I Love CHIRP Radio and You Should Too

Why do I listen to CHIRP Radio? I stopped using Spotify this year because I hate the way they fuck over musicians, and also because I got tired of paying some rich ding-dong ten dollars a month to listen to the same shit I’ve been on since high school. Spotify only exists because tech dorks and vulture capitalists teamed up and figured out the legal loopholes required to commit music piracy that benefits them and literally nobody else. I’m gonna keep my money, and those ghouls can go screw. 

But where does music come from once you bail on algorithms? When I was a scrappy youngin’ developing a music taste of my own, I was the kind of neglected that makes punk an aesthetic necessity. When nobody takes care of you, safety pins and thrift store finds cover a multitude of sins. Loving music was both a defense mechanism and an escape hatch.

I was too broke to buy the taste-making albums I craved. I had a boombox with a tape recorder built into it, and that was how I amassed a library of lovingly stolen tunes from the local radio. I would spend hours every night holed up in my room hiding from my family and bumping the two stations that played “alternative” music, tensed next to the big red record button and waiting to jam it down at the first hint of something cool. I caught Talking Heads and Blondie songs like butterflies, pinning them to magnetic tape so I could learn why I found them so beautiful.

Twenty years later, I'm back to the radio. I am now lucky enough to live in Chicago, where there is a ton of excellent local radio to enjoy. (The college stations in particular slap; love the kids at Loyola!) My favorite is CHIRP Radio (107.1FM). CHIRP is an independent volunteer-run radio station that has the same feel for me as the indie radio stations I loved as a teen. It feels messy and human and real in a way that an algorithm simply cannot. 

A computer can guess what songs I might like with worrying precision, but it never surprises or delights me. For that, I need a queer DJ with the vision to take his playlist on a journey from Madonna to Angine de Poitrine without breaking a sweat. (Shoutout to DJ thepanderson— Tipping Point is the highlight of my Wednesday afternoon.)

CHIRP also gives me the joy of feeling connected to Chicago. My girlfriend is the bassist for a kickass band called Weaklung. Since CHIRP plays a ton of local stuff, I get to hear their music randomly throughout my day. There’s nothing cooler than hearing my friends on the radio. Or being briefly terrified when I hear the band members unexpectedly greet me from within my walls, until I realize it’s a pre-recorded station ident. Which, again, is pretty cool.

I am still relatively new to Chicago, and things like CHIRP help me feel like a local. I moved here with the Great Trans Migration, and I am always learning more about this city I call home. Chicago is a big place and there’s a lot going on, and I feel lucky I have CHIRP to help me learn the lay of the land. I used to feel hopelessly adrift in Chicago’s music scene. Now I have locals like PINKSQUEEZE and Vacancy Chain and daddy’s boy and Andrew Sa on my radar, and I’m checking out even more new stuff every day. It’s essential to my sanity to be reminded that I live in a big city full of music and art and queer people doing incredible things. 

Radio is a delight throughout the day, but it is a balm for the soul after midnight. Streaming services play music in a vacuum for an audience of one, and there is nothing interesting about that. In contrast, late-night volunteer DJs at indie radio stations like CHIRP are deeply interesting: they play the music they love for the world at large, at a time when their audience is mostly asleep.

I am the platonic perfect listener for these insomniac DJs. I am a nocturnal creature by habit and inclination. Before I can sleep, I need to have my “dumb-dumb time.” This is our house’s nickname for the dead hours that occur after everyone else has gone to bed and I have done my nightly chores, a time that I can then spend doing whatever I like until my body grudgingly considers rest. 

One of the greatest small pleasures of my life occurs when the house is quiet and the lights are low and the radio is on, just loud enough to keep me bopping along without waking up my partners or the cats. I’ve spent many happy small hours listening to Klee’s The Witching Hour, zoning in and out of her musical dissections of oracle cards while I burn incense in the dark. On Wednesdays, I settle in for The Restaurant at the End of The Universe, a delightfully high-concept broadcast that spins funk and oldies from the imagined event horizon of one of my favorite books. 

I drift on the audible tides, noting new songs and appreciating old favorites. The people and the city I love all doze around me. Somewhere a few miles away, another sleepless stranger whispers into a microphone, and we both feel a little less alone.

And I think that is the gift of local radio: it has a million ways to make you feel a little less alone. It’s worth supporting. As previously mentioned, I am broke, but I still want to support CHIRP. Please check them out and kick them a couple bucks so they can keep doing what they do. I love my local radio and I really do not want to re-subscribe to Spotify. Thank you!