Reality TV Killed the Radio Star

I'm always surprised by the things I find on our TV. I was flipping channels the other day, lounging around (I'm really good at that), and I found a new channel on our system. It's called "Current." I'm sure a lot of people already know about this station, but for me last Sunday was love at first site. They have a website if anyone has a care to check it out. The channel has shows created by viewers about really anything. It's really cool because you can submit your own videos, ads, whatever and if they're chosen to be aired, you earn a fat check. Also, to make it easier, they have a whole part of the website dedicated to demonstarting the best, easiest and most efficient ways to start. Their big topics are the Environment, Music, Movies, Technology, and Current Events (Political or otherwise). Their website even has a page dedicated to comedy. The channel itself airs shows called "Rotten Tomatoes," which is about movies playing in theaters, and "Vanguard Journalism," a show about current global issues on a myriad of topics among others. My favorite, or the one I have seen the most of so far is called "Embedded," a show about bands and/or singers on tour. You get a chance to see them not so much as musicians, but just regular people having normal day-to-day interactions with other people. They talk about the music and you get a closer look at how bands put albums and tours together. So far I've seen episodes featuring Passion Pit, Ben Harper, Bon Iver, The Decemberists, K'naan, and Bloc Party. I was really excited to learn that on the Decemberists latest album, "The Hazards of Love" (Great title btw), the band collaborated with two female artists I am already a fan of. The first is Becky Stark, the lead vocalist for the pop-folk group, Lavender Diamond and the second is Shara Worden from "My Brightest Diamond". (Lots of "Diamonds" if I do say so myself). For someone who's not too big on shiny things, I really dig these two acts.

(Becky left, Shara right. Shara has since cut her hair in a Karen O- type fashion, not that that has anything to do with this entry whatsoever...)

That's why I love this show. You encounter out all sorts of new things and connections without having to search, search, search throught the internet for them. I'm far too impatient for all that jazz. We're really missing quality music programming nowadays and this is a definite breath of fresh air. While I love my trash tv time dearly (Eh hem Conveyor Belt of Love and Jersey Shore), it would be nice to get a little something relevent to music out of MTV and VH1 once in a while....I mean come on, MTV. You have multiple channels. Give me something.

I digress. The point of this is to highlight the quality music tv on the tube today (Nice alliteration huh?). There's another fun show I have found which airs on Ovation TV. It's called "Later...With Jools Holland" and presents live performances by different types of recording artists. Today, I saw Elvis Costello, David Gilmour, Paul Simon, The Streets, Allen Toussaint and Nacao Zumbi perform live sets. Usually this is late -nighter, but I've seen it on earlier in the day recently. It's definately worth a watch or two when your brain grows weary of the trash as mine sometimes does (emphasis on "sometimes").

On that somewhat hippie-tacular note, I'll leave you to your television sets.

Happy watching.