Talk Radio Killed the Radio Star

I used to be a music guy.

I can still recite lyrics and name the year of release of a large number of songs from the 1990s and early 2000s.

I was all music all the time. From mix tapes in middle school to burned CDs in high school to MP3 playlists in college. I wrote reviews for the newspaper in college, I wrote reviews for a website after college.  From age 13 through 24 or so I was the one to ask about music. Rock, pop, hip hop, classical, Christian, secular, even some country, I knew it all.

Then I started listening to talk radio. There was a talk radio station that hit Columbus soon after I moved here that played Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller and others. I had never listened to talk before and it caught my attention.

Soon, after finding myself getting depressed by political talk radio, I found sports talk radio. That is what's been on my radio dial for the majority of the past few years.

I've tried to listen to music on the radio when I'm driving but I get too impatient, for many reasons

1) When I do listen to music now it's on a computer or a mobile device where there are few or no commercials. That doesn't happen on the radio.

2) I don't know where to start. I have some stations saved that I heard something I liked at some point. But not knowing most of the songs makes me lose patients.

3) Common Man and the Torg are just too good to turn off, even though I don't really even follow sports that much anymore.

4) The station I default to the most, The River, repeats songs way too much.

5) When I listen to modern stations, I find a lot of the "music" is pretty terrible.

I do listen to Pandora at home, when I'm not listening to Podcasts (again, talk!). But Pandora has a tendency to repeat a lot, too. My iTunes library is solid but dated and doesn't teach me anything new. I thought Spotify might be the answer but a) I don't really know where to start and b) even if I find something I like I can't take it with me because I won't pay for mobile.

This is all frustrating because deep down I really miss my connection to music. (Much like I missed writing, hence this blog.)

I guess the impasse I've reached is that I like the music I know, and I'm comfortable with it. But I'm also  kind weary of it and want to find something new to add to it. But, the patience and time it takes to find good, new music doesn't really work for me right now.

This is the part of the blog post where I'm supposed to wrap things up in a nice little package and put a bow on it. But I am really lost here.

Any suggestions? How do you find new music? Or do you just crank up the "oldies" of whatever point in your life you connected to music the most? Any help would be greatly appreciated.