I stopped listening to over-the-air radio in my car about eighteen months ago. Someone stole it out of my car. Brrrrmmp (just kidding. Perhaps the only blog that has its own drummer).
Radio here in SE Connecticut isn't that difficult to stop listening to--it's uniformly terrible. The chatter on the police and fire radio frequencies (trouble calls, et al), is better than most of the programming on the stations in this region. Not sure why, exactly and not completely comfortable with it being 'the radio guys' fault' only. No one steps into the same river twice, because both he and the river have changed (and take off that banana hammock, dude. Chiquita just called and threatened to sue).
Purchased a satellite radio receiver and, combined with the CD and cassette player and (of course) the AM/FM (and weather) car radio, I'm well served in terms of tunes. Someday, I'll actually drive the car out of the garage (that'll probably improve the sat radio reception) and maybe take it for a spin, but right now I'm still panelling the backseat and putting in a whirlpool. One step at a time.
BTW, who listens to weather radio and for how long at one sitting? I have NO life and I find it boring nearly beyond words so what do real people make of it? And how the heck does it make money for whoever puts it on?
The other day on Sat radio I stumbled across the 'punk channel' ("Anarchy! It's nothing but vintage and new punk rock music.") and all I can say to mom and dad is "I'm sorry for making fun." I always thought the folks you grew up listening to, Perry Como, Jerry Vale and that lot were awful (actually I still think they are) but I don't think I want my kids finding my collection of CDs from The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, or The Dead Kennedys (though 'Holiday in Cambodia' isn't without its moments) or humming along to Jim Carroll's "People Who Died".
When they were smaller, I feared one of them might bring a Uriah Heep elpee (The Magician's Birthday, as an example) to school for show and tell on a day when the DARE police officer, Bill Nash, was in the classroom and then I'd have had some real explaining to do. Talk about the changing river. Earlier this month we elected the now-retired-from-the-police-force Bill Nash to the Norwich City Council. Hey! I told you to get rid of the swim trunks! You're leaving a puddle on the kitchen floor.
Anyway. This punk channel stuff is amazing and awful, often simultaneously. Tons of stuff I remember from my young and innocent days: Black Flag, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Buzzcocks, Motorhead (never thought of them as punk-more the predecessors of thrash rock) and more recent acts like NOFX and Social Distortion (well, they're more recent to me) and The Dropkick Murphys who, I've read, are a Celtic punk band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Imagine that must be, at times, a little like being a Rastafarian country and western band in the South Bronx.
Lots of anger, tons of outrage, continents of contempt. My kingdom for a melody.
Was it always this strident? And in the mixes (and why, for crying out loud, did so much of it sound like it had been mixed through a wet sweat sock anyway?) where you can understand the vocals, how come the lyrics sound so lame now but sounded so vital and vibrant then?
How did it happen that all the things that made you clench your fist and thrust it in the air in syncopation with some glue-sniffing minimalistic drummer, are now so quaint and so of another time? This station is my new guilty pleasure, but I make sure I switch to a CD when one of the kids or my wife gets into the car. After all, I have an image to maintain.
Besides, "Starry-eyed and laughing as I recall when we were caught."
-bill kenny
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