Rustic radio (Sounds Like 1926...)

CD 101 and its trend-ridden playlist long ago winked into the static - even the Louisville stations had submerged into gibberish. The iPod battery cells were spent, and truckers angered by my refusal to budget from 70 mph whistled by.

Clearly, I needed a new soundtrack.

Elizabethtown delivered.

The town, not the Cameron Crowe movie.

From my pre-sets I stumbled upon 90.0 FM and a pile of old 78s courtesy of "Old Scratchy Records." Pre-Depression tunes. They piled on the fun tunes from another era, performed by anonymous musicians more relevant than the detritus pouring from the Ohio River signals I just endured. (How many times can a different station play "Waiting for the World to Change"? Enough to challenge the sturdiest gag reflex.)

This music came from Greil Marcus' Strange Old America and the Alan Lomax's heyday, a time when genres played less importance - the walls between blues, country and folk host had been built yet. They all mixed together in the early days of radio, Nolen Porterfield pointed out.

I listened till the signal gave out somewhere near Central Time Zone's border. It was a refreshing change from the fire sermons and pop-country rooted in America's rural radio garden.
So should you ever find yourself drifting through Kentucky on a Sunday afternoon, put the mp3s out to pasture, and fire up the old antenna for a dose of the old vinyl.

We can all stand a dose of the 1920's on occasion - not to mention a break from the segregation of genres.