Many moons ago.....
Some dude named Roger Colletti at SiriusXM had a crazy idea :
"What if we make a talk radio station... but about MUSIC?!?!"
And the Volume channel was born.
In the mornings, on the drive to work, we were introduced to Nik Carter and Lori Majewski.
In the evenings, on our drive home, we became besties with Alan Light and Mark Goodman. Yes. The original MTV VJ.
Eddie Trunk brought his show, "Trunk Nation" to the airwaves. Ron Bennington did as well. And we were used as test subjects for new ideas like Rock Tales.
But the one thing no one realized would happen, not even Roger himself, was that the audience would start talking to each other. Eventually we started referring to ourselves as the Volumaniacs.
We were regular callers and tweeters to the show. We got to know each other and was able to put names to voices. We looked forward to hearing Dean from Kansas greet us from the high plains. We would often spend all of our time in whatever rabbit hole subject was brought up on Feedback. We spent hours, starting on Monday nights, trying to come with the perfect votes for #Top5Tuesday on Debatable. And we would giggle like children when the mysterious Kevin from Arizona sang our his choices. And if for some reason, one of the regular listeners was unable to call in with our own votes, we would tap a fellow listener to deliver them by proxy. I will always regret never making it as a contestant on 70s/80s/90s/NOW with Jim Shearer.
We all have our favorite moments. The late, great Gilbert Gottfried reciting the lyrics to WAP is etched in our brains. Occasionally hearing the joyful laughter in the background coming from Kerry Alivizatos would bring a grin to anyone's face. An actual discussion about which celebrity we would want to punch us in the face. (Man I miss Raven. )
And we got to meet new friends. Larry Flick popped in on Friday mornings to give us new music. And occasionalny we would get some evening New Music Friday picks from the wonderfully talented DJ Hesta Prynn.
Whether it was on Twitter, Facebook, smoke signals, or whatever way they could. We formed a family.
Like all good things, Sirius XM Volume came to an end. It was a glorious experiment. But it had run its course.
And the Volumaniacs tribe persisted.
The Facebook group is still active. We do our own #Top5Tuesday every week. We still share music news with each other. And a lot of the time. We just talk about random music. Maybe shows we have seen or want to see. New albums. Past experiences. A particular lyric from a 40 year old song that just hits us the right or wrong way.
And then Amazon started this thing called AMP. This new site lets us DJ our own shows. So now we get to hear the people we love do the things they love.
The journey is in its first few steps. But it is going to be a hell of a ride.
Update : Amazon has decided that October 31, 2023 will be the last day that AMP is online. For the time being, the curators here at Volumaniacs.Net have started using https://StationHead.Com/ to continue to broadcast our shows.
Just another step in this journey.