About the time I was a sophomore or junior in high school, FM radio came into being, and I discovered KSHE (St. Louis, again). But KSHE saw itself as kind of an underground, hippy station, and never played any Motown or Pop at all. It was Album Rock. So, I then got into Led Zeppelin (I don't think you can 'love' Led Zeppelin", you just 'get into them'), Moody Blues (all the groups that used orchestras got a lot of play), Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, Jimi Hendrix (my, I loved Hendrix - I bought every one of his albums), Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Foghat, Iron Butterfly (who could not air-drum Inagodadavita?) The Who, and any other artists worthy of being played on FM.

Looking back, I see a trend in radio - way back when I was a kid, I heard a much more varied selection of music on one station - Pop, Rock, R&B than I can listen to now.

My tastes became more and more narrow as I got older - in college, I listened to our pitiful college station and probably only heard 30 different songs in 4 years (small Jesuit college in Kansas City).

Then, some years later, MTV was invented, and Video did indeed kill the Radio Star. I bet not more than 30 videos were played in a week's time, but at least MTV actually played videos , none of the stupid non-video stuff they produce now.

These days, Radio station formats have become pretty damned narrow. There are Pop, RAP, R&B, Heavy Metal, Classic Rock, Alternative Rock, Adult Alternative Rock, 80's Rock, 90's Rock, Rock of the Ages (that's a joke), Christian Rock, and so on, ad nauseum. I fully expect that some station somewhere is playing a Beatles only format.

So now, I listen to AM radio in the car - talk stations. While working, I tune into Launchcast. com - I pay for the upgraded version. I can pick the types of music I like, and if it starts to play something I hate, I can ban it forever from my station. Too bad I can't listen to it in the car.

I blame the big radio conglomerates for this lack of musical diversity. They aim for such narrow marketing targets that they have narrowed all of us in our musical tastes.