Thursday, September 22, 2005

You may think I’m on an audio kick this week, a five-day acoustic pursuit to shape your eardrums to my unbending will, but I assure you it’s simply chance. Our discussion tonight on podcasts is by no means trendsetting, since the trend began months and months ago, and it’s more of a way to sort out my own thoughts and pinpoint why I’ve been spending progressively more time on these homemade radio shows.

“Homemade” actually blankets the field in undue connotation, so let me append this by saying some are professionally done. But a lot of them are shitty. A lot. One of the reasons I didn’t fully embrace the initial upswing was because I downloaded a few shows with high hopes, only to discover a kind of sound piping through my speakers best described as serialized vomit. It was as if a bunch of Neanderthals had broken into a microphone store, somehow managed to build recording equipment out of mud, and then proceeded to vocalize in the wrong end of the mic.

The trick, then, is to choose wisely from the bounty. I’ve finally built a stable, which you probably accomplished a while ago. For me, the appeal of these podcasts isn’t so complex. First, there’s the roughness, the scrappy nature of the whole enterprise. Sure, there’s pleasure to be had from a polished piece of work, such as the modern radio drama I mentioned to you previously, but there is a different type of drama in immediacy.

The medium itself is what separates it from traditional radio. It’s very forgiving–all of my needs and scheduling are built into that small file. If I miss something? I can replay it, wonder of wonders. Most of all, though, it’s the chance to hear different people articulate in spectacular fashion. Remember eavesdropping on that one conversation at Applebee’s during Bottomless Riblets Night? Yeah, this would be the opposite of that.