you when a given artist played anywhere on Sirius. I did that for **Muse** in the summer of 2003, and I got an alert about every 10 minutes on one channel or another, they were quite the hot thing then. When I got XM, that meant another similar external radio turner. For a while, I had the comedy of two dueling external devices connected to my stereo's external input though y-connectors. Later that year the speakers in my Dodge Neon gave out. I was forced to install and aftermarket Sony head unit with new speakers, and it was XM Ready. This allowed me to install a more permanent XM tuner in my glove box, and I could continue to use the external Sirius unit if I so wished. I rarely used Sirius after that, and the merger would happen and make the whole thing moot. Here is a summary of my favorite stations from that first time with Sirius and/or XM: - **Sirius Classic Vinyl/Rewind** - I started off with satellite radio the way that I started with terrestrial radio, classic rock. Safe, but other than the lack of commercials, nothing new. - **Sirius The Vault** - Then I found the classic rock station that did play things I was never going to hear over the air. This deep cuts format station introduced me to **Zappa** and made me appreciate the solo work by **George Harrison**. They also played way too much **Traffic**. Like an absurd amount of Traffic. - **Sirius Alt Nation** - I had recently started to listen to modern alt rock like **Interpol** and **The Arcade Fire**. This station was the home for that kind of thing. They also played more mainstream things like **Incubus** and **The Killers**. A nice gateway to the indie music I was about to get very into. On Friday nights, there was a great program called the Liquid Todd Show, which was an amazing combination of electronic music and indie rock. It would somehow introduce me to **Elliott Smith** and **Orbital** one song after another when I listened one Cleveland evening in 2003. - **Sirius First Wave/80s on 8** - I have always loved the music of the 80s, and these stations were the alternative and mainstream options for that decade. These stations have changed very little in the 20 years since I first listened. Richard Blade is still the dominant force on First Wave, and other than Martha Quinn, the original group of MTV DJs that started this station, continue to host it on a daily basis. - **Sirius Left of Center** - Eventually I would find the slightly more indie channel than Alt Nation. This was "college rock" or "indie rock". I would discover a ton of artists here from **Modest Mouse** to **Elliott Smith**, and **Cat Power** to **The Go Team!**. It was a little adventurous, but just enough to ease me into this new kind of music. - **XM Beyond Jazz** - I traveled to the 2006 Orange Bowl with a large group of friends. We were sharing limited hotel bathroom facilities and I found myself often traveling down to the lobby as a backup plan. It was there that I read the interesting sounds of Beyond Jazz. The Modern Jazz radio format was created by Russ Davis, who was essentially its sole champion for the decade or two that it existed. The idea is a continuation of the development of jass beyond the late 70s, where it generally appears to stall out and stumble into more milquetoast sounds in the smooth jazz format. I liked the station so much that I immediately went out and bought a second dockable radio unit, this time for XM. I would discover a range of amazing artists on the station from **The Bad Plus** to **Squarepusher**. They also highlighted fusion artists on Friday and I would expand my knowledge of that genre as well. When XM and Sirius merged, this was one of the first stations to go. That really made me angry and contributed to me dropping satellite radio quickly after the merger. Russ would operate his own internet radio station MoJa Radio for over a decade. I subscribed for a short while, but in the years before smart phones, there was no easy way to listen in my car. Perhaps no channel better illustrated the specific strengths of satellite radio for putting a spotlight on under the radar sounds. - **XM Deep Tracks** - Pretty much "The Vault" with way less Traffic. - **XMU** - Like "Left of Center" but a much, much deeper playlist. This was the channel I listened to the most from 2006-2008. So many artists discovered from this channel from **Islands** to **Electric President**, and **Caribou** to **Frightened Rabbit**. When the merger happened we got a more Sirius size playlist. I was not pleased. - **XM Canada The Unsigned/Verge** - Like "XMU" but Canadian. Some really obscure things got played on this channel. Here I found bands like **Hey Rosetta!** and **The Dears**. It would even motivate me to import super indie things like the Calgary band **Jane Vain and the Dark Matter**, who I heard play a live session on the channel. You won't find their work on Spotify.