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Summary: Radio Ga Ga
Review: Is radio doomed by the Internet? When was its golden age? Is it a triumph of capitalist business or government planning? In the course of telling tale after absorbing tale, Jesse Walker answers these questions and dozens of others in "Rebels on the Air." Unlike most people who talk on the radio, however, Walker writing about radio doesn't come across as a simpleton. He is a very thoughtful appreciator of excellence as well as a fine diagnostician of failure. He understands the theory of radio as a business enterprise, and is unencumbered by a narrow ideology. He knows what happened; he is a master of fact. And he has insight into what might have happened; he is the master of the counterfactual. Further, being informed and no fool, he is as reliable prophet as any; it pays to listen to what he says. From the beginnings of radio as point-to-point communication through its strange evolution to broadcasting, winding up in recent dispensations of "piracy," micro radio, community radio, and even the Citizens Band, Walker ushers the reader through a rogue's gallery of fascinating revolutionaries. Radio, it turns out, is not just a humdrum affair. It has featured strange people saying odd, perceptive and occasionally wise things, playing music other than top 40 or classical warhorses, turning listeners on their ears. To most people, commercial radio and NPR delimit the narrow confines of the medium: to these, Walker's history will come as a revelation. To the knowing few who have heard (or at least heard of) Firesign Theater or Jean Shepherd or The Crazy Cajun Show, Walker is a sensible surveyor of diversity on radio, the ideal defender of both idiosyncratic entertainment and responsible "enlightenment." Radio may usually be boring, but Walker's book is not. For anyone who cares about the medium or its messages, "Rebels on the Air" is indispensable.
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Summary: Finally, a *true* history of how radio happened
Review: So many other radio 'history' books just tell you all about what programs were on which corporate network and which DJs were indicted for payola -- without bothering to explore how radio broadcasting came about, where the innovations came from, and how and why most of the current spectrum has become so bland in the last twenty years. Jesse Walker gets into all this and more: he gives just about the best and most complete history of radio broadcasting's *true* pioneers, from spark-gap to internet: the underground and alternative radio movement. I thought I knew a lot about the subject (at least regarding pre-1980 radio), but Walker's book has five times more in it than I even knew existed -- and extends right to the end of the 1990s. I highly recommend this book!
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