review

Regular readers may know that this space usually features five different websites, quite frequently new ones, that are interesting or useful in their own ways. That format isn’t being changed, but for this issue we’re deviating from it to highlight but one website, which if you don’t have access to broadband or a computer with sound you won’t be able to enjoy.

But hey --- not only do I not have a broadband connection of my own, I don’t have any Internet connection of any sort to the computer on which this website is produced. That, of course, means that I do a lot of my work at Internet cafes --- something that hardly exists in many parts of the USA, I am told, but very popular institutions down here in Panama. And the cafe that I frequent most often does have broadband, and does have headphones with each computer, so I quite frequently listen to the radio while I work.

If I find myself listening on a Saturday night, I am likely to tune in to the online broadcast of the my old college radio station, WEMU, out of Eastern Michigan University, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. That’s because Saturday nights feature the Third World Dance Party --- the best reggae and world music show there is --- and then Therone’s industrial-strength rhythm and blues review, “The Bone Conduction Show.” Where else can you hear immortal classics like Robert Cray’s “I’d Rather be a Wino than to be Without Your Love”?

But I try not to be working in an Internet cafe on Saturday night. Not that I’m a weekend party animal --- on the evening of the seventh day you are likely to find me curled up in bed, reading science fiction.

From time to time I will tune into one of the various links found by hitting the Panamanian music button on our arts pages. If you are living outside of Panama, this temptation must be so much stronger because, unlike me, you will not be constantly exposed to many of the popular music forms with a following down here. And I do have an appreciation for Panamanian cumbia, Dominican merengue, Colombian vallenato and all the rest, but I live in a place where such appetites get satiated.

What I find most attractive in Internet radio appeals to the hippie rather than the Panamanian in me. You spell it http://3wk.com and it comes in four basic versions. There are the very high quality versions to which you must subscribe, and then there are the free versions that take up a bit less bandwidth. In each of these, you have a choice between contemporary alternative music --- the sort of stuff that my nephews’ generation makes and listens to --- and the classic underground radio. Buzzardly old me, I’m usually --- but not always --- one to try the latter.

But 3wk classic is not the racially segregated album oriented rock format that the corporate world imposed on American popular culture in the 70s and has maintained ever since. It’s a more eclectic throwback to the free-form radio of the 60s. You can listen to Motown and Iggy, the Beatles and Hendrix, Steppenwolf and Sly. And.... And....

Like The Panama News, 3wk is organized as a commercial enterprise, with a dot-com domain. Like The Panama News, it’s a struggling institution with a mission, and occasionally solicits listener contributions to pay its bills.

Do you have broadband? Do you have speakers or headphones? If so, tune into 3wk right now, and listen while you’re reading the newspaper --- if that’s your sort of thing.



Also in this section:
Halloween whodunit at the Theatre Guild
Cool Internet sites
History books

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