I know you’re probably tired of hearing me yammer about some tiny “modern rock” radio station where I worked long, long ago.
Heck, that station has been off the air for 22 years.
It’s so old that it’s now considered “historical.”
Give it a rest already!
But here’s the thing. This past Saturday, the Butler County Historical Society had a 97X “Back to the Future of Rock & Roll” event.
More than one hundred people paid their hard-earned cash to hear more about the station from several folks who worked there: Steve “Bakerman” Baker, Dave Tellmann, Matt Sledge, former student co-producer Jen Dalton (now at Channel 12), and yours truly.
But the Q&A segment at the end was the best part of it, and helps explain why people would cough up cash to attend a history lecture. Because there weren’t that many questions, but there were plenty of testimonials from people in attendance.
“Such a big part of my life.”
“My husband came to Oxford from North Carolina for a job interview, and we moved because he heard 97X.”
“I met my husband at the 97X 10th anniversary concert.”
“The station changed my life.”
“The station saved my life.”
The station’s listenership was tiny. But its impact on those listeners was mighty. The connection was so much stronger than the weak signal. Because we gave listeners what they wanted (music they couldn’t hear anywhere else) and what all of us need (a sense of community).
It meant a lot then. It means even more now that it’s gone.
Here’s a photo of all the 97X alums who were there.
Jen Dalton was an unpaid college intern. The rest of us got a paycheck, but it was below-poverty wages. Yet I wouldn’t trade my time there for a million dollars. Not then, and not now. The people I met during my time there (co-workers and listeners alike) were solid gold.
We loved the music. We had fun playing it. We had free rein creatively – not just live, but also for commercials and promos and contests. And best of all, we knew we were sharing it with people who cared.
Good luck getting anything close to that from cookie cutter corporate radio stations.
It’s why Dave Tellmann and I keep publishing new episodes of our podcast about the station. (Listening links are here.)
I was listening to a different podcast this week where Erykah Badu was quoted as saying you experience two deaths: once when you pass away, and then later when your name is spoken for the last time.
It’s been 16 years and we’re still saying “97X” (with or without the Rainman “BAM!”).
We’re a year and a half into the second term of the Cheeto in Chief. How’s it going for you? Grocery prices? Gas prices? Affordable housing? Peace?
Donnie’s dumped more than $100 billion down the gold-plated toilet for an unwinnable war, which also shut down a key shipping route. It’s wreaked havoc across the world. And here were are in 2026, worse off than when the Obama agreement was put in place more than a decade ago.
And some costs can’t be measured in dollars and cents, because they’re senseless.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Deranged Donnie has “fixed” the Reflecting Pool. Or “pond” as he keeps calling it. It seems more like a fetid swamp at the moment. Why? Because he had a “pool guy… the best!” and awarded a no-bid contract. And he picked “American Flag Blue” as the new paint color, and a darker color creates a better environment for algae growth. And then the “fix” (dump hydrogen peroxide into the water) will kill some algae, but it also peels paint.
Pure genius, Mr. Perfect Score on the Cognitive Tests that they keep giving you. No notes.
It’s not an aberration, it’s a pattern. It’s his M.O.
Jeff Tiedrich summed it up quite nicely in his Substack post from June 22:
He’ll never learn. So it’s up to us.
“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” — Harry Emerson Fosdick
And if you voted for DJT, please take some time for a bit of reflecting. Uh, you’ll have to find a different pool.
That sort of heartless profiteering from the prediction markets (namely Kalshi and Polymarket) has continued pretty much unabated. Those companies have become unregulated casinos in our pockets, with scary consequence. So much so that John Oliver devoted an episode of his Last Week Tonight show to it a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a four-minute clip from it:
What Oliver says at the end is especially poignant:
If you’re considering using these markets to gamble, try and remember that you’re statistically likely to lose money. And while I’m not against gambling per se, there’s something so grim about these sites turning every aspect of our lives into a bet. Because sure, money can be won on them. But in that happening, something also gets lost. Specifically a society where things aren’t only weighed in financial terms, and where people engage in news for what it means to human beings – not just because they have $50 riding on it.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Scott Galloway’s post from last November about the prediction markets. He’s the one who put this emerging issue on my radar. His post is titled “The Next Opioid Crisis” – which may seem like hyperbole. But it’s a clear-eyed, fact-based and somber assessment of the dangers of gambling disguised as prediction markets, especially to young men.
As Oliver points out in his show, with Donald Trump Jr. on the payroll for both Kalshi and Polymarket, there won’t be any changes at the federal level. (The only sure bet is that the Trump family will always look for ways to cash in, no matter the costs to others.)
Are prediction markets making our society poorer in multiple ways? You bet!
By all accounts, the Iran “don’t call it a war” war has been a unmitigated disaster, an utter folly, a colossal mistake.
Oh wait, not by ALL accounts. There are some bank accounts who have rated it a rousing success, based on their totally coincidental investments in oil and S&P500 futures, just minutes before a Trump tweet last Monday hinting at an end to the war.
Hmm, who could’ve had such insider information? Perhaps the ED boys? (That’s Eric and Donald Jr.) They learned grifting and cheating and gaming the system from daddy, just like Donald did from Fred.
Trump’s approval rating is in the dumper, but here’s the only stat he really cares about.
