I don’t think I would love the Current 89.3 so much if Twin Cities commercial radio didn’t make network television seem like a surrealist collective. I’m a commercial radio guy, still on the listen for the latest Beatles, and I always felt smirky around the turtleneck modulations and weenie self-congratulation of public radio. But I love the Current. When I first tuned in, a week or two after its launch. I heard a set of three David Bowie songs: one by Bowie, one by Bauhaus and one by a Brazilian singer who simply covered Bowie songs. And I remember how people talked about the Current when it first arrived, with that particular tilt of excitement that people use to talk about music. I haven’t kept my dial on 89.3 every minute since–sometimes in the morning a wan bit of Americana has me scurrying to commercial radio and then, disappointed in my inability to foresee my disappointment, back again. But the Current is the closest thing to a multi-genre, multi-ethnic (Diggable Planets, Blackalicious), personal yet professional , eclectic but not diffuse, righteous but not penitential radio station I'm going to find any time soon.
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