Sinister: XFM.

[Mark Casarotto]

Sarah wrote:

XFM. Weren't they going to kill that? They should have done. You 
Londoners only need listen to RED ROSE GOLD, and you'll all become 
better people with teh greatest songs from the 60s 70s and 80s! Apart 
from when they have PNE playing Blackpool live and NOBODY CARES ABOUT 
FOOTBALL ON THE RADIO! WHY!?!?!?!?!? Anyway, I hate XFM, because all the

*national* papers start a crusade for a LONDON station, which nobody 
else cares about and would have been jealous off, would it have been 
that is was any GOOD. 

Right. Forget the fact that I'm from London, forget the fact I like it
here. I KNOW we are privileged to be, for better or for worse, viewed by
the press and the marketing bods as a more profitable playing field than
the rest of the country, and as a result get  access to things that
should be available to everyone, but aren't. 

But there are 8 million of us, and if you're a fledgling radio station
with a low-output transmitter, it doesn't make any sense to put it in
the middle of nowhere. We also have more disposable income than the rest
of the country (in theory at least  - that is, of course, after paying
£100 a week on some grotty flat somewhere slightly too far from all the
decent places to go) - and that's where the licence came up, after all.
What do you expect? 

Although there are bound to be many people on the list who did have a
chance to hear XFM and thought it was shit, there are also a number of
us whose lives it revolutionised. I was woken up by "The Boy with the
Arab Strap" yesterday  (but that's enough of my personal life...), and
I'm sure you can imagine what kind of spring in my step that gave me. I
went to sleep every night with John Kennedy playing songs I'd never
heard in the past but can't live without in the future. I am going to
miss that show like crazy - it gave me everything I wanted, even if I
was occasionally jolted out of my slumber by a random drill 'n bass
track at 1 in the morning. 

I feel let down, distraught, pissed off with those at Capital who have
lied and cheated their way towards monopolising commercial radio, and
just really, really upset because something I loved has been taken away
from me. I honestly wish you all had the chance to hear it - you might
have thought it was shit too, but at least you couldn't make
ridiculously ill-informed and pointlessly bitter comments like the one
above.

So there you go. I tried to unsubscribe and failed, which probably said
more about me than I'd like, but I'm glad I'm still here.

In culo alla balena,
Mark x	

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