An Open Letter to Local Rock Stations

Congratulations. You win! I admit defeat! After hoping for years that a station would come along and provide Knoxville with a decent selection of good ol' rock and roll, I have finally accepted the harsh reality that you all are required to remain in the same rut forever.

First we had WIMZ, which has gradually and continually gotten worse and worse, playing the same songs from their Time-Life "Sounds Of The Seventies" collection as if they have to test the claim that a compact disc will never wear out! The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Peter Frampton (dear Lord, why HIM of all people?), ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Doobie Brothers are always in abundance at 103.5, and if any of this stuff was ever destined to go away, rest assured that WIMZ will keep 'em in the public eye FOREVER!

Anyway, after years and years of these people digging their musical abyss deeper and deeper, the long awaited "new" rock station arrives...WXVO a.k.a. "The X"...promising at first, but ultimately just as bad. Like every other radio station, they latch onto a VERY limited number of songs and play them into the ground. As if THAT ain't bad enough, they take the worst of WIMZ and play it with pride! Hearing 'em proudly proclaim that they're not my father's rock station and then hearing Thin Lizzy or Rush makes me wonder what dream world they live in! (News flash, guys...my father's radio station DOES play that stuff...that's what I was trying to get away from in the first place!)

And now we have "The Eagle" 100.3 on the FM dial, nestled almost at a halfway point between WXVO and WIMZ, and with just as much creativity. How much thought did it take to look at WIMZ's playlist, scratch out anything after the mid-'80s (not that there's much to remove), and then replace those songs with Billy Joel and Jim Croce? However, they do play the single versions of some of these songs, so I guess that's a radical step... maybe... if I imagine really hard.

Thus, I GIVE UP! As soon as I mail this, I'm going to disconnect the antenna from my car radio, buy a buncha blank tapes, and set my tape deck to program my own little internal station, with nary an REO Speedwagon song to be found! There will be no songs that I have been forced to listen to hundreds of times over the past few years. (Here's a career tip for all you future radio programmers out there...if I didn't like "Dreamweaver" the first time I heard it, I sure ain't gonna like it after hearing it four score and seven times more!)

We have over 40 years of music to choose from (more if we feel bold enough to play some blues or R&B, at least as a history lesson).

There is so much good stuff out there that no one is willing to dig up, so I'll take it upon myself to seek it out. It'll be fun to see if I go through any sort of withdrawal by not hearing "China Grove" for at least a year. Maybe my zest for life will finally return.

By the way, anybody reading this letter...nobody should be offended if a fave artist of theirs is mentioned above. I'm not necessarily putting down their talent, but how many times can you hear the same music licks before losing interest? (That goes for everybody... well, except Peter Frampton fans. Find a support group or something, and face up to your problem!)

Goodbye Knoxville rock radio. I hardly knew ye, yet I knew your music all too well.

George "Won't Get Fooled Again" Brandon
Oak Ridge

Viva Cup-a-Joe

I was passing through Knoxville coming back from a weekend excursion in the mountains. As I do every time I find myself in Knoxville, I stopped in on Cup-a-Joe located at 1911 Cumberland Avenue.

While enjoying my coffee, I picked up your magazine and read Adrienne Martini's article titled "Coffee Quest" [Vol. 8, No. 24]. Ms. Martini related that, on her visit to Cup-a-Joe, she did not feel as though she "fit in" with what she described as "...young gamers who look like Russian revolutionaries."

I certainly cannot take issue with whether or not Ms. Martini felt comfortable in my favorite coffee shop. I have no particular basis of knowledge with which to form an opinion as to Ms. Martini's feelings and no information to lead me to believe she felt other than exactly the way she described in her article. However, I would like offer a counterpoint based on my personal experiences.

I am a very conservative and probably exceedingly normal individual with no singular interest in revolution. While not everyone in Cup-a-Joe may necessarily be my personal cup-a-tea, I have never been there when I felt any less than absolutely accepted and free to be myself. In that vein, I attempt to accept the other patrons, allowing them the dignity and space to be whomever they wish.

Therefore, on behalf of the patrons of Cup-a-Joe, I would like to extend to Ms. Martini my personal invitation to return to my favorite place for some excellent coffee together with lively and stimulating conversation. Should she wish to avoid the "Russian Revolutionaries," she is free to sit with me.

Fletcher W. Long
Nashville