Radio Waves

When I drive through the Southwest, something that happens about 6 to 8 times a year, I am usually in a rental vehicle without a cd or tape player. I have an ipod that I don't ever use stuffed in some office drawer so I depend on the car radio. The first part of my trip I can get the Highway Stations in the Mojave, which is kind of pablum classic rock, but I flit around the dial. You can usually get a decent station out of Vegas when you get close to the river. I lose Sportstalk about 2 hours from my home and find it again near Phoenix.

Occasionally I will listen to Christian radio, where the saved and righteous will ward off Sodom and Gomorrah with either Bible Study, which I listen to once in a while or timely topical rants regarding the present human conundrum. This morphs into Catholic Radio by the time you get to Santa Fe, which has a decidedly right to life flavor but is pretty unique.

There are a lot of third stringer Rush Limbaugh clones lurking around the airspace, Jerry Doyle, Rusty Somebody or other, Pipsqueaked voice Mark Levin. I listened to Dennis Miller for a few minutes last week until a lady from Oregon called up and started making racist coments about Obama and about changing the national fruit to Watermelon and I had to shut it off. Evil lurking on the right... very little progressive radio around, kind of dig Ed Schultz but the left is definitely undermanned.

Once you get to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, it gets real effete and erudite with jazz, classical and the like. Used to be a great pirate blues station operating with a tremendous playlist but I think they disappeared.

You get some excellent classic country stations on the reservation, old treasures like George Jones, Faron Young and the rest of the people that you won't hear on your new homogenized country stations. Sometimes in the small towns there are shows where people call in to sell things from home, from axles to washing machines that work great except maybe you have to turn them off manually. I heard a woman call in selling a Billy goat and two kids and I can only assume they were progeny of the goat. This is great radio and americana.

My favorite station, the one I always ultimately turn to, is KTNN 660, the Voice of the Navajo Nation. I think that it is based out of Window Rock and it's definitely one of a kind. You get cool country mixed with Navajo chants and dances. English seamlessly mixed with Dineh...You just heard Shorty Charlie singing Ain't she pretty heyaa, heyaa cascading into a navajo drum song with the beautiful low intonation of the men interspersed with yelping wolf calls of the women singers. I don't think it will surprise you when I tell you that I do not speak a word of Navajo but this stuff is so soothing and grounded that you get hypnotized by the beauty.

I like to listen to KTNN in the early morning when I have lots of miles in front of me. It puts me in a great zone for the day. If you are driving through the southwest, give it a shot!