All-Kiwi radio is facing extinction, but fans can still fill their boots with local music.
If there's one thing everyone in our household can agree on, it's that our choice of vehicle is seriously, dangerously uncool. But we completely fall apart when it comes to what station the vehicle's radio should be set to. It's a frequent battle as we cruise the streets in our blue, seven-seat people mover, replete with three car seats, six drink holders and the entire Wiggles back catalogue.
I tend to spend an eternity cursing and trying to find National Radio. My husband prefers the strangled-cat ramblings of Radio Live. Naturally, as modern parents, we are both over-ruled by my daughter's Dora the Explorer Around the World soundtrack, and she in turn is superseded by my son's Playhouse Disney Volume 45.
The babysitter, in her mid-20s, footloose and fancy-free, prefers the stylings of 95BFM, as befits her demographic. She has that easy, sophisticated taste of a young woman at ease with herself: where I hear clanging guitars assaulted by young men with too much time on their hands, she sees tortured, talented souls. I hear pre-menstrual lunacy, she hears an oestrogen-powered cri de coeur; that sort of thing.
Local and alternative she likes, but she's not blindly loyal to New Zealand music per se. Her generation hasn't been steeped in the "struggle" to keep local music, in turns awful and inspired, on radio playlists. The local musicians she likes are just as likely to make their home in Berlin or Melbourne as Dominion or K Rds. She simply likes it if it's good, and doesn't if it's not.
