radio 3D

Is community radio the new face of music consumption for people who care about music? ROBERT BROKENMOUTH thinks so in this appraisal of the format, with a special focus on Adelaide station 3D Radio and its Mike Drive program.

Napster, eh? Who remembers those sites? Where - wow - you didn’t have to pay for your music (if the site had it). Assorted court cases and many decades later we are stuck with several sad truths.

The first, and most obvious, is that "file sharing" and "streaming", "burning" and "ripping" are as ordinary an activity as picking the newspaper off the lawn used to be. 

The difference is that theft is now so common that it’s not comprehended as either theft, or wrong. 

Rock'n'Roll Undead – Mad3 (Rock'n'Roll Kingdom)
Upon the Dentigire - 2yago: (Zygeltigit)]

These albums by Japanese bands Mad3 and 2yago were pressed into my hands by one, Paul Slater, who runs the 3D Radio show ”'It's Always Rock'n'Roll”out of Adelaide on Monday nights (and whose adverts occasionally send him to Facebook Jail.) Paul is one of those music nutters who often knows the people who make the music, and has travelled overseas (France, Japan, UK) just for the bands (rather than the touristy T-shirts, towels and gastro).

Mad3 is built around guitar hero Eddie Legend (I-94 Bar readers will know him from the 5.6.7.8s) and are simply incredible. They're one big, bad, really sharp and clever rock'n'roll rollercoaster road trip - you're dragged kicking and squealing into a comic-character world of underground surfer/phantom/doom guitar noir. Play very fucking loud. Eddie has an incredible guitar sound.

3D Radio, Adelaide, October 27, 2013

There was always only one gig for me in Adelaide this week, and it wasn't a gig. We were lucky enough to be among the few watching Grong Grong play live to air on 3D Radio last night.