Rick's Blog - MTB Commentary - Stay Tuned

This space has until now been a general statement of operating policy about the website.  The music has been the main focus of the rest of the website, but not here.  A growing feeling has been emerging that this is misguided, and that some general conclusions should be offered on the state of the bay area music scene, at least in so far as the roughly one tenth that is represented in the MTB music stream.

 To do this however, a basic shift in point of view is necessary.  Instead of post-journalism objectivism in the 3rd person, the narrative needs to shift into low gear, telling the story from the ground up.  Standing there in this spotlighe is an old radio pirate with a quarter century of on-air exploits in about a half dozen states, and at least that many stations within a 30 mile radiuis of what was once called the Million Dollar Pier in St Pete. 

 That's where I come in.  My first thoughts about putting this project into a form that can be seen and heard by anyone began somewhere along that journey from WLCY, WFLA, WGUL & others in the 60s and 70s, WTAN in the 80s, followed by a break to get a degree in Gator Country up in Gainesville, and then WTKN & WHNZ in the early 90s.  After that, and until about the 3rd year that MTB began streaming, my career was off-the-air and not in radio, but still in broadcasting.  Few people know a full-fledged national television network operates out of an old church in Clearwater, a sort of off-spring of the Home Shopping Network, but running off network reruns seen by viewers in about 85 percent of the country.  I had the privilege of working with the old Tampa Bay Devil Rays in their regional telecasts, and once operated an MTV type cable channel for about 5 years that featured nothing but great Christina music videos.  Today this enterprise is known as ION TV, cable channel 17 for most of the Tampa Bay area.

So, I offer my credentials as exhibit one in giving some background about what Music Tampa Bay is all about, and what the following perspective on all original music by local artists means.

For starters, there is a song currently working its way up the daily playlist (another webpage on this site) by a guy named Charlie Souza that deserves a mention.  I first encounted this guy about 45 years ago when he was bursting on the scene in a group called The Tropics.  We did not meet then, but he was doing live shows promoted by the top-40 station I was working at as a weekday newsman and playing DJ on the weekends.  The Tropics were hot then, and Charlie is still in great form, performing these days with a remake of another 60s group getting national airplay, The New Rascals.  His current song on MTB is also the title of a newly released autobiography, Live Your Dream, and reflects the highest standard in music recording, at least as far as I'm concerned.  Why this isn't on local broadcast radio simply boggles my mind.  But then, I would say the same thing for at least a hundred other songs, also currently being heard.

So this diary, or journal now becomes a personal recollection, and a timely one, that if read a year from now would be out of focus.  Such is the trouble with trying to remain relevant, in the 1st person.

Back to the music, take the current #1 song - Randy Bluesman Hock's, OK Just Ain't Good Enough.  Why is local radio ignoring this, or anything in the playlist by Rebel Pride, or Rob Kosinsik, Rebekah Pulley.  Oh sure, WMNF gives some of these and others a spin every now and then, but where is the concentration of airplay that is heard everyday all across the commercial radio band?  Local talent has been getting the finger ever since I can remember, and in fact, I think I even shot a bird or two in my early days, until all this began to just not make any sense at all. 

Local radio is suppose to server the local community where stations are licensed to operate.  Name one Clear Channel, CBS, Cox, Cumulus, or other conglomerate station that gives a shit about local artists.  Yeah, that finger is sticking right up out of the earth like the 1,000 towers scattered all around us with their 100,000 watts telling us what music we like. 

MTB is my personal vendetta to change that. 

Here is music that is just as good, and often better, than what the national distribution system is hyping.  Sure, there is a lot of raw, developing talent in the MTB music stream, but there is also a lot of highly polished, professional product that should also be heard. 

We will look at this in more detail in weeks and months, and hopefully years to come.  The narrative for now will return to the dispassionate and impartial view that now makes up the Blog Archive.

Respond or reply to rick@musictampabay.com or in the Guest Book on the Contact page. 

Artists currently being heard on MTB and seen frequently at local venues offer a view of the Tampa Bay Music Scene quite different from any other. Mainstream artists come through the area all the time, as well as a constant stream of touring acts that travel through Florida every year.  High priced shows draw huge numbers of fans treated to the latest hits being heard on-line, on radio and elsewhere.  Of course radio is clearly not the main source of new music it once was.  Not even Internet Radio commands this distinction, though the choices are impressive.  On one MTB system called Shoutcast - only one of many different ways of listening on-line - there are more than 40,000 stations now saturating the web and soaking up bandwidth.  It is a good guess there may be as many as 100,000 or more such stations altogether on the world wide web.  

Big name acts and traveling wanna-bees will always be around, and so will local artists, who call the beautiful beaches and bays of Great Tampa Bay home.  Local artists normally have families and roots here.  Most are what are called Indies, or unsigned groups and solos.  Some lean toward the the raw and un-tempered side of the art, while  it is true that there is also a healthy stable of polished and professional performers who can be seen quite regularly, and over long periods of time, at local venues and public events.  Nearly all inscribe their work into various forms of recorded media, which eventually can be converted into a digital format and entered into a constantly moving audio stream on which MTB and all these other tens or hundreds of thousands of station can be heard.

Up and down the beaches and all around the bay area there is a proliferation of places where this select group of local artists are paid to perform.  But, they are not normally heard in mainstream public domains such as broadcast radio.  MTB seeks to change that, but also is discovering a self supporting new medium with a future too.  One that can exist just as well without the benefit of a tower and transmitter, with accompanying real estate and a rather large ensemble of equipment and facilities.  Radio in cyber space is truly free of all that, though there is one expense that does not go away.  Broadband is the new economics of radio and all streaming media in the 21st century.

Radio is in a trek of some kind to gain its new identity and purpose in society in the digital age. MTB has been, from the beginning, a listening post that for all practical purposes is unlike anything on broadcast radio, but is also a viable listening format that could, and some might argue should, be heard on over-the-air stations.   That was an MTB goal on day one.  Whether it will ever happen, remains to be seen.

From its inception, this project has been a mostly solo effort, based on a broadcast career spanning more than 4 decades.  However, a number of artists who are heard in the music stream have also made significant contributions to the project.  For one, a Tampa music lover who creates an enormous quantity of original material, mostly it is believed using tools found in his computer, has also added his singing voice to the pool of MTB signature jingles.  This same cyber musician also created a video presentation depicting MTB milestones that can be found on the homepage.   Another artist offered his interpretation of the MTB logo, which appears at various key locations on the website and all printed displays on which the logo appears.  These are contributions that were not sought after, but instead offered simply because the individuals involved were motivated by the essence of the project, and wanted to help improve it.  What a remarkable way to come together under one on-line umbrella.