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

Twenty-Oh-Eight

This time of year you can't turn on the TV, read the paper or surf the net without running into "The Year in Review" over and over again. Those things seem to come earlier and earlier each year, just like Christmas decorations at the mall. The problem with airing your "Year in Review" show on December 10th is that there are still 21 more days for stuff to happen. Here are two examples of that:

Bernie Madoff - he was arrested on December 11th and charged with investment fraud. His hedge fund investors may have lost $50 Billion - that's Billion with a B. Family fortunes, entire life savings and charitable trusts gone forever in an instant. This is major, big time news and should definitely be in your Year in Review show, list, blog...

The Shoe Thrower - that guy in Iraq threw his shoes at President Bush on December 14th. In the grand scheme of 2008 this is a relatively lame event, but the entire incident is over in 10 seconds. Surely you could cut out 10 seconds of Paris Hilton or Kanye West to fit it in.

Here's my attempt at a review of 2008.

Favorite Memory: Bonfire in Maine

Friday, October 10th. A warm fall night with copious amounts of Miller High Life, smores and Red Sox Playoff baseball via radio in Freeport, ME. It was the perfect ending for my last night of the year in Maine.

Best Song: "Shattered (Turn the Car Around)" by O.A.R.

Best Play: The Catch, Superbowl XLII

Up until February 3, 2008 if you mentioned "The Catch" it was understood that you were talking about the throw from Joe Montana to Dwight Clark to win the 1982 NFC Championship Game against the Dallas Cowboys. Not anymore. Now you are talking about the ball Eli Manning flings in the direction of David Tyree. Tyree leaps into the air to grab the ball, takes a pounding hit from the Patriots' Rodney Harrison and comes down with the ball clutched between his hands and helmet. Thirty six seconds later the Giants score the winning touchdown to end the Patriots hope of a perfect season.

Best Movie: Ironman

Biggest Surprise: Stock Market Collapse.

With one day of trading left the S&P 500 Index, which represents the 500 largest public companies in the US, is down a mind boggling 39.3% for the year. This is the worst year for the S&P Index since 1931. We have had bear markets in the past, but none as severe and swift as what we have seen in 2008.

Underdog of the Year: Tampa Bay Rays

You might expect me to pick my NY Football Giants win in Superbowl 42 but you would be wrong. The Giants proved that they could play with the Patriots in the final game of the regular season on December 29, 2007. It's awfully hard to beat a good team twice in a season, so I don't consider their Superbowl win much of a surprise.

What was a surprise to me was the Tampa Bay Rays making it to the World Series in 2008. This is a team that had never had a winning season since they came into existence in 1994. In fact, they had never finished better than 21 games under .500 in a season. They had finished in last place in their division every year except 2005 when they finished in...next to last place. A worst to first story indeed.

Mood: Hopeful

Song of the Day:

"Banks back then was lendin' money, the banker was the farmer's friend."

- A Month of Sundays

Don Henley

Random Occurances

Every now and then something will happen that is so totally random. A couple weeks back I was sitting at a red light, waiting to make a left hand turn. Before the light went green for me the pedestrians got the right of way and made their way past my car. A pretty normal suburban scene until a gal walked by toting a unicycle. I wasn't on my way to or from the circus. I was actually on the way home from the post office. She wasn't riding the unicycle, she was simply toting it beside her as she walked. To me, this implied she was waiting to ride it at some kind of special occasion that awaited her down the road. I could not even imagine what that could be in January, in Centreville. I also couldn't remember the last time I saw anyone with a unicycle before then, still can't even now. Who knows, maybe the circus winters in C'Ville.

Today another random and totally unrelated thing occurred. I had the ole iTunes on shuffle and it decided to play the same song twice in a row. I have noticed that iTunes has a tendency to repeat songs in short order. Quite often it will play a song and then try to repeat it a mere 5 or 6 songs later. But the odds that it would select one particular song from the thousands of songs available and then select it again as the next song just boggle my mind. That is about as random as things get. Normally I would simply skip a song that had recently been played in shuffle mode the next time it came up. But today, I listened to "Every Morning" by Sugar Ray twice in a row. I figure something that random deserves some recognition.

"It was like deja vu all over again."

We Always Rock Washington!?!

What the hell happened to 94.7 The Arrow? They have suddenly gone all hippie on us all and become 94.7 The Globe. If that isn't a total suck-up to the aging baby boomers I don't know what is. The music just isn't the same now either, they are playing some obscure and fruity stuff all of the sudden.

