"Nine FM" Test Drive, Part 1

So you've read all the press and speculation on this new "Nine FM," but most imporantly... How does it sound? While I have caught snippets here and there of the new "Nine FM," I've never really listened to the station for an extended period of time. I really want to like it, but I haven't heard enough to make a real judgment yet. So what better way to evaluate the new station than to lock my radio at 99.9 and listen to it for an entire day? Yesterday I pointed my antenna toward to the heavens, grabbed a note pad and pen, and proceeded to make "Nine FM" my only music source for the entire day. Here's how it went... Wednesday, 8/11/04 8:30am Arrive at work, tune radio to 99.9fm...first song, "I Did It" by Dave Matthews. God damn I hate Dave Matthews Band!!...I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. 8:34am DJ comes on and goes into some entertainment news shtick. I try to tune him out, but he's so damn cheesy...sounds like someone is trying to imitate a cheesy morning jock, only this guy is serious. 8:35 -9:00am A blockbuster set of music consisting of Sugar Ray, Journey, Mike+The Mechanics(are you kidding me?!?) and Janet Jackson. This whole "listen to Nine all day" thing is starting to seem like a really bad idea...like a painfully bad idea. 9:04am REO Speedwagon comes on...that "heard it from a friend who, heard from a friend who..." song. That's it!! I can't take it anymore... 9:04-10:00am Abort mission, tune into WHPK. 10:00am OK, OK...i'll give Nine FM another shot... 10:01am "Bruuuuuuuuuuuce!!" Alright, "Born to Run" by Springsteen, hopefully things will get better now 10:05-10:25am Iggy Pop ("Lust of Life" of course!), Curtis Mayfield ("Superfly"), old school U2, Smashing Pumpkins (yes Billy, despite all my rage, I too am still just a rat in a cage), and "Band on the Run" by McCartney. Yeah, Paul is lame (the sound you make is Muzak to ears!!) and the Pumpkins have been played into the ground by XRT and Q-101, but I have to admit I didn't completely hate that set. Maybe we're finally getting somewhere here... 10:30-10:40am What the fuck is this shit??? Some unbelievably sappy song is played, followed by an equally lame tune that seems to have been borrowed from the country station. Next song..."Shoop" by Salt n' Peppa. 10:45am Red Hot Chili Peppers follows Salt n' Peppa Hey, these Nine FM jocks are clever! (hint of sarcasm there) Actually, the current jock sounds alright, a 100% improvement over the "wacky" morning guy. 10:48am "Oh Sherry" by Steve Perry What the hell?? Didn't they just play a Journey track last hour?? 10:53am Sappy as hell, 80's schlock from Cetera-era Chicago Uggghhh! 10:57-11:05am Cars, "She's a lot like You"...Nena, "99 Luftbaloons" Woo-hoo! Finally some songs I actually want to crank up! 11:05am That god-damn Barenaked Ladies song with the "Chinese Chicken" rap is played Oh jesus, here we go again with the shitty tunes... 11:10am-1:00pm I did manage to make it to my lunch hour without having any emergency “REO Speedwagon” situations that made me want to throw my radio out the window. However, at this point I'm not exactly ready to super glue my dial to 99.9. There was a decent set that featured current buzz bin dudes Franz Ferdinand, followed by the Stones' "Midnight Rambler" and that "Betty Davis Eyes" song. Other highlights included the new Darkness single, "You're Really Growing on Me," "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult (sorry, I'm not looking up how to make umlauts in HTML) and "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Heart (80's one-hit wonders rawk!!). However, the amount of bad songs overshadowed the good stuff by quite a bit. Everclear, Fuel, Sting, and the lite-rock, 90's version of Eric Clapton...c'mon who likes this stuff??? OK, OK... dentists and soccer moms don't count... Stay tuned tomorrow on RFC for part 2 of the "Nine FM" test drive