A: College radio.
Live here for one day or longer, and you'll conclude it too: college radio is one of the great delicacies of this region. Not simply its existence, but its abundance.
The call signs are great, the institutions are too, and they are many:
- WBUR (BU)
- WERS (Emerson)
- WHRB (Harvard)
- WMBR (MIT)
- WUMB (U Mass Boston)
- WZBC (Boston College)
That's a partial sample of what you can pick up on any given day either at home or in your car. It's a lot of real estate on the radio dial, but it's all good.
Of course, college radio can range from the sublime to the ridiculous, depending on the hour of day and the day of the year, but in the end, it's just a celebration of youth. In a part of the world that is filled with 'em, there is plenty to celebrate.
Here is a most recent gift, courtesy of WUMB. I heard it while driving down a snowy Belmont road on Saturday and made a mental note to look it up. It's a lovely tune by a duo from Jamaica Plain called Hoot and Holler, also known as Amy Alvey and Mark Kilianski. Their song is called "Wishful Thinking" and we wish them well.