R.I.P. Indie 103.1

Yesterday, the last great bastion of locally produced commercial radio went off the air in a major market. But Indie 103.1 survived five years in an era when forward thinking terrestrial radio isn't supposed to last five minutes. That in itself is an astonishing accomplishment.

Indie 103.1 went on the air January 1, 2004, just two months after I moved to Los Angeles. And in many ways, Indie's rise and fall parallels my own half a decade in the City of Angels. I distinctly remember driving in my car alone, a new face in a big city, when I first heard Indie. A blast of teenage faves—Sex Pistols, Breeders, Flaming Lip—I couldn't fathom such radio existing. Equally at awe of the new town I called home, I imagined some Hollywood renegade millionaire had bought himself a radio station on which to play the music he loved. And why not? This is a city where dreams come true. I was a newly minted magazine editor in the entertainment capital of the world. There should be a stations that catered to my taste. I was a tastemaker. I was "running shit." I vowed to seek out these radio renegades and offer my support and talent—18 months of late night college radio, dawg!

Of course, Indie didn't need my help. They were doing just fine as part of the Clear Channel network. Once my momentary disappointment subsided, I was still 99% thrilled by Indie. After all, maybe this was the test market for a new era of "classic rock." If my generation was getting old enough to be in charge, why shouldn't we have own radio format? It was our turn.

The true genius of Indie came in the hiring of it's afternoon host, one Steve Jones, formerly of the Sex Pistols, who's Jonesy's Jukebox became an instant hit. The cynical wit and wisdom that Jonesy dished out—uncomfortabley at first, becoming more natural with time—became an international sensation. Around the same time, I attended my first Coachella, another "I-can't-beleive-this-is-real" introduction to West Coast life. It was as though I had "lept" into 1990s England, a time and place I had dreamed of as a teenager in Detroit, lock in my room with a copy of Melody Maker Reading Festival special edition. Now here I was, in the present, with the Pixies, Radiohead and Kraftwerk, both onstage and on my radio dial. Mecca.

And it kept getting bigger. By 2005, the "rave and rap" magazine I moved to LA to help helm was diving head first into the new indie-rock/dance club culture that was simmering up across the globe. Bloc Party was a ubiquitous presence, played in the clubs and on the radio non-stop (one day I heard three Bloc Party songs on three different radio stations during one 30 minute drive). We had them on the cover of URB twice that year—M.I.A. too. The office radio, more often than not, was tuned to Indie all day. Sure, the occasional Junior Vazquez mix would make it onto the system (URB editor Scott Sterling thought it was old Richie Hawtin) but when Carlos D was DJing in town, we were all there, no matter who was at the local superclub the same night.

Of course, like all scenes, this one began to falter. In one fell swoop, Daft Punk's Coachella set pushed the Arcade Fire remixes aside, replacing them with serious French electro. Justice was our new Bloc Party, although they never quite secured the same radio hegimoney. Indie could have been more generous to the new sound. They restricted it to the typical dance music latenight ghetto. Paul V's Neon Noise program was a fantastic platform for the new DJs and producers who were popping up all over LA. Even the Crystal Method's Friday night show was promoting "LCD Soundsystem, Justice, Daft Punk." Their peers The Chemical Brothers deamed the only legacy act worth noting. It was during this time that my Indie listening declined as well. It was still the first stop on the channel search, but I would just as likely end up on KLOS's classic rock than the new sound of Wolf (Parade or Mother, you choose).

Just as my infactuation with Indie was fading, they went and pulled the ultimate romantic gesture. The words "This is Darren Revel and you're listening to Big Sonic Heaven" came through the car speakers—and I almost went off the road. Every Sunday from 1995-2003, I had heard those words on the radio in Detroit. The one and only relief from the monotony of Limp Bizkut and Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls," BSH was an oasis on the Motor City airwaves. A shoegazer fantasy, where all thing moody and ethereal got equal airing. And here it was on Los Angeles radio. I felt like Peter Pan having found his shadow.

I was friendly with Darren from the Detroit days and we soon connected, talking about the old town while never losing site that life was much better in LA. I even got to go on Big Sonic Heaven this past fall, given an hour to chat with Darren on-air and play some of my favorite songs. I'm a big enough dork to admit it was a dream come true.

Big Sonic Heaven was taken off the air in November, along with a number of Indie's specialty shows. Jonesy was still there—scoring a major coup just last month when Prince blessed the show with three new songs to debut. But things had changed. The indie rotation had turned towards the dark side, and you were as likely to hear STP as you were Amazing Baby. The end—a classic zero notice format flip to Spanish syndicated radio—was hardly a shock.

