Mark of Cain, Youth Radio, and Pneumatic Drills

An excerpt from my favourite bit of online reading this week:

We did play Mark of Cain on Triple J, but not in the breakfast program. This is because Mark of Cain sounded like a pneumatic drill slowed to the pace of a Fitzroy junkie looking for his tram ticket and so were only played after 9am. We called this dayparting. This is an industry term used only by people who know about music scheduling for radio.

It comes courtesy of Helen Razer’s defense of Triple J over on Crikey, and references a time period where I was a moderately enthusiastic fan of the radio station, Razer as a presenter, and yes, godsfuckit, the Mark of Cain.

I mean, I’ve more or less got an entire story drafted that’s all about the summer they released this cover:

There are still days when I can fire that song up and listen to it non-stop. One of these days, I’ll even figure out how to make the story I wrote about it non-shit.

But for all that I’ll take any excuse to post youtube clips by bands I love, the debate that inspired Razer’s article is an interesting one and her conclusions are pretty much bang-on in terms where I’d stand in the argument. Worth reading, if you’re interested in music, radio, and the representation of young people in Australia.