Obviously, this isn't a big of a shock as the day that WHFS became El Taco - or whatever 99.1 is now. I remember that day. 8:59am they were on the air as WHFS - still speaking English - and 9:00am they signed on in Spanish as something else. Talk about being thrown for a loss. I was totally clueless and all day long I kept flipping the dial back to 99.1 expecting to hear some Foo Fighters but no dice. It was gone, vanished like to Colts to Indianapolis on that cold night in March 1984. All I can say is thank god for my iPod!


Random Fact of The Day:

The energy saved by recycyling one aluminum can is enough to run your TV for 3 hours.

John Mellencamp Is A Whore

It's true, admit it. You know EXACTLY what I am talking about. His next album comes out on January 23, 2007 but we have been absolutely BOMBARDED with that song of his since September. It's in every Chevy truck commercial and Chevy apparently advertises during EVERYTHING. Either they are not familiar with the concept of target marketing or their target is "everybody with a pulse". If you have seen any sporting event over the past four months you could not escape hearing that G-D song.

I am a mild sporting enthusiast, I watched the MLB playoffs and an occasional football game, but that's about it. Even with that relatively small sample of sporting event advertising I am utterly sick of that damn song. I was sick of it long before the World Series had even begun.

When he came out and sung that G-D song before one of the MLB playoff games I had to hold back the vom. (You can't tell, but I just threw up a little in my mouth as I was typing.) I can't imagine if I was a sports nut who watched baseball, football, hockey, basketball, college sports, Sportscenter and the like. I would have shot myself by now.

I have always been a fan of John Cougar Mellencamp - JCM for short. I have several of his albums in my collection. I still pull out my Scarecrow cassette and fire it up every now and then. It's that good of an album. But those days are over. He has whored out his new song so much that I just can't take it anymore. It's to the point now that if I hear one of his songs on the radio I change the channel. JCM is dead to me, his soul went to the highest bidder.


Failed Advertising Slogan of The Day:

Even Dykes Love Dick's Sporting Goods!



Random Movie Quote:

"Raise your hand if your brother's a homo!" - Just Friends

Music Pimpin'

Wow, it is amazing how the world of music has changed over the past dozen years or so. I heard a song on the radio today by Train - "Get To Me." It is really catchy and I am sure it gets a bunch of airplay, but the first time I heard this song it was in a cell phone commercial many, many months ago. Five years ago, this song would only have been in a commercial months or perhaps years after it was a big old radio hit. Not so anymore, this song was in a commercial and that finally got it airplay. This song is from 2003 but is just getting popular now.

Ten years ago, they wouldn't have used an actual hit song, they would have doctored it up a bit and used that for a commercial. The best example of that I can think of is Toby Keith's "Big Ol' Truck" was pimped into "I'm A Ford Truck Man" - sad but true. There are dozens of other songs suffered the same fate and their commercial alter egos are all just as forgettable.

Bands are just pimpin' themselves out all over the place these days for a shot at some dead presidents. How many bands does "One Tree Hill" pimp out in each episode? Seems like they pimp out a dozen songs in every damn episode. (OK, now you know I watch "One Tree Hill" like a pre-teen school girl.) It used to be taboo for a band to have a song used in a network TV show. They were considered sellouts for that kind of exposure. Now it can jump start someone's career.

Oddly enough, the first TV show I remember doing this was.........drum roll please...............Beverly Hills 90210! They were pimpin' the Bare Naked Ladies back in 1997, the Goo Goo Dolls in 1995 and good old Jamie Walters waaaayyyyy back in 1994. Like I always say - everything I learned, I learned by watching 90210!

"I just scored the most righteous job of the summer!"

Music

Finally, we have had some decent rock n roll songs to listen to on the radio the last couple months, it has been a while. It seemed like it was all post grunge music there for the longest time. You couldn't make out the lyrics for all the guitar, drums and bass going on - please don't make me listen to another Creed, 3 Doors Down, Lifehouse or Nickelback song! I found myself gravitating towards Country music simply because I could make out the lyrics to the songs.

Thank you for The Click Five, Hot Hot Heat, Keane, Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard and Howie Day. I gotta plug my Maine-Man-Howie, it's about time he's gotten some actual airplay. Give em' hell, Howie!