I have to admit that on the day it happened, I spent three hours round trip in the car going from Hollywood to Anaheim without once turning to Indie (I kept it on NPR's chatter). It wasn't until I got home and sat at my computer that I heard the news. Word is that some incarnation if Indie is going to live online—but that's no real comfort. I can already hear all the music I want on the web. It was haviing it on the radio that counts. Jonesy will probably land a cush gig on satellite radio. Picture him in one studio while Bob Dylan records in the one next door. Sweeeeeet. And I'm sure the rest of the Indie team will land softly as well. This is a town where it's easy to fail up. And being a vet of a failed yet buzzworthy radio station can become a choice music consulting gig with just a few well placed phone calls.

As for me, I don't have a car anymore. I don't even have an office to go to as of this week. Working from home and rarely going out at night, there's not much need for Indie 103.1 in my life. Still, when I heard last week that LA Weekly music editor and comrade Randall Roberts was on Jonesy's Jukebox Jury, I felt more than a little green with envy. I guess Indie still mattered more than I thought.




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Sneeze MAG @ Strawlace gig (01/24/09)

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Homophobic? Then You're Probably Gay By:Johann Hari Columnist, London Independent

Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com

I have always been slightly bemused by homophobia. Why would two adults (or ten) having consensual sex upset you? What's it to you? A new expose of one of the West's most rancidly anti-gay subcultures -- hip-hop -- offers the beginnings of an answer. Hip hop has long been the ultimate in fag-bashing, gay-trashing hate music. Listen to any album and a list of homophobic howls will hit you: Eminem squeaking "Hate fags? The answer's yes!", or Masse saying "I be wastin' em. That's what you faggots get!" The music's mood was summarised in a 1992 Ice Cube hit: "True niggaz ain't gay."

This boom-boom-boom of homo-cidal hate has a crushing effect on gay kids. It sends out the message: you are so repulsive you should be killed. It's one of several reasons why gay teenagers are still -- after all the amazing progress we have made -- six times more likely to commit suicide than their straight siblings.

Why do they do it? Why do hip-hop artists -- often the victims of bigotry themselves -- incite this hatred? For ten years, Terrence Dean was at the heart of the hip-hop scene as a producer at MTV and Warner Brothers. His life is as ghetto as any of the big name artists. His mother was a heroin-addicted, AIDS-infected prostitute whose 'clients' held Terrence hostage at gunpoint. His drunken grandmother raised him in the slums of Detroit, and he eventually ended up in prison. When he was released, he headed for Hollywood - and he was amazed to stumble into a gay underworld stocked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop.

I recently interviewed Dean for Attitude, Britain's best-selling gay magazine. He told me about a man -- I don't believe in outing, so I won't give his name -- who "has been named in the past as one of the biggest rappers of all time by MTV. He's always trashing gay men in his lyrics. But he is surrounded by a posse of transvestites," who he has sex with. Dean then runs through a list of hip-hop gays, each more famous and closeted than the last.

He explains: "When the rappers rap about the hatred they have of homosexuals, I know it's because many of them are struggling with their own sexuality. They hate what they are and in turn they spew their hatred toward men who are reflections of themselves."

Terence tried to live their life. He explains: "They had to see me with women. I talked the talk -- cars, sports, women. One misstep would have been the end of my career. Hell, it would have been the end of my life." But it was a miserable, bitter existence, based on violent emotional repression. These homie-sexuals even convinced themselves they could have sex with men without being "gay" -- a term they see as synonymous with being weak and womanly.

Dean's autobiography, Hiding in Hip-Hop: On the Down-Low in the Entertainment Industry - From Music to Hollywood. Its claims have been taken seriously enough to rattle the whole industry: Young Berg, said he could "destroy a good family" by making wives suspect their husbands.

There is some scientific evidence suggesting Dean is right -- and that his arguments apply much more widely, to homophobes in politics, religion and the wider world. Professor Henry Adams at the University of Georgia conducted a major study in the 1990s, where he took several groups of men who identified as heterosexual and expressed hostility to gays, and wired them up so the blood flow to their penises could be monitored. He then showed them gay porn -- and some 80 percent became aroused. He concluded that since "most homophobes demonstrate significant sexual arousal to homosexual erotic stimuli", anti-gay hatred is probably "a form of latent homosexuality."

Of course, not all of these hate-mongers are secretly gay. But we know from decades of sexual research that almost everyone -- especially as a teenager -- has a period when they have omnivorous sexual urges, with attraction to the 'wrong' gender cropping up for a while. (Like most gay boys, I had a burst of heterosexual experiences when I was 15 and 16.) The question is: how do you deal with them? If you see this as an interesting, natural part of human experience, they will soon fade from your mind. If you see them as shameful or immoral, they will fester -- and you will subconsciously project them outwards, onto the demonic, disgusting fags, who should be punished for tempting you.

How do we break through this? It has to start with honesty. Homosexuality is not some unnatural intrusion, wrought by demonic perverts, as the pre-modern religious texts so absurdly assert. It is an inevitable part of nature -- birds do it, bees do it -- and it is, fleetingly, part of the sexual development of most teenagers. If you are full of hate for homosexuals, the evidence suggests you have a psychological problem, based on denying part of yourself.

