I miss radio. Well, duh, yes, radio is still around, but it’s not what it used to be. This thought occurred to me while listening to the radio series Theme Time Radio Hour with Your Host Bob Dylan which to me is the epitome of what a certain kind of music radio should be. Radio shouldn’t merely be background noise or something to pass the time. The airwaves are ostensibly a public trust and those who have stewardship over them have a responsibility to educate and enlighten, not merely entertain. And I don’t just mean news or talk radio - music programmes should do that as well. But mostly they don’t anymore.

When I was very young, my parents gave me a pocket transistor AM radio. Made of shiny red plastic and about the size of a pack of cards or cigarettes, it went with me everywhere. And the timing was right, because it was at the dawn of what rock fans refer to as the Golden Age of Radio with Cousin Brucie in New York, Tom Donahue in San Francisco and, of course, Wolfman Jack (brilliantly immortalized in American Graffiti) sending out his illegal signal from Mexico and blanketing the US airwaves every night. The music started with Phil Spector’s self-proclaimed teenage symphonies to God, the surfing sounds of the Beach Boys and the urban cool of Motown. And then came the Beatles and the British invasion, quickly followed by the California sound, Stax’s gritty soul music, folk rock and the dawn of psychedelic rock. I loved everything I heard and bought singles by the dozens.

As the ‘60s came to a close, so-called alternative radio was born. For me, this was the true golden age. I remember the first time I tuned into WNEW-FM in New York. The DJs would play three or four records in a row, they didn’t talk over the records and when I took a list of the songs I’d heard to my neighbourhood record shop, I discovered that they weren’t playing singles at all, they were playing tracks off albums they liked. On alternative radio, there were no boundaries based on genre and no playlists. In the space of 15 minutes you might hear the Doors, King Crimson, Joni Mitchell and Miles Davis, and perhaps a bit of poetry as well. The disk jockeys seemed deeply knowledgeable about past and present music and were on the radio to share that knowledge with you. It was totally unprecedented. And it couldn’t last.

The 1980s saw a wave of consolidation as big corporations stepped in and scooped up every radio station they could buy. The purchases were financed by bank loans with monthly interest payments so high one tenth of a rating point could mean the difference between profit and loss. A radio station’s prime programming mission was to ensure that once you were tuned in, nothing would get you to tune out. Some geniuses decided that if you liked Bruce Springsteen, there was no way you could possibly like Marvin Gaye. So music was viciously segmented into rigid formats ruled by corporate playlists and soon DJs became unnecessary, as radio stations simply played tapes mailed to them from head office.

Radio used to be something that brought everyone together but today’s music radio exists as background in your car or office, or something annoying to get you out of bed in the morning, blindly flailing away trying to hit the ‘Off’ switch. Music radio has lost all relevance. And perhaps you could argue that with the internet - with MP3s from iTunes or Amazon, thousands of internet radio stations, podcasting and social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook - the need for great radio no longer exists. But on those rare occasions I encounter some unique radio I become nostalgic for the past and slightly bitter over our collective loss.

One such example comes from a most unexpected source - Bob Dylan, playing DJ on satellite radio in the US, hosting the aforementioned Theme Time Radio Hour. One of the things you may not know about Dylan is that he has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the country, blues and folk music that preceded him. And some of his friends (like comedy writer and former DJ Eddie Gorodetsky) know even more than he does. The result is a weekly one-hour radio show centred on a specific theme, like ‘weather’ or ‘father’ or, well, ‘radio’. The first programme went out into the world two years ago on my birthday (thanks Zimmy!). The show has also been broadcast in the UK and for a time was available on AOL. So far, 75 shows have aired and a third season is rumoured to start this September.

Theme Time Radio Hour with Your Host Bob Dylan, a two-CD compilation released by the Ace label in the UK a couple of months ago highlights just how eclectic Dylan can be. Among its 50 tracks are songs from Slim Gaillard, Billie Holiday, Otis Rush, Jerry Butler, Bobby Darin, Charles Mingus, Bo Diddley, George Jones, the Modern Lovers and the White Stripes. Listening to this set and reading through the extensive 48-page booklet only served to whet my appetite
for more.

So I worked my geek magic, twisted the knobs on my internet connection, ran the secret software, made the secret hand signals, spoke the forbidden words and managed to find almost every episode of the show in MP3 format, hidden away in dark, dusty corners of the internet. They’re just amazing.

Each show isn’t merely a random collection of songs with the same word in the title; they’re a series of mini history lessons. Dylan, more than anyone, knows that every song has a story and he takes the time to tell those stories, all in his inimitable nasal drawl. And the mix of artists and genres is something no commercial radio station would ever allow. Right now I’m listening to season two, show 25, ‘cold’. He plays John Lennon’s Cold Turkey and follows that by musing on the origins of the title phrase, complete with a tale told to him by Keith Richards, then reads a Charles Bukowski poem and introduces tracks by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Loretta Lynn, Big Joe Turner, the calypso singer The Charmer, Parliament, Tom Waits... get the idea? All accompanied by simple words of wisdom such as, “I file everything alphabetically. I don’t separate it by style. That’s why you find Thelonious Monk right next to The Monkees,” and “I don’t have to tell you record collectors this, but you flip over records and you might find your favourite thing on the back.”

Of course, Dylan is not the only person labouring heroically to do something a little bit more meaningful within the confines of music radio; he’s merely the one with the highest profile. Steven Van Zandt (of the E Street Band and The Sopranos) has a show on satellite radio called Little Steven’s Underground Garage, playing what he calls “60 years of REAL Rock and Roll” - old shows can be streamed from his website. And there are probably hundreds more doing something similar, true labours of love that might only be heard by a few dozen people. So maybe great music radio hasn’t really disappeared, you jus need to dig a little bit harder to find it.