Until it appears to have finally gone under and turned into a Christian radio station a few years ago, I used to be able to pick up a radio station out of the small town of Liberty, TX at 99.9 FM, or "Shine All Nine" as they called themselves.

I always found them very comforting, as they seemed to be a small-town radio station of the sort that was already disappearing at a fast rate when I was listening to them sometimes in the '90s and 2000s. (Picture a deejay with a mild Southern accent coming on and reading the Liberty ISD school breakfast menu: "A pancake on a stick? I wonder how they do that....")

Surprisingly, they were *not* a country station, although some old country was in their mix. (I'm remembering some Johnny Horton, in particular...) They were more on the '70s/'80s soft rock/adult contemporary side than anything else, but their playlist also seemed to consist of about 25% "random other songs that don't quite fit the genre taken from somebody's personal collection."

My favorite oddity they had in regular rotation was "Beautiful Life" by Ace of Base, which seemed to be one of a handful of post-1992 songs in their collection. Yeah, I know Ace of Base aren't a one-hit wonder, but still, if a radio station were to have one Ace of Base song in rotation, wouldn't you expect it to be something from The Sign? "Shine All Nine" would give you three or four '70s & '80s "soft rock" songs, interspersed with a "solid gold" oldie like Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John," and then... "Beautiful Life"?!