In short: homophobia? It's so gay.




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Are Plants Watching Us?

This fascinating short documentary reveals the work of scientist Cleve Backster, who investigated plants’ “secret lives.” Backster argues that plants are sentient beings, despite their lack of a nervous system; we are merely unable to detect the fact that they are conscious. He attempts to show plants' awareness by hooking garden-variety ones up to a polygraph. The machine records spikes in electrical activity which seem to correspond to Backster's actions. It even jumps when he focuses his mind on a mental image of a burning fire; it seems that the plants could sense Backster’s presence and even his emotions.







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Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data

Teenagers who pledged to avoid sex until marriage were as likely to have intercourse as other U.S. adolescents, according to a survey of conduct mostly in 1990s.

Teens who took the pledge also were less likely to use birth control pills or condoms than those making no promise, according to the research in the January issue of Pediatrics. The results show that teens need information on safe sex and pregnancy prevention even if they vow to refrain, a study author said.

The pledges, made orally or in writing, are viewed by advocates as buttressing federally funded education programs that say avoiding pre-marital sex rather than using protection will curb pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. President George W. Bush’s administration more than doubled the budget for abstinence-only education programs since 1999 to $204 million this fiscal year. More than a dozen states have rejected federal money rather than limit what is taught.

“The results suggest that the virginity pledge does not change sexual behavior,” wrote author Janet Rosenbaum, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Clinicians should provide birth control information to all adolescents, especially abstinence-only sex education participants.”

Today’s study relied on surveys of students in 1996, when Congress authorized increased funding for abstinence-only education as part of an overhaul of welfare, and 2001. A Congressionally authorized report in 2007 on the program in that bill, Title V, also found students were no more likely to abstain. That program gets about $50 million a year. Research published in June found that virginity pledges decreased sexual activity in students ages 12 to 17.

Obama and Abstinence

President-elect Barack Obama said while campaigning in April he has “consistently” talked about the need to take a comprehensive approach “where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children,” and “contraception has to be part of that education process.”

Obama does plan to reverse a policy that linked assistance for combating AIDS in poor parts of the world to requirements that health workers emphasize monogamy and abstinence from sex over condom use, said Susan F. Wood, co-chairman of Obama’s advisory committee for women’s health, in November.

Today’s study included 289 middle-school and high-school students who said, in a 1996 U.S. survey of adolescent behavior, that they had taken a virginity pledge. They were matched with 645 other teens with similar attitudes toward 100 items, including religion and sex. After five years, the groups were compared on self-reported sexual behavior, test results for sexually transmitted diseases and the use of birth control.

Oath Denied

The researchers found that 82 percent of those who had taken the oath denied five years later having done so. Fifty-three percent of the teens in the pledge group said they had engaged in premarital sex compared with 57 percent of those who hadn’t taken the pledge. Forty-six percent of those who had pledged abstinence reported using birth control most of the time, compared with 52 percent of those who didn’t pledge.

The average age of sexual initiation for both groups was 21, which is higher than the average age of 17 for U.S. teenagers reported by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University in Bloomington.

A June report by Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, California, that found virginity pledges decreased sexual activity in students ages 12 to 17. That study interviewed students three times over three years and found 42 percent who didn’t make virginity pledges started intercourse during the period compared with 34 percent who made the pledges.

Broader Population

The findings in Pediatrics don’t reflect the behavior of the broader teenage population, said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based supporter of abstinence programs.

“We do not think a student taking a pledge is enough when they’re living in a sex-saturated culture,” she said in a Dec. 23 telephone interview. “They need reinforcement and encouragement in their pursuit to make healthy decisions.”

Teen sex has increased since 2001, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an Atlanta-based agency, said in June. Forty-eight percent of teens said they had sex last year compared with 46 percent in 2001, the agency said. Condom use declined slightly, to 62 percent in 2007 from 63 percent in 2003, the survey of high school students found.

Teenage pregnancies rose in 2006 for the first time in 15 years, according to a July report compiled by 22 U.S. agencies. The birth rate in 2006 increased to 22 births per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 17 from 21 births per 1,000 in 2005.

Safe Sex Programs Challenged

Abstinence programs, including virginity pledges, provide an alternative to safe-sex programs taught in schools that haven’t proven effective, said Denny Pattyn, founder of the Silver Ring Thing, an evangelical-Christian program based in Moon Township, Pennsylvania.

More than 100,000 people worldwide have been part of the Silver Ring Thing, he said. Teenagers who attend a live program and make a pledge to abstain from sex until marriage are given a silver ring as a symbol of their oath. The organization provides regular follow-up e-mails and helps parents support their children.

“Why not have an alternative message for kids who want to wait?” Pattyn said in a Dec. 23 telephone interview. “Instead of saying, ‘Turn it off,’ say: ‘Make it better, help it work, help these kids be abstinent.’”




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