Back when I lived in Casinoport, lo, those six years ago, I put my radio on a bookshelf, extended the antenna and adjusted it just so, and could receive the local Jazz station, WSIE, in my office.
I listened to it while I sorted garage and estate sale finds, posted Ebay listings, and packaged sold items for shipping in that phase of my life. I listened to it while writing my novel John Donnelly’s Gold. I listened to it while I worked in my first months as quality assurance for the interactive agency, working remotely.
Once I got to working in an office downtown, I didn’t have over the air radio, and WSIE didn’t have a live stream at the time. So I ended up listening to KCSM out of San Francisco. That’s been weird, listening to the time two hours behind where it is here. To be honest, I thought the musical selection was okay, but they played a number of programs I didn’t like that much, and the on-air personalities where more excited than mellow, which is what I prefer on a jazz station.
But the stream has been wonky lately, dropping and not coming back unless I switch computers to the Macintosh to restart the stream, and so I looked for WSIE, and it’s finally gotten a live stream.
I like the musical selection better, but I do find it a little strange to listen to a St. Louis area station with its traffic reports talking about places I know, where I find myself mapping alternative routes to get around trouble.
Unfortunately, the station turned out all of its old on-air personalities. No more E.B. Stevenson. No more Ross Gentile (but what would he have had to talk about with the closure of Webster Records?). No more Adam Tracy (who really wasn’t the same after Buddy Moreno left the program). I suppose the decline started when they replaced LaVerne Holliday with canned jazz in the mornings.
So it’s not without mixed emotions that I return home to WSIE. I’m pleased with the quality of the stream and with the musical selection. I am saddened and miss the old guys. I’m nostalgic, warmly, for the era in which I listened to it daily. And I’m hopeful I’ll learn to like the new guys.
Now I just have to invent reasons to sit at my desk and listen.