[OutVoice] Radio With a Twist....a review of first show

[Jddoyle1 at aol.com]

Okay, Gay Radio Fans....

I got many, many emails last week when the announcement hit about the new 
national gay radio show:

<<January 11, 2005. (Los Angeles, California) Sony Music sees a gay future 
for the music industry.  The giant entertainment corporation announced on 
Tuesday that it is forming an LGBT music division with Wilderness Media & 
Entertainment. Wilderness is run by Matt Farber the man who created Logo Television. The 
new division will be called Music With A Twist and comes just days before 
Farber launches Twist Radio, a new syndicated weekly gay radio show. The record 
label will feature a mix of gay artists and performers who have a wide gay 
appeal. It will also draw from Sony BMG's extensive talent pool of gay favorite 
performers. Sony also owns Columbia Records Group, Epic Records, Sony Nashville 
and Sony Urban Music.>>

The show airs on a number of cities, mostly on Sundays 10-midnight, but here 
in Houston it was on last night, so of course I needed to listen (and I took 
notes). And I went to their site, at http://www.radiowithatwist.com/home/

Now, in their defense I admit my extreme bias in this area....I want 
all-queer-music. I don't care about music "popular with gays." This will surprise no 
one. But I am not so naive to expect a show driven by Sony to not feature 
straight acts. As I was curious at what the breakdown would be I kept track. Here 
are the acts, in order. I didn't list the titles by the straight artists; I 
didn't care.

Green Day, Melissa Etheridge ("Come To My Window"), Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, 
James Blunt, Elton John & George Michael ("Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me"), 
Gwen Stefani, Melissa Ferrick ("The Other Side"), REM ("Losing My Religion"), 
Cher, Rob Thomas, Madonna, John Mayer, and Kelly Clarkson.

So that's 14 songs in two hours. Songs by GLBT artists: 4 if you count REM. 
Now I realize that Top 40-style programming is very different from what I 
generally would listen to. Top 40 has not enough actual music per hour, lots of 
chatter, commercials, etc. And I acknowledge that the almost totally gay staff 
that produced the show surely considered that they thought they must have known 
straight acts popular with gays to drive the show. They after all want to 
catch young straight listeners as well. And I hope that they will slowly evolve 
the show to be actually more gay oriented.

But, this is a review of the first show, and I was disappointed in the music 
played. Three of the four gay acts were the ones who are already big gay 
stars...Melissa, Elton & George, and REM's Michael Stipe all came out after being 
very successful, and none of course are independent artists. 

The show included a feature called Gay Discovery Club, and to quote the host, 
"The Gay Discovery Club is all about finding the newest and freshest gay or 
gay-friendly talent." Now, why a show already totally saturated with straight 
music would feel it has to include "gay-friendly" in the GDC well, says a lot. 
Anyway, this week's artist was Melissa Ferrick. I love Melissa so was pleased 
at that, though it would have been a service to her if they would have also 
given her name after the song, so listeners new to her could catch it, which 
would fall in the area of Discovery.

The show also has a feature called The Big Gay 5. Alas, you can already 
predict my amazement that it did not include any gay acts. It is a countdown 
supposedly derived from "listener votes and national record sales and airplay." So 
on the site you can "vote" from a list of about 50 songs....no 
write-ins.....all 50 are straight acts, so obviously I was very wrong about confusing the 
countdown with a Big Straight 5. Okay, my bias is showing again...sorry, I'm not 
interested in "gay-friendly" artists being in any Big Gay 5 of mine.

Part of what drives any radio show of a Top 40 style are the on-air 
personalties, and they are pretty good, in fact, excellent....light, lively, funny, 
witty, etc. I've been a fan of Dennis Hensley for years, and he's joined by 
Melissa Carter and Will Wikle. They are in different cities, and have a very good 
playful rapport...very easy to like them. The show features a little 
commentary, a little light news, a quick interview (this time with Margaret Cho) and 
something called Group Therapy, in which listeners can email their 
questions/problems and get advice. One this week involved a guy saying he's getting serious 
about his boyfriend, but the boyfriend is not out to his family, can the 
relationship work? While this got away from the music, I liked this, because I like 
the idea of the straight listeners hearing about real gay people, educating 
the young masses, etc.

To sum up, well, so far musically it's a show full of straight acts and just 
a sprinkling of already big gay acts and probably one Discovery per week. I 
think (hope) it will evolve into more songs by gay artists, especially by 
independent artists, but time will tell. We must not forget though that this is a 
national and very Out gay show and politically that is wonderful. If they change 
nothing, that fact is still wonderful. You don't start out getting a national 
audience by not catering to the masses a bit. I wish it well.

JD Doyle

my "Queer Music Heritage" radio show site:
http://www.queermusicheritage.com
my Outradio site:
http://www.outradio.com
and co-producer of Audiofile, the monthly 
radio review of CDs of interest to the GLBT
communities, airing on over 150 stations 
around the world on This Way Out. 
The Audiofile site is at www.Audiofile.org
and all past Audiofile segments are archived
at http://www.queermusicheritage.com/af.html
Also co-host of Queer Voices on KPFT, every
Monday night from 7-9 pm, www.queervoices.org
and at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jddoyle
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