When I was growing up in Richmond, there was one station (WANT/990) which was aimed directly at the Black community. I never listened to it. But the top-40 station (WLEE/1480) played a lot of music from Black artists (especially those who recorded for Motown), mixed in with the rest of their playlist.

Listening to Soul Street today reminded me of those days — I heard many familiar artists and songs which I’d heard often on WLEE — and which, for the most part, I hadn’t heard since.

There were some clunkers, but in general, Soul Street was good listening today (though they lost me when they went to a half-hour of Black History Month celebration — I was looking for music, not documentary programming). I’ll be back, but for fairly small doses; I like my soul music mixed in with other formats, not as an exclusive diet.

After my brief visit to The Torch earlier today, it was time to catch up on the last channel I’d missed while in France — The Heart.

The Heart’s programming theme is very simple and straightforward: all love songs, all the time. They stretch it as far as playing “breakup songs”, but that’s as far as they go. And they lived up to their claims, at least during the time I was listening.

I could see coming back here once in a while (and it might make better background music for activities other than sitting in my office, writing Python code), but it’s not likely to be one of my frequent stops.