BANDS:

Punk & Ska
80's New Wave/
Post-Punk/
College Bands
90's & Beyond
Virginia, North
Carolina, & DC

MID-ATLANTIC STATIONS & INTERNET RADIO 

    Charlottesville, VA:

91.9 WNRN Charlottesville, VA - A non-commercial/public station based in a college town.  WNRN gets all of its cash from pledgers and local underwriters, so it is not bound by advertisers to play a certain type of music; its primary obligation is to its listeners.  Thus, the station's format includes quite a mix of musical genres, including time slots for acoustic, folk, and bluegrass; modern rock and classic alternative; and urban and hip-hop.  The station also features weekly specialty shows for electronic, industrial, ska/punk, dance, goth, gospel, local, and world music, as well as a Grateful Dead show.  Basically, you can get everything you need from this station, and you can listen to it online. 

91.1 WTJU Charlottesville, VA - This is yet another public, listener-supported radio station in a college town with a downright eclectic format.  There is really no genre of music that I have not heard on WTJU, which is actually affiliated with the University of Virginia.  The format includes indie rock, classical, orchestral and chamber music,  jazz, folk, reggae, blues, hip-hop, world, country, disco, Americana, blues, and more!  It's really what college radio was meant to be.  And weekdays at 4 pm, WTJU broadcasts the BBC news hour.

97.5 3WV Charlottesville, VA - This station is decent.  It's  the only commercial station worth listening to at all in Charlottesville.  I used to call it "the Van Halen station" because it seemed like they played them at least once an hour, but the repetition has dropped off a bit lately.  This is a commercial station, so you hear a much more typical format, which for the most part is a mix of classic and modern rock.

    Hampton Roads, VA:

93.7 WKOC The Coast Norfolk, VA
The Coast is no more, but this is what it used to be:
Hampton Roads has no public radio stations devoted to any sort of underground music, so The Coast is pretty much the best alternative (no pun intended).  The format actually used to be much better until about 1996 when the company that owned 96X  (see below) bought it out.   After the "takeover," the format began including some classic rock, whereas before, the roots of alternative music were the starting point.  I discovered many great 80's post-punk bands and 90's gems from listening to Kristi Michael's "After-hours All-request" show.   (I was too young to discover them in the 80's.)  She spun tunes from great bands like The Replacements,* Buffalo Tom, and Pavement*.  

96.1 WROX 96X Norfolk, VA - This station started around 1993, and played some of the important bands in modern rock over the previous 5 years or so, including Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, and the like.  96X always had a harder edge than The Coast.  But when the company owning 96X bought The Coast, someone made the decision that the two stations needed to cater to even more differing audiences.  So 96X turned top forty for a about a year to the chagrin of many.  Then in June 1999, the station made a "sort of turn-around" and began to play modern rock again, but the format included even harder stuff, and as the popularity of that annoying rap-metal has increased lately, so has its presence on this previously great station.  Now the airwaves are polluted with bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Papa Roach.  Lately, however, 96X has somewhat come full-circle by playing some pretty good up and coming punk bands on its Sunday night punk show.  But long gone are the days when the station sponsored cool concerts, and even longer gone is the program directorship of Al Mitchell!

94.9 WPTE The Point Portsmouth, VA - I thought about not including this corporate-whipped station on my site, but I do listen to it when I am in Hampton Roads.  Playing more generic tunes than the previous two stations, this is what I like to call the resident yuppy's station.  You'll hear your Dave Matthews, 10,000 Maniacs, Peter Gabriel, Sarah McLaughlin, etc.  What's amusing is that during the summer, this station sponsors "The Point Concert Series," and I think whoever books the concerts has much better taste than the Program Director of the station.  The Point has brought great bands like Cowboy Mouth, The Pietasters, and The Connells to Hampton Roads, but they never, ever play these bands on the radio!  I don't remember exact details, but a program director at the Point once told Nine Volt Magazine that the real purpose of The Point is to make money from advertisers, not to play the music that people want to hear.  Come on, while we all know that's true, you don't have to be quoted saying that in a popular local music magazine! 

   North Carolina:

       JUST ADDED: 
      

   Washington DC Metro Area:         

 More North Carolina and DC Stations coming soon!

 Internet Radio:

NetRadio - Rating:  ***  Lets you listen to one of their 100 professionally programmed channels.    You can also view a piece from the programmer letting you know if you'd be interested in his/her channel.   Channels of Interest include: Under Rock  category: Indie Rock, Today in Rock, Adult Alternative, Industrial, Punk, Ska, Reggae, Adult Alternative, Hard Rock, The X; Under Pop category: New Wave, Trip-Hop.  Two downloads of small files required for listening.  Can listen on Real Player or Windows Media.

Live365 - Rating: **** Can search for channels by artists, song titles, and keywords, and also by location or broadcaster.  Channels are ranked and you are told what type connection you need to listen to each.  The channel list is extremely extensive.  You'll find everything from a channel that plays all punk love songs to a channel that plays just underground music from Minneapolis.  You can listen to some channels with as low as a 28K connection speed.  Very user-friendly set-up process.  Can listen with an mp3 player like Winamp, a Live365 original player, Real Player 8. 

Bitbop Tuner - Rating: ***** Wow, modern technology continues to amaze me!  The Bitbop Tuner searches thousands of Internet radio stations and automatically picks the best stations based on your favorite artists. For example, I typed in The Connells, The Replacements, & Face to Face, and Bitbop returned four stations: Early Alternative, Slowcore, Hot Alternative, and Europop.  On these stations I heard artists like Camper Van Beethoven, Luscious Jackson, The Smiths, New Order, and Iggy Pop.  It's as if the software knows you!  You can even use the auto record function to download any song you hear while it's playing.  Two minor downsides: 1) You have to download the exclusive Bitbop Tuner player which is just over 1 MB 2) Still a couple of bugs in their software.  My computer has frozen a couple of times.

Sonic Net - Rating: **  This site is a bit more commercial and has fewer channels, but some of them are really good, including Altern80s, Anti (Punk), Axis (Adult Alternative), Indie, MTV2 Radio, Rocks (Active Rock).  Less descriptions about each station than the other sites, but setting up is much easier.  You can use an mp3 player or Real Player.

Fat Free Radio - Rating: *** This radio site is run by the punk label, Fat Wreck Chords.  It plays (of course) all punk, all the time, so this site can't be compared to the others.  You can listen with an mp3 player at any speed connection.

Spinner - Rating: *** This is probably the most popular Internet radio service.  While Spinner features quite a few channels, not all are running at all times.  However, when they are running, some of Spinner's channels play really great music--80's Alternative and 90's Indie are two of the best.

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