Cities 97- MN Radio Review

AA Radio Format

Cities 97 plays AA Radio, bands that aren't quite mainstream yet or fit into their chill rock sound. They often play bands like U2, Coldplay, Train, Augustana, Matt Nathanson, Jack Johnson, The Decemberists, Adele, and the like. They do give smaller bands a chance but overplay the hot songs. If I would have heard Train's 'Soul Sister' one more time....
A few great shows they have are Freedom Rock and the Local Show. On Freedom Rock they play music from unknown bands from around the world. In this show they truly give the little guys a chance to get some Air time. The Local Show is as you can guess local music from the great state of Minnesota. I was surprised by how much quality music the area produces with bans that I love such as Cloud Cult, Jeremy Messersmith, Tapes n' Tapes, an Trampled by Turtles.
The most notable thing that Cites 97 is their music sampler. Artist that are in town often visit Studio C (their personal studio) and record a few songs. The best of these performances get put on a CD and sold for people in the area at local Targets. They currently on Sampler Vol. 22 and they sold out of the 33,000 copies in the first day. The current total dollar amount raised for charity is over $8,000,000. There is a long list of charities that receive this help. The CD's sell out so fast and are somewhat hard to come by. They can be found resold at double or even triple the original price. Yet, due to copyright laws they are not able to make more CD's for everyone to get one. However, you can go and look at many live performances online and many videos are also available.
Overall, this is a great radio station and one of the best. However, I personally enjoy 89.3 'The Current' more and you can check out my hub on that radio station as well. Cities 97 is definitely in it for the money and it losses its pursuit of art at the cost of the $. However, they do not sell out completely and just play top 40 stuff. Check out the station and tell me what you think of it.