A few years ago, inspired by Sunday night’s Jazz on Radio 1, I started my search for the ultimate online Jazz radio. I must say, it wasn’t as easy. There’s plenty of great electronic radio out there, as you will see in other blog posts. Most Jazz is a little too tame for me.
Lets listen to Smoothjazz for instance. It’s not bad (else I wouldn’t even have mentioned it), in fact it’s ideal if you want to play something in the background when your in-laws are coming for new years diner. It’s not that I’m looking for controversy, but every harsh edge the music once had, seems to have been carefully removed in order to attract the largest possible crowd. Again, in spite of the maybe too harsh critic here, I do like the music. I’m even surprised this isn’t more popular. For me, it would be incredible if this was what the average radio station sounded like. So check it out, and turn it on when you want something smooth to go along with your lazy reading or interesting diner guests.
Contemporary Jazz is also on the shortlist of “good music” (my choice). If it wasn’t for the annoying live365 commercials every two or three tracks, it would get two thumbs up. It features a more risque selection of jazz. Nu jazz, Acid jazz, whatever you want to call it. It seems Jazz has the same issue with trainspotters that electronic music has.
One thing that bothers me a little with the two stations above, is the lack of the “human factor”. It’s just a bunch of mp3’s somewhere on a hard-disc that are randomly played. I can do that too. Just leech or rip a bunch of tracks and I’m all set. I do like the more personal touch of a DJ. See for instance friskyRadio in the previous posts, they have “shows”, where actual humans select the order of play. It seems to be even more difficult to find such stations. After some searching I ended up at El Club de Jazz, which is in fact a podcast, not a streaming station. I’m not even sure if it is in Spanish or Portuguese, or something else. But I love its local touch.
Enjoy.