Radio nowhere

There are plenty of reasons I can think of for the Internet to just be shut down. The proliferation of useless blogs (including this one) is just one.

But if you're looking for reasons the Internet is the greatest thing since... well, ever... I give you the web site for the country's best radio station, WXRT-FM.

As the five people who read this blog know, I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago a year ago, and I love 98 percent of everything about L.A. It'll be 100 percent just as soon as they fix two things: the traffic (I know, such an original thought) and the suck-ass radio stations. They call this the entertainment capital of the world, but apparently "they" forgot to tell the owners of every freaking radio station in Southern California.

Oh, sure, I can enjoy my commute thanks to Adam Carolla's show on 97.1 FM ... I can unwind to classical on KUSC-FM when I get home ... and I can fill in the gaps with podcasts of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me. Oh, and if I want to hear six Linkin Park songs and five Chili Peppers songs per hour, I can tune into KROQ.

But there's nothing that comes close to good old 'XRT. No station that dares play such crazy radical acts as Wilco or Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello or John Hiatt. Then, finally, last night I remembered that Chicago's Finest Rock streams online. (Only 12 months later, and who says I'm slow?)

So this morning at the office, I punched up the webcast. Less than an hour later, I felt like I had arrived at a sonic oasis after wandering aimlessly through a desert of musical detritus: Teri Hemmert was playing Supertramp, Oasis (as if to reinforce the sonic oasis metaphor), KT Tunstall, Peter Bjorn and John, The Shins, the Stones and Bruce Springsteen.

Al Gore, wherever you are, thank you for this incredible invention that we call the Internet.