OK tribe, rubbin' some sticks together here, hoping to get a fire going, or something. For what it's worth: a little story. The 80's, suburban ATL, a kid of 13, eldest born to square parents, trying to figure out the difference between the 'culture' he has access to and a tupperware container. The picture I am hoping to paint for you is - this kid lived in a very sterile place and time. But he had a radio, and one day flipping around on the left end of the FM spectrum, he came across some bizarre sounds. I'm not sure that the first encounter was upon, but let's pretend, it was a sunday night. He heard a show called Personality Crisis, and another called Notes From Underground. The DJ spoke in in this creepy, but intensly interesting, monotone. Or maybe it was a Wednesday night and he heard Atmospherics. The theoretical world got a lot bigger-
Let stick him, for fun's sake, into the lyrics of a VU song for a moment:
And then one evening he turned on an ATL station,
and he couldn't believe what he heard at all-
He started veggin' to that fine, fine music,
yeah his life was saved by - a diversified playlist!

I soon had a conception of industrial music that had more to do with people in state institutions, staving off the effects of thorazine, expressing themselves, experimenting, challenging - than a later definition that came along, that seemed about spoiled bratty rich kids trying to appear angstful (and mysteriously sexy), in latex costumes, rhyming over drum machines in a 3 minute (pop) song format. (Yes, I am ragging on Trent Reznor and his ilk). Sorry chumps, PVC Precint/Flatbush took me further.
And this was just the begining of the education:jazz, nonpolished blues, dub and all sorts of other musics I otherwise knew nothing about, were presented for my sensory intake. It was years before I met anyone else I could talk with this station about. And it stayed by me. Oxford books, another pubescent love, eventually fell apart, The Rhodes Theatre and SIlver Screen closed, but WREK is still what it always was for me, and it's still there. I'm not saying this is the only thing I want to hear on the radio, but it's always a randomized option, THE MOST RANDOMIZED option, if I should choose to check it. I've left ATL and come back many times, I will leave again. As often as I've wanted to say, during a surly moment, 'fuck this souless collection of stripmalls, fuck Atlanta', there is always this one radio station that won't allow me to write this place off entirely. How many of the 4 mil appreciate this resource? It doesn't matter, the signals are transmitted anyway. What is meant to be heard, by those meant to hear it, WILL BE HEARD.
Pardon elements of my story that may strike you as melodramatic, and share your own-