Tune in, Turn on

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Thank God for the Internet.

Without the Internet, how would we blog? How would we forward pleas for greeting cards from little dying kids to a whole distribution list of people with the click of a button? How �- dear lord, how??? -- would we get up-to-the-second updates on how much Lindsay Lohan weighs?

And, sad to say, without the Internet, where would we hear radio stations playing decent music for free?

With the Internet, we have Radio Indie Pop, the brainchild of Robert Sacher, music lover and owner of a live music venue called Luna Lounge in New York City.

The radio station started in 2000 as an offshoot of the club, playing music from the usually start-up bands (including some whippersnappers called The Strokes, and some other newbies called Interpol, both of whose first club gigs were at Luna Lounge) performing there to help get the word out.

But, Sacher said: "It quickly took on a life of its own, and people really seemed to enjoy it."

Fast-forward six years, and you find a Radio Indie Pop with 20,000 listeners � half in the U.S. and half outside.

At any given moment at Radio Indie Pop, where there's no advertising and no DJs, you might hear The Strokes or Belle & Sebastian � both with entire new albums in rotation recently on the station's "Album of the Month" channel � or you might hear a song from someone totally unfamiliar. But whatever you hear, it's got an independent spirit � and chances are it's rarely or never heard on mainstream, over-the-air radio stations.

Sacher doesn't try to put on an air of mystery about how he picks the music for the radio station's six channels and day-of-the-week playlists: "I just play what I like," he says.

He pulls from the mountains of CDs and sound-file links sent his way each month for the station, as well as from bands who want the attention of someone with his stature in the NYC music scene, and he's got no paltry collection. The radio station currently has about 3000 songs in its playlists, or about 400 on each channel.

It's a lot of work for one man (plus a friend who lends a hand from time to time and a Japan-based Web master) with a day job, so why does he do it?

Because radio sucks.

"I live in New York City, and we have the worst radio in the world," Sacher declares. " � There are a couple of cool college radio stations, but their formats tend to be really eclectic and you never know what you're going to hear on the station. And so from time to time I'll put it on � but sometimes they might even have a college football game on or basketball game � or sometimes it'll just be a DJ talking about nothing that is of interest to me for 10 minutes in a row."

What does interest him is what he terms "melodic alternative music." And he loves "the old stuff that never gets played ," he says, "like I never hear the Jesus and Mary Chain on the radio station, or My Bloody Valentine."

With Radio Indie Pop, he says, "I wanted to add a little bit of that kind of stuff in with a lot of the modern stuff that's very melodic."
Of the six themed channels on Radio Indie Pop, which include one for unsigned acts and one that's quite possibly the only all-Ramones radio station out there, Sacher's favorite at the moment is the one for "Alt-Country Artists."

"Since I'm an older guy, I was around when there were bands that were doing alt- country music before it was even called alt-country music," said Sacher, who's 49. Some of his favorite alt-country-before-it-was-alt bands are the New Riders of the Purple Sage ("They were called 'a psychedelic space cowboy band' � they did a lot of drugs, they partied � but they played country music.") and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

"I play some of that old stuff," Sacher says, "and I mix it in with Wilco and Ryan Adams and other, more current alt-country bands, and people seem to like the mix."

What a concept! Good thing we have the Internet and Radio Indie Pop, because the over-the-air radio stations apparently aren't tuned in.

Note: First-time users of Radio Indie Pop will be asked to sign in to a free registration system, but the site promises "We won't spam you and we won't share your email address with anyone," so it's well worth the price of admission.