WRXP-101.9: Has anyone been listening to the Best Rock Station in New York City?

101.9 RXP - The New York Rock Experience


The newest radio station in town came on the air, Feb. 7, 2008 and I have been remiss in writing about it. Finally, Finally, FINALLY a station for those of us who still wish the best for terrestrial radio.

My commute is only 1 hour round trip and I don't want to get satellite radio for my car for such a short period of time. I could get an I-Pod, but then I will only be listening to music I already own and not experiencing new stuff. And I will never hear the news or any other current events that way. I love variety on the radio, but my mainstay since 1978 has been great rock and roll radio, and we used to have it.

I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, because I was too young to notice and because it was always there, so who knew it could be taken away from us, but rock radio started going downhill around the end of 1982 and the fall has been precipitous since 1990. I won't go through an entire history, but people my age and older remember when WPLJ and WNEW were in a great dogfight for best rock station in New York. PLJ had a more commercial bent, but they were in touch with the modern listener and there was no shame in listening to them. WNEW was more avant garde, but boy did they open this young boy's ears. The punk rock scene never totally caught on in New York City, despite the revisionist history we hear on VH1 these days, but certain bands had their day in the sun on NEW and are staples today. Talking Heads, Blondie and The Ramones to name a few.

In 1982, NEW was so sure of itself that it started paying attention to the drumbeats of those who wanted to hear more black rock on the radio. They had always played Motown and Stax records, but they started looking at more modern fair and felt that Michael Jackson and Prince were making rock records. You'd hear "Beat It" because of Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo and Little Red Corvette, because of Prince's familiarity with Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix. But the corporate honchos started making their move on NEW and the experimenting was suddenly limited to Sundays and Friday afternoons with Things From England.

When K-Rock switched to all classic rock in the late '80s, New York radio started its fast swirl towards the drain. Classic rock became a code phrase for the Top 100 songs according to listener surveys beaten to death. Now many of those songs which I once loved are barely listenable anymore. And I won't even get into the fact that hardly any new rock and roll bands got a chance to find an audience during these last 25 years. U2, REM and Guns and Roses were the only new bands to find great success.

Now with so many in the New York audience turned off to FM radio by the lack of great music, a new station rises like a Phoenix from the ashes, 101.9--WRXP--The New York Rock Experience. It plays classic rock, modern rock and alternative rock. You are likely to hear in a row: Spoon, The Smiths and the Rolling Stones, but the Stones song will probably one you haven't heard on the radio in 25 years, like "Respectable" off Some Girls. Never heard of Spoon? They are a modern New York band with a fast, Spanish-flavored acoustic sound.

So basically, WRXP mixes up several genres into one cohesive rock and roll station. The punk/new wave era of late '70s WNEW, the modern hard-core rockers of '90s K-Rock, the alternative '80s and '90s records of WLIR and the classic rock that any number of stations have laid claim to since 1988. It's a lot for one station to take on, but hopefully the suits at other stations are starting to see the groundswell of support it's getting. People want to hear something both familiar and new. At most, classic rock stations will play the same five songs from an artist, RXP played the rarely heard Boogie With Stu from Led Zep III the other day. I nearly hit a tree when I heard it on the radio.

It's already starting to happen. Other stations are starting to experiment more. K-Rock is now playing hard rock back to 1970; WCBS is making more room for the '50s records they shamelessly pushed aside; the lowly "classic" Q-104.3 is at least playing something different on Two-for Tuesdays, making the second song one you haven't heard in a while.

RXP claims that they let their DJs pick the records, which might be true, but they do seem to have a bit of playlist that they choose from. Hopefully with success will come more experimentation. The afternoon DJ, Bryan Schock has become the biggest name on the station so far and he brags that he will play something you haven't heard in many years at least once a day on his show. Which is great and I hope that number grows exponentially, but the songs and groups I've heard him play on my way home is heartening. Devo's "Satisfaction" (which like Schock I prefer to the Stones version), Jim Carroll's "All the People Who Died, Died"; Sex Pistols "Anarchy in the UK"; Ian Hunter's "All the Way to Memphis"; Husker Du; The Replacements; and several more I'm not remembering.

Unfortunately, this should not be such a tremendous event. Rock and Roll is 54 years old, there is so much great and wonderful music out there just waiting to be heard. But suit and ties who probably listen to John Tesh make the decisions for what you can hear and like lemmings we listen to stations that long ago gave up any connection to what we want. It has fueled the alternative ways of hearing the music you want from satellite to I-Pods, but how stupid is it for companies to chase away radio listeners who care about what they listen to. I'll keep listening to a station if it's playing a song I don't like, if the promise is there that I will like the next song, but how horrible is it that I am forced to change the station because they've made me sick of a song.

I hope 101.9-WRXP continues to experiment and I hope the New York audience makes them a rousing success.

The Freditor