Now the Pentagon – led by a man who thinks he’s the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie, where the death and destruction are merely CGI – is asking for another $200 billion for the war. If approved, here’s what it’ll cost the average taxpayer, compared to other allocations.
Grocery prices – which the Orange Oligarch promised to bring down on Day 1 – are soaring. As are gas prices. Here’s our daily life in a nutshell:
And there’s another crisis looming – the AI bubble could easily burst and take the entire global economy down with it, thanks to Operation Epic Fury Failure. Check out this story from The Atlantic. Here’s a key excerpt:
These are dark days indeed. But there may be a glimmer of hope. And that glimmer is coming from the sun.
The Miami Redhawks men’s basketball team takes on Tennessee in the NCAA tourney this afternoon. A #11 seed vs. a #6 seed. Miami has already won – literally and figuratively. They won their “play-in” game Wednesday night in Dayton against SMU. I was there. It felt like a Miami home game with most of the crowd cheering for the school that’s a mere 46 miles from Dayton.
But they’ve also already won because they are, as my friend Joe says, “the best story in college basketball.” Undefeated in the regular season. 31-0. With a homegrown roster of mostly midwestern kids. And a coach (Travis Steele) seeking redemption after being fired by a school (Xavier) just down the road in Cincinnati.
Critics — and they are legion — sneered. “They haven’t played anybody.” “The MAC is a weak conference.”
But they beat everyone who was on their schedule.
Yes, they pay their players – all D1 schools do in the NIL era. But their “salary cap” (it feels weird typing that for college sports) is much smaller than the Floridas, the Dukes, the Tennessees. They’re not getting the blue chippers, they’re getting the blue collars. But they are a great team – offensively, defensively, shooting, passing — because their starters all played together at Miami last year. In the transfer portal era, that’s unheard of. And frankly, refreshing.
A lot of their regular season games were nail-biters. They won because they’d been there, done that. Muscle memory and belief in their teammates.
“Oh, we more than belong,” Steele said, with his entire team behind him. “We can advance deep into this tournament. Our group’s fully confident in that.”
Miami’s Cinderella season will end. Maybe this afternoon (although I think they can beat Tennessee – especially if it’s close in crunch time). But teams like the Redhawks are what make March Madness so much fun. The High Points are the high points. Yes, a “power conference” team will wind up hoisting the trophy. And then most of their roster will immediately seek a bigger payday. Good for them. But I miss the days when the players were less mercenary.
Miami University’s motto is “Love and Honor.”
Their basketball team embodies that. And we need more Miami U. in college sports.
This past Friday, I spent about an hour visiting the box offices at three different concert venues in the Cincinnati area, buying tickets for seven different shows for my friends and for myself.
It saved us $180 in ridiculous Live Nation/Ticketmaster fees. Actually make that $180.14.
I despise all the made-up fees that Live Nation/Ticketmaster charges.
The lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department alongside numerous states, argues the company has used its position across concert promotion, venue ownership and ticketing to stifle competition and increase costs for fans.
Attorney General Merrick Garland previously said Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s control of the industry means concertgoers face “a seemingly endless list of fees,” according to reporting cited by Newsweek.
The lawsuit is spot-on. The Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopoly is costing fans money. And their strong-arming tactics would make a Mafioso running a protection racket blush. “If you want to play our venues, you need to use Ticketmaster. And you need to pay us a higher percentage…”
I had texted several music-loving friends in advance, and told them I was going on a ticket run, and to let me know what tickets they needed. I was like a cast member on Alice, taking orders, but instead of eggs and coffee it was Spoon and Sugar.
My first stop was the box office at the indoor/outdoor venue in Newport, KY. (It’s called MegaCorp Pavilion – a local logistics company bought the naming rights, when they should’ve spent that money on coming up with a name for their company that doesn’t sound like a fictional company from Office Space.) Their box office is only open Tues-Fri. from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. (extremely unfriendly toward in-person purchase for working stiffs). I bought:
3 tickets to Spoon with The Beths (great double bill!)
4 tickets to Death Cab for Cutie with Jay Som (another great double bill)
3 tickets to Courtney Barnett
2 tickets to Sugar
Then it was off to Bogart’s, the long-in-the-tooth club venue near the University of Cincinnati. I got a ticket to the 40th anniversary show of a band that started in Cincinnati, the Afghan Whigs. Mercury Rev is the opener. The Afghan Whigs played dozens of shows at Bogart’s back in the day, so this should be a nice homecoming set.
My final stop was the Ludlow Garage. I got a ticket to the Patterson Hood/John Moreland show. And I bought four for the Built to Spill show, with Wussy as the opener.
Lucky for me that the bands I like aren’t typically going to sell out a venue. Pity the poor folks who want prized tickets to high-demand tours. They have to pay through both nostrils.
And having used websites and ticketing apps for both Ticketmaster and much smaller ticketing sites, I can assure you that Live Nation is NOT using all those fees to create a better user experience. Their website and their app are awful.
Whenever I can, I’m gonna stick it to the Live Nation man. A Reddit user quoted in the article above said it best:
Damian on The Future is forever: “It was a magical time for sure! Just don’t get any paint on that 97X sweatshirt, it’ll bring down the…” Jul 4, 20:44
Andrea J McKiernan on The Future is forever: “I still wear my 97X sweatshirt when I’m painting. I have some amazing memories of those times!” Jul 4, 14:46
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