Wednesday, June 27, 2001
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Wednesday, June 27, 2001 |
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Radio is bringing me down By MICHAEL
BOYLAN I think I have repetitive stress disorder. Not from typing at a keyboard all day long, but from changing the radio stations in my car constantly. I used to be a one- or two-station man, but my tastes have grown more fickle. Well, that and local radio is terrible. My commute to and from work is very short, but the morning drive shows are no less irritating. Many stations don't play music and their conversations are either juvenile or inane. In the case of the regular guys on 96 Rock or Jimmy Barron on the Morning X, they are both. They will prattle on and on about complete nonsense, often ridiculing the listeners who call in. This disrespect eventually drove me to AM radio. I figured that if I was going to listen to talk, I'd rather listen to a station that is all talk. Last year I began listening to Neal Boortz, the often hilarious but often infuriating talk show host on WSB 750. When you agree with his point of view, he sounds almost presidential and when you disagree with him you want to wash out your ears and you're afraid no matter how much you wash they will never be clean again. I stopped listening to him around the time of the election. He talked about nothing else and I found him to be very one-sided. This led me to The Zone. The Zone (790 AM) is a sports talk station that until recently featured Don Imus in the morning. Thankfully, he is gone and there is a sports talk program on in the morning. There are three hosts offering three different points of view on sports topics. I find myself listening to this station the most now, with the exception of when the fiancee' is in the car. The only problem with this station is the really long commercial breaks, which lead me to flip stations again. Though I have a real problem with the morning shows, the local FM radio stations aren't much better during the day. 99X, the modern rock station, plays the same 50 songs over and over again, with a few older songs thrown in to show they still use their catalog of music every now and then. If I hear Staind's "It's Been Awhile" again, I'll start screaming and I'm afraid I won't be able to stop. 96 Rock, a mix of classic and modern rock, plays a wide variety of bands. Unfortunately, they play the same songs over and over. Pink Floyd wrote more than "Comfortably Numb" and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II," just as the Rolling Stones wrote more than "Sympathy for the Devil" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want." It seems like they have a looping tape that has pauses built in for commercial breaks and inane chatter. Bands record whole albums. It would be nice to hear tracks that weren't released as singles. I'll bet that some of those songs are really good and would make me interested in buying the album. Other stations are just as bad. Star 94 plays a good mix of stuff, everything from N'Sync and Madonna to Blink 182 and U2, but the Top 40 dominates the afternoon and the personalities on their station sound really fake. I don't believe them when they say it's a beautiful day or that they really like Mariah Carey. The only station that offers a truly varied mix of music is Album 88, Georgia State's radio station (88.5 FM). Their problem is that most of the music is too eccentric. They may play Tom Waits in one set, but they'll follow it with a 10-minute techno song that samples Julia Childs and a blender, leading the listener to flip around. Again. The solution is very easy. Don't listen to the radio. I can do this for awhile. I have over 300 tapes and 100 CDs, but even then I start to get fidgety. I don't like a certain track or I'd rather hear another song off another album. I start to press the eject button on the tape player or the track selector button on my new Discman. I guess I'll never be content with the radio selection, until I lose my sense of taste, that is.
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