My Listening Picks on the Internet

It's summer time now, and I'm going to the Internet Cafe's a bit more often than I usually do (and probably more than I should--the cost adds up a bit).

The frequency with which this blog is updated perhaps belies the fact that I don't have regular internet access. As mentioned in a previous post, I usually write up entries on a word processor, once a week go to an internet cafe and transfer them to my blog, and put in all the links. Then, throughout the following week, I only sneak on the internet at work long enough to hit the post button on the blog.

But when I am in an internet cafe, I always try and get the most out of my money by listening to internet radio while I surf.

I used to listen to Air America Radio, until I decided I couldn't stand it anymore.

I appreciate what these guys are doing, and more power to them, keep on fighting the good fight, and so on.

But if their goal was to create a liberal alternative to conservative radio, I think they've accomplished it too well. It's just one long bitch fest about the republicans. I don't even learn anything interesting; all I hear is ranting and raving and complaining, and if the hosts aren't bad enough, the callers are equally as vacuous.

So, I began to explore other listening options on the internet. The NPR website is absolutely brilliant. Not only do I feel that I am actually learning stuff as opposed to just listening to someone bitch, but they have all their stories organized, and I can click on anything that interests me.

And then I discovered that they have all their previous shows archived on their website, and it's searchable. How cool is that? So whatever I'm interested in at the moment I can find a show on the topic and listen to it. In the past month I've listened to shows on Emma Goldman, "The Office", The Black Panthers, Pete Seeger, John Brown, Noam Chomsky, etc. All really good quality shows as well. I'd love to link to all of them, but I guess there's no point. If you're interested, you can pull them up yourself. Otherwise you can just search NPR for whatever you happen to be interested in today.

That being said, I couldn't resist linking to this clip on Jefferson Airplane.

I first stumbled upon Jefferson Airplane when I found a greatest hits tape going through my dad's music collection. I quickly became addicted to their music, and ended up buying all their CDs.

Then when I took my CD collection to college with me, my large amount of Jefferson Airplane CDs made me a target of ridicule. Either people have never heard of Jefferson Airplane, and wondered why I had all these CDs of an old obscure band. Or, they associated Jefferson Airplane with the worst of hippy pretension and excess, and questioned my musical taste. The NPR clip I linked to above made me remember why I used to like the band so much.

One final recommendation on Internet listening: Noam Chomsky's audio archives are stored here on Z-Net. If you're surfing the net and want something to listen to while doing it, I can't recommend this highly enough. Chomsky completely changed the way I look at the world.