Well, it happened again. Fuck, this sucks. Gonna have to find a new station to fill the #6 position in the car stereo presets. Ever notice how whenever a radio station changes formats, they do it totally without warning? No DJ ever says anything like “Hey, starting tomorrow we’re going to be playing sucky music, so you’d better change the presets on your dial.”
I was jamming to Daniel by Elton John (hey! stop laughing!) on my way to work today, but on my way home I was being crudely crooned to through the 3AM fog by the likes of Garth Brooks et al. No big deal I guess, since the station is 80 miles away and I can barely catch it anyhow. Still it sucks. In fact everything about radio fucking sucks!
For years I have endured the mind-numbing monotonity of corporate bastard radio and I’m really about fed up with it. I get to take my pick from top thousand or so songs of the past 40 years from about 6 or 7 ubiquitous, ultra-mainstream genres,and listen these SAME songs over and over and over for eternity on every station on the fucking dial. Top it all off with a large helping of smarmy DJ’s and screaming carsalesmen and I’m truly in hell. I’m not even lucky enough to live near a decent college station.
Every alt-rock, classic rock, and Top 40 DJ has the exact same voice :
[list]
[li]Males - Deep voice, possibly cocky in a non-offensive way. They often display great exitement about remote broadcasts from auto parts stores.[/li][li]Females - Shrill, eardrum piercing voices. They are mostly relegated to news girl, wacky sidekick on a morning show, and the graveyard shift on Sunday. (unless it’s one of the stations that’s too cheap to even hire a DJ to work nights)[/li]
Every station has a “birthday wheel” or something similar. The worst are the ones that announce the birthdays of local people who call in so they can hear their name on the radio and maybe, just maybe win a $50 birthday party.
Alt-rock promises the best new rock, new music first, and the MOST new music(usually said directly preceding a 7 year old Nirvana song). They have names like “The Edge,” and “The X.” And they all sound the same.
Classic rock stations have 50 minute music marathons, two-fer tuesdays, and names like
“The Eagle,” and “The Point.”
They all hype themselves up with CONSTANT liners between songs proclaiming their greatness, yet they all sound EXACTLY the same! 95% of them are owned by one of two huge corporations so they’re just competing against their own damn company. I even heard stations crowing about how wonderful they were in desolate areas of the Southwest where you can ONLY PICK UP ONE FRIGGIN STATION!!!
So many thousands of generic stations and NOTHING for those of us that don’t fit their narrow demographics. I don’t doubt that the record companies pay off the stations. It’s illegal, yeah, but that kinda thing never stopped profit-hungry scavengers of other peoples’ talent before.
“Glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity”
–Rush from The Sprit of Radio