Radio El Aguantadero: The Shrine For Underground Music In Uruguay

A radio station that has broadcast for more than two years now, El Aguantadero is unarguably one of the finest places for understanding what the underground music scene in Uruguay is like.

As “El Zapa” (the radio’s host) said on a recent interview, the project was created by him and his good friend “El Pato” because they “were (and still are) eager consumers of underground culture. We believed it was necessary to provide a radial space where all the music we saw at pubs could be brought together. We thought someone had to create a collective medium for spreading and supporting such artistic manifestations.”

You can visit El Aguantadero’s website here. There’s music playing 24/7, and a chat where you’ll be able to interact both with punters and underground musicians who are sharing their work with everybody else. And an index of bands is likewise available here.

You can also catch up with the guys and gals who make up El Aguantadero on Facebook. This is the page.

Radio Tuna – Find New Radio Stations To Listen To Based On Your Tastes

Radiotuna

Name: Radio Tuna
URL: http://www.radiotuna.com

Do you remember Durocast? That was a site I reviewed in 2010 that let you find new music to listen to based on your geographical location. Well, Radio Tuna is a comparable site. It will let you find radio stations to tune into, but the one difference is that here the discovery process is artist-focused.

That is, on Radio Tuna the search process is initiated by specifying who you want to listen to. And it is also possible to pick a genre and center your whole search on that. Rock, blues, Latin, classical, electronic and dance are all supported genres.

In any case, you can always carry a search by station. This means that if you are traveling abroad you will always be able to find your best-loved station and listen to your favorite shows, even if you are further away from home than Jason and his ever-loyal argonauts.

Plus, if you have a music blog you will be able to get the provided widget and let your visitors listen to any song they like as they are going through your posts. Neat.

Durocast – Listen To Worldwide Radio On Your Computer

Durocast

Name: DuroCast
URL: http://www.durocast.com

“What if, like the radios commonly found in cars and stereos, there was an online central hub providing easy access to thousands of real radio stations, both local and national?”

That is the inspiration behind DuroCast, a startup company that hails from Portland. Its founders are Bryce Clemmer, Matt Polzin and Elliot Swan.

DuroCast empowers people to listen to radio stations from anywhere in the United States, Canada and some parts of South America (yes!). The idea is that users will be able not just to listen to their favorite radio stations, but actually discover new ones as they go along. Eventually, they will build up their own personalized radio dashboards, centralizing all the good music that they have found. And the best bit is that these radio dashboards are instantly shareable. Continue reading

Shuffler.fm – The Pandora.fm Of Music Blogs

Shuffler

Name: Shuffler.fm
URL: http://www.shuffler.fm

Shuffler.fm is a site that redefines the way in which Internet radio has always been approached. In a nutshell, it’s like Pandora for music blogs. The site aggregates all the music-related content that surfaces on the blogosphere, and has it arranged by genre on its homepage for you to listen.

Each genre has got its very own channel, and you can jump from one to the other at will. You can also skip songs that start as energetically as Stephen Bishop on downers and find something that can at least make you tap the table and hum along.

It’s important to make it clear that the music featured here is not aggregated from just any old blog. In fact, the music is culled from a curated list of blogs in order to ensure a minimum of quality. And an effort is also made not to present users with duplicate songs. Continue reading

Superpunk! – Jorge Nasser Vs. Jorge Bonomi & Fernán Cisnero (Tiempos Salvajes)

This is a classic of Uruguayan radio. The incident took place one Saturday in March, 1993. Jorge Bonomi & Fernán Cisnero hosted a radio show named “Tiempos Salvajes” [Wild Times] in which they routinely abused one of the most popular rock bands of the day, Niquel. The band was fronted by Jorge Nasser and Pablo Faragó, and the hosts of the show looked askance at them because they regarded themselves as tough rock & rollers. They deemed Niquel’s approach as something sissy. They were making fun of the band live on air, and taking special umbrage at their recently-released symphonic album. Jorge Nasser (the singer and leader of the band) had enough. He headed straight to the studio, and by a bizarre twist of fate he got in without anybody noticing. He stood at the other side of the booth’s door, listening to the final segment of the show.

When the two hosts began picking on Niquel again, he exploded. Nasser stormed into the studio and gave the two radio hosts a beating to write home about. And it was all broadcast because the operator (fearing for her safety) ran away so quickly that she forgot to turn the mikes off.

“Stop it, man, stop it! Let’s talk it over!”. That was the only thing the radio hosts could repeat during the beating. When the first bout was over and Nasser stood towering over both of them, one of the hosts (completely scared out of his brains) squelched “Call the cops!”. Nasser’s retort has gone down in the history of Uruguayan radio.

“¡Ja! ¿Pero no sos el superpunk? ¿No sos el súperagresivo? ¿No es que te gusta la música con personalidad? Bueno, poné personalidad, jugate por lo que decís”.

[“¡Ha! Ain’t you a superpunk? Ain’t you a super-aggressive one? Don’t you always say you like music with personality? Come on, put a little personality to use, walk it the way you talk it”.]

Below you can download the audio in its entirety – you can listen to the first part of the show, the beating and then the mention the two hosts made to the incident the following Saturday.

People being people, I know you will want to listen to the beating first. Jump to 02:58. The “superpunk” bit comes at 04:24.

Superpunk – Jorge Nasser Vs. Jorge Bonomi & Fernán Cisnero (Tiempos Salvajes)

Spreaker – Social Radio Come True

Spreaker

Name: Spreaker
URL: http://www.spreaker.com

Not every person with thoughts to share about his favorite artists will sit down and tend to a blog or a personal site. The thing is, there are not really that many other options, and none I can think of is as accessible as blogging.

Well, that is set to change thanks to a startup like Spreaker. We can call it a social web radio service. The site will empower just anybody to create his own radio and broadcast whenever he feels like doing it. There are no fees of any kind to be met, as both royalties and bandwidth expenses are covered by Spreaker.

This means that you can host your own talk show and (for example) invite people from you local music scene that you are in good terms with. You can also create a show devoted to your favorite band and play its songs left, right and center. Hint: if you tune in and catch a radio that plays The Who indiscriminately you know who is behind it. Continue reading