Can't Touch This

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 One of the most salient features

of the "alternative" music network

that emerged

with the fragmentation of the rock audience

in the post-punk era was

radio.

Although it was non-commercial and college radio

stations that first formed the nexus

of sub cultural

cohesion in terms of both institutional

and

ideological articulation, commercial radio

soon

drifted into the scene.  Subscribing

to an "indie"

ethos, regardless of economic reality,

radio kept its audience informed about varied

sites in which the signs and sounds

of the alternative music culture were produced

and consumed: record stores, music venues,

dance clubs, clothing stores, bars, and so on.

  Ideologically, the discourse of 

"alternative" radio often invokes rhetorics

of community and place meant to

differentiate it and its audience

from "mainstream" musical culture.  Within a

rhetoric of place and locality,

then, "home" is a combination of frequency and call

letters on the dial which

-- to paraphrase an old come-on --

should never be

touched.

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