by Vince Capece

Created on: April 24, 2008

cynical bitterly or sneeringly distrustful, contemptuous, or pessimistic

As I age, cynical is the word that increasingly describes my view of the world. I always had slightly odd tastes. The girls I liked in high school, the music I chose to listen to, and the movies I enjoyed all defined me as someone different than anyone else. These are all good things and, I hope, they define most people as unique personalities.

But those differences in my personality are making me more and more mad at the world as the years go by. I chose this particular definition for the word cynical because it seemed to be the closest to how I feel: "bitterly or sneeringly distrustful" and "pessimistic."

I've never been overly optimistic, but a growing pessimism has taken over my mind.
As I write this, I'm listening to my current favorite radio station. WXPN is the public radio station in the Philadelphia area that plays music. Three nights a week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday), the station turns over the airwaves of the very eclectic playlist to the discjockeys of the former Y100.

The story starts in 1992 when I was leaving the office and heading to my car. One of my co-workers yells across the parking lot, "they're playing A Flock of Seagulls on 103.9." I flipped the dial to that frequency and it remained there for five years.

WDRE was a "modern rock" station in New York that became affiliated with WIBF in Jenkintown, just outside of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia station eventually absorbed the WDRE call letters and remained a mirage in a desert of radio sameness. They played music not found on other stations, they dared to reach out and present something more radical than was being offered on other stations.

I loved this radio station. I didn't realize how important they were to me until February 7, 1997.

In late 1996, it was announced that radio station conglomerate Radio One had purchased WDRE. The independent 'DRE was given notice that the format would change. So for a few months, 'DRE said goodbye to its listeners. My favorite commercial advertising their last bash concert that would mark the end of the station said, "DREwhich now stands for Dre.as in Dr." It was a little dig at the pending format change from "modern rock" to "urban contemporary" (read: rap and hip hop).

Between my move to Boston and a decent CD collection, I survived. In Boston, the independent WFNX (known as "f-in X") softened the blow of losing 'DRE. And my subscription to CMJ, which provides a monthly CD sampler

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