Radio Paradise
People of a certain age group (Boomers, not to put too fine a point on it) remember the great “underground” FM stations of the 1970s and 1980s. You may have first encountered Pink Floyd there. Or Procol Harum. Genesis. Yes. ELP. Tangerine Dream. Those stations played songs that AM didn’t dare touch, because they were a) not in the top 40, b) went longer than 3 minutes and c) had dangerous words and ideas. Great stuff, right?
They’ve mostly all fallen to corporate control these days, and what you get is a blanderized kind of top 40 with taped playlists and a distinct refusal to play anything other than the perhaps 250 songs the better of those stations repeat.
Miss the days of Space Pirate Radio and Proctor and Ward?
There’s a place on the web that has kept the magic intact. RadioParadise.com
Agnes Obel, Stranglers, Cage the Elephant, the Decemberists, Gypsophila, Dengue Fever, shphongle, Helium Voga, [Folk, Pop] Eivor Palsdottir, the Waterboys, Ludovico Einaudi, and probably a dozen others. These are all musicians I first encountered listening to Radio Paradise.
If you’re looking over the list and going “Whoda fuck are these guys?” that kinda the point. They’re brilliant, recognized acts that just don’t show up on commercial broadcast.
The list is utterly dwarfed by music I’ve heard from commercially known acts that just was “on the same album as” or in an album they did twenty years later. Jethro Tull, for example, has 26 studio albums, the latest of which is “The Zealot Game” (2022). Believe me, Ian Anderson didn’t suddenly stop being brilliant and innovative in 1976. He’s still going strong. King Crimson have at least ten albums, and while most are challenging, the craftmanship and innovation remain.
Further, you hear once-well known songs that they just won’t play on Clear Channel: “Something in the Air” by Thunderclap Newton. “Working Class Hero” – John Lennon, covered by Marianne Faithful. “The Revolution will not be Televised” – Gil Scott Heron.
Let’s not forget music from Africa, Central America, South America, India, the Middle East, and Australia. Cultural and indigenous music of all types.
The founder of Radio Paradise, William Goldsmith “had recently moved to the town of Paradise, California in the Sierra foothills north of Sacramento. 30 years of working as a DJ, program director, station manager, and engineer hadn’t diminished his love of radio, but he had become increasingly distressed by the state of the radio industry. With very few exceptions, the days when DJs picked the music they played and when stations were locally owned and run — in many cases by people who truly cared about the music they played and the communities they served — were long gone.” (From Radio Paradise’s “About” page)
If that doesn’t instantly resonate with you, well, there’s lots of pop music out there. There’s no shortage of vapid blondes hiding behind Autotune willing to take your money.
He and his wife Rebecca founded Radio Paradise (named for Paradise California, where it was located until 2017) in 1999, and have carefully nurtured and curated it since, building a fantastic library of music. He moved to the SoCal desert the year before Paradise was burned to hell and gone. Rebecca retired in 2022, but luckily, William’s daughter Alanna in Eureka was more than willing to join the team. Radio Paradise relocated to her home in Eureka, where it is today.
Listeners have amazing control over what they can hear. There are now five separate channels: Main Mix (“Dj-mixed modern & classic rock, electronic, world music, and more. An eclectic musical adventure”), Mellow Mix (“Thoughtful, gentle songs, perfect as background music at home or work), Rock Mix (“Many different styles and genres with a steady rockin’ energy to keep you moving”), Global Mix (“Musical styles from all over the world, mixed with other eclectic flavors”), and for those less interested in new and unknown music, a Favorites Mix. Your own curated favorites, that is.
I’ve been listening to Radio Paradise since at least 2012, and even after all those hours, it’s not unusual to go a half hour or more and not hear something you’ve heard before. The library is that vast. The playlists are curated by real humans (usually Goldsmith himself) and follow discernible patterns of mood, atmosphere, genre and style.
There are no ads. DJ commentary is spare, and limited to discussing the music itself. Once every 15 minutes or so they stop to say “Thank you for listening to Radio Paradise” only characteristically, the little blurb comes in 20 or 25 different languages. It’s entirely listener-supported.
There are a lot of streaming music services out there, including the big commercial ones. None come close to the quality and depth of Radio Paradise.
They stream at studio-level quality. While you can listen to them on your smartphone or airbuds, they are best enjoyed through a player with good electronics and speakers, for obvious reasons. I’ve got good speakers on my desktop computer, but even when I’m just reading on my Kindle, I usually have them playing. The only problem I’ve encountered is that I often find myself switching over to the Kindle browser to see what new and interesting song I’m listening to now. It better be a good book, or I might be gone for a spell.
Try it. It costs nothing, and you’ll be amazed.