A majority of Americans say it's harder to stay informed these days "due to the plethora of information and news sources available," according to a new GALLUP/KNIGHT FOUNDATION poll. The paradox of too many options. Too much noise. Or, as a certain monarch once said, too many notes. Or maybe some of those Americans, like the monarch, don’t know how to listen for the right notes. That poll popped up in my inbox as I was still absorbing this fascinating essay by writer/musician/record-collector JAMES JACKSON TOTH, who finds himself so overwhelmed by easily available music that he's able to absorb none of it. The paradox of getting everything you wanted. "I started noticing that my brain was no longer retaining song titles," he writes. "All music was becoming Muzak." Is this an unavoidable effect of the streaming age, or just a natural effect of getting older? Fifteen-year-olds can still listen to a DUA LIPA single or a CHILDISH GAMBINO album over and over again and immerse themselves in its cellular structure as easily as 15-year-olds in 1998 could get lost in an OUTKAST album, right? Or are they fighting streaming overload, too? Or does time not matter to them so just bring it all on and who cares? Toth decided to devote his 2017 to listening to one, and only one, album per week, to get to know it inside out, to get to appreciate the album art, the studio musicians, the drum sounds, the hook on track 17, everything. Slow cooking, meet slow listening. It was, it turned out, easier said than done. But what was to blame: SPOTIFY? ADHD? The world? His 39th birthday? AUTECHRE? Can he—can you—stop and smell a single rose anymore? Can you tune out the noise? Can you tune your brain to hear the exact number of notes you want to hear?... MARISSA MOSS isn't the first writer to expose "Country Radio's Dark, Secret History of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct." But her four-month investigation, landing in ROLLING STONE in the wake of the #METOO movement, provides a horrifying clarity into how men who hold the keys to radio airplay are preying on women—musicians as well as record company employees—who need that airplay. A handful of female artist/victims are named along with a number of anonymous sources. Many of the radio programmers go unnamed, too. They should be named. But the burden to do so shouldn't fall on the victims. There are people at labels, in radio and in management who know this is going on. People who continue to do business with these guys and send young women their way. Will *they* speak out? Will they name names?... The final episode of THE COMBAT JACK SHOW... The first episode of JEFF MILLS' six-part radio series on space exploration, which he is both hosting and scoring (!) in partnership with NASA (!), airs at 9 am ET today, here... That time BUDDY HOLLY asked DECCA RECORDS to give him back his songs, and taped the phone call.