Submerged In Streams
by Sean Carolan

Once upon a time, and quite a long time ago it was, I was a disc jockey at FM106.3 on the Jersey Shore. It was a real, live, commercial "alternative" station, back when there were only a handful of such stations in existence.

This was back in the mid-to-late eighties, and it was an awful lot of fun, despite the fact that it paid little, had little prospect of advancement, and was run out of a house in the middle of a meadow adjacent to the Garden State Parkway, with a transmitter tower in the rear where most of us would have a backyard shed.

Against all logic, there it was, and through it flowed a river of talent that did radio in very much their own way. Listeners appreciated this (both of them.)

Unfortunately, you can only pile sandbags against the levee of commerce for so long, and the station, it's library, and its legacy were sold for a particularly nice chunk of change. A nice enough chunk of change, in fact, that I certainly can't criticize the motives behind the sale. Money's money, y'know?

All this activity got me into a nostalgic mood, which lasted only as long as it took me to realize what it means when you say "the good old days" about a radio station...

It has no meaning.

Or, more specifically, it has as many individual meanings as it does people who have memories of it.

Take, for instance, the streams that are linked from the appropriate place here on AltRok. (Ah, you always wondered what that "streams" link on the upper left was all about.) There you'll find four folks from the recently deceased station, each with an individual interpretation of what it means to be "alternative". They're all different, they're all valid, and they're all streaming right now. With any luck, more streams will join them as time, bandwidth, and venture capital at Live365.com permit.

Consider it a mighty attempt to ensure that these are the "good old days".