San Francisco finally has a genuine dance radio station, one of about five in America, and it would make most "superstar" DJs puke. It offers no extended mixes, no tribal trax, no progressive house dubs, breakbeat instrumentals, or underground designer record labels. No cognoscenti chic whatsoever. Instead, 92.7 Party pumps up the trance-pop—crate-loads of breathy Euro babes chirping English-as-a-second-language love lyrics while fizzy synth hooks buzz and zap angst-riddled chords to a bouncy mechanical beat. It hit the Bay Area airwaves at exactly the same time DJ Sammy's squirrelly girlie remake of Bryan Adams's "Heaven" came out of nowhere (well, Spain to be exact) to share radio time with Nickelback and Creed in an obvious conspiracy to wear out the public's trance-pop tolerance while offering flimsy shadows of its delights. It's the Nicki French effect: Remember when this one-hit wonder's 1995 hi-NRG remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" inexplicably topped the American singles chart, back when poor Kylie Minogue couldn't even get a U.S. recording contract? Nearly anything faster than a hip-hop shuffle that manages to get past commercial radio's discophobic gatekeepers goes on to embed itself Cher-style into our pop consciousness, no matter how tacky it is. That's how starved America is for... More >>>