When I've written in to my local radio station to protest the axing of the folk show, I've played with an organic/local food metaphor.


Just as we don't want all vegetables shipped in across the globe and out of season, so too, with music: please, not everything from major labels or Nashville. Play, support, listen to, give airtime to, local bands, own-labels, regional/traditional music.

If you don't buy some local produce, then even milk and lamb will only be imported, and that has implications for the entire landscape and ecology as well as diet and carbon footprint. Not quite so, too, with music, but it's only a few steps apart.

Greg--that sounds like a really rewarding thing to have been involved in.

....How about a write-in campaign to Mike Harding to invite him to do a show, or a section of the show every week, devoted exclusively to own-label artists that he hasn't been playing?

No way does the quality have to be inferior. And it's the musical equivalent of choosing the farm stand not agribusiness or McDonald's.