Vibrating stars
Listening to AM at night
Lately I’ve been listening to a barely present AM radio station when I drive home after local shows. I turned it on by accident. I was trying to press “next track” but hit the radio switcher instead and it was already tuned to AM 1610, apparently the perfect ghostly frequency to soundtrack empty Northwest Side streets at night. As I drove, the signal sounded like it was bobbing around and through the squat 1950s buildings up there, squeezing itself past the door to listenability. During the day it’s fully engulfed by noise—the course of normal broadcasting and whatever radio chatter goes on during business hours is too much for 1610 to overcome.
It turns out that it’s a Spanish-language community radio station from Toronto. But when heard through static at night, the songs they program sound like they were purposely created for eery, lonely listening. Upbeat Latin music plays against the weak signal like a clown. A chipper attitude out of place.
I’ve heard that carmakers are getting rid of AM radio. I think that, all things considered, that’s probably OK. On one hand, when technologies fall out of use, it doesn’t make sense to hang on to them too tightly. On the other hand, I love turning on the radio at night and hearing mystery—active, real-time, human activity from a distance that asynchronous digital listening or even livestreaming, with all its buffering and mediation, can never provide. Some in Congress agree and say AM is a crucial emergency broadcasting tool (though we can’t be sure they’re not just trying to protect their beloved conservative talk radio shows). Tens of millions of people, after all, still listen to AM. If it’s not in our cars, we should probably still protect its frequencies for regular ole portable radios to pick up. We can tape them to our dashboards for post-show drives.
I know I’m not alone in liking the sound of a radio signal shining down through the haze but I also can’t help but feel, unreasonably, that it’s hereditary, because my dad has been enamored with that sound since he was a kid and enshrined shortwave numbers stations so prominently in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Almost a hundred years after its “golden age,” radio still feels like magic. You can understand its physics and remain in disbelief that we live in a universe where the basic building blocks allow for invisible action like that.
Announcements
Tonight (Saturday) in Chicago Sammy and I play an instrumental duo show at the Hungry Brain. We don’t play out like this often! We’ll be improvising, free-time some of the time, hypnotic-patterned-time the other time. Our friend Elan made a cool, hyporeal poster for the show.
Tickets for Avrom Farm Party, the small music festival in Wisconsin I co-organize with my friends Hayden and Georgia, are on sale now.
If you’re in Chicago, I’m playing at the Golden Dagger with Henry True on Wednesday, July 5. And at Square Roots Fest with Cosmic Country Showcase on July 8. And at Sleeping Village with Sima Cunningham on July 16.
P.S. Last night my friend Sam told me that this newsletter is the only one he actually reads when it shows up in his inbox 🥹 Hi, Sam. I hope this one is worth your inbox too.
Thank you Spencer! You hit on it. That feeling of hearing through a peephole. That magic of pulling sound from the ether and that real-time shared experience of radio. It’s always been special to me too and passed down to me from my dad as well.
I like that sort of accidental shifted interpretation of radio, art and life. AM radio seems like it was made for the warm glow of betterment thru misunderstanding.