Radio Ga-Ga

I listen to music a lot as background noise at home and at the office. I have periods of time when I will use my iPod almost exclusively, other times when I only listen to the radio, and sometimes I even get out my cassettes and throw them on and listen to them for weeks on end. Whenever I get into a music rut I switch it up and switch from one music medium to another.

Lately I have been on a radio kick. I generally have 3 stations I listen to. A pop station, a modern country station, and a classic rock station. A few years ago it was all the rage to have "no repeat workdays" so you could listen to a station all day long and never hear the same song twice. Those days are long gone so repeat songs are a pretty common occurrence on the air waves these days. I would expect that on the pop station and the modern country station as they are both concentrating on playing the songs in their music genre that are popular right now, but it is even true on the classic rock station.

That really threw me for a loop. It seems to me that the point of a classic rock station is that they can literally choose from thousands of songs over the past 40-some years to play. As a result they should have a pretty eclectic play list. But this in fact is not true at all on BIG 100.3, the classic rock station in the DC metro area. They play the same songs over and over and over.

The song that really opened my eyes to this is "Me & Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin. This is, in my opinion, one of the worst songs of all time and BIG 100.3 seems to play it every friggin' day of the week. At first I simply turned the station every time this song came on, but eventually I started keeping track of how often it was played.

Over time, I actually built up a nice list of songs they have in heavy rotation and then took it a step further and kept track for 2 weeks of how many times I heard these songs. This is a completely unscientific survey on my part. I didn't listen to the radio 24 hours a day. I didn't look at the recently played list on their website. If the radio was on and I heard a song on my list I wrote it down. The big winner was...actually it was a tie.

I heard two different songs a total of 8 times in the two weeks I kept track: "More Than A Feeling" by Boston [which is playing right now as I edit this post] and "Blinded By The Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Officially, I am giving the Radio Ga-Ga Title to Blinded By The Light because I actually heard that song twice on the very last day of my music survey. I can only imagine how many other times they played these two songs while I was playing Pac-Man, asleep, watching TV, or out of the house. I would imagine the real play counts for both these songs truly are about once per day.

There was also a tie for 3rd place among six songs that I heard 6 times each over the survey period: "Crazy on You" by Heart, "Radar Love" by Golden Earring, "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" by Yes, "Magic Man" by Heart, "What's Your Name" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and "Second Hand News" by Fleetwood Mac.

The song that started it all "Me & Bobby MeGee" finished in a tie for 9th place as I heard it only 5 times over the two week period. There were five other songs that finished tied with it in 9th place: "Roundabout" by Yes, "We're An American Band" by Grand Funk Railroad, "Do It Again" by Steely Dan, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult, and "Reelin' In The Years" by Steely Dan.

The moral of the story is if you truly want music variety you apparently have to use the shuffle play on your iPod. You won't get it on today's modern radio station, no matter what genre of music they play.

Mood: Surprised.


Song of the Day:

"Some silicon sister with a manager mister told me I got what it takes"

-Blinded By The Light

Manfred Mann's Earth Band


Movie Quote of the Day:

"This is the cleanest and nicest police car I've ever been in in my life. This thing's nice than my apartment."

-Beverly Hills Cop

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I spent the past 17 days on vacation in New England. Here are some of the highlights from my Summer Vacation 2010:

Played Croquet: July 15, July 16, July 31
Ate Lobster: July 17 – both lunch and dinner!
Had A Campfire: July 16, July 24, July 29
Went Bowling: July 28
Ate Ice Cream: July 17, July 19, July 25, July 28
Made A Sand Castle: July 20
Ate at McDonald’s July 20 – lunch in Bucksport, ME and dinner in Brewer, ME
Mowed The Lawn: July 21
Layed In The Hammock: July 21, July 22, July 27, July 28, July 29
Played Wiffleball: July 18, July 21, July 28
Went Shopping: July 19, July 28
Ate Smores: July 16, July 24
Drank Alcohol: July 15, July 16, July 22, July 23, July 24, July 25
Went Swimming: July 30; July 31

Towns Visited: Yarmouth, ME; Freeport, ME; Hampden, ME; Hermon, ME; Bangor, ME; Manset, ME; Industry, ME; Wilton, ME; Orono, ME; Upton, MA.



Mood: Recharged!


Song of the Day:

"So we'll live out in our old van, travel all across this land"

-Free

Zac Brown Band


Failed Advertising Slogan Of The Day:

"Bud Light Lime: Still tastes like ass, but we added lime!"