93.9 FM Rick Rolls Smooth Jazz Lovers With Guilty Pleasures

Let’s say you’re a smooth jazz lover who was away for the holidays and tuned into your favorite radio station Love 94 at exactly 4:10 p.m. today for the first time since Christmas hoping to hear the smooth, comforting sounds of Kenny G finally back on the airwaves after the station went bonkers for Santa. Instead you’d hear Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” No, you haven’t been Rick Roll’d, this is just what the station plays now. 
Well, actually their new format mixes up semi-current inoffensive hits by the likes of Leona Lewis and Rihanna with vintage guilty pleasure. Just in the last few hours they’ve spun Young MC’s “Bust a Move,” Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” Stacy Q’s “Two of Hearts” and Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s “I Wonder If I Take You Home.” Oh Wow! Lipps, Inc. Just came on! Someone has indeed taken us to Funky Town. 

Is it blasphemous to say we’re sort of digging this Clear Channel concocted sugar coated crap cocktail? It is sort of simple pop paradise. Soft Cell! “Tainted Love”!
SFDB has been less approving. Other are inexplicably over joyed (because Jazz is for sissy communists). 
Smooth jazz lovers, shouldn’t fret though. That format has moved to the channel’s HD signal (HD recievers cost at least $100 dollars though, but more and more car makers are offering them as factory installed options). Jazz lovers who are willing to take their tunes a little less smooth still have WDNA 88.9, Evenin’ Jazz with Len Pace on WLRN 91.3, Jazz in the Present Tense on WVUM 90.5 on Sunday Nights (hosted, again I believe, by my friend and former WVUM colleague Cousin Chris), and their iPods. 
Oh my god. Their was just a double shot of A Ha’s “Take on Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.” This station has guilty pleasure down to a science. 
Here is a link to some other interesting information on the topic. 
—Kyle Munzenrieder