Is Marconi haunting me?

Factual Questions
1

Because I believe Tesla was the true inventor of radio!!??

Seriously, I am driving along and I turn on the radio. I find a station I like and there is a song on that I really like but it is just ending. Frustrating! That has happened more times than I can remember. So much so that that I why I am posting on here.

Am I the only one this happens to?

I can’t be…can I?

P.S. No, I don’t have an MP3 player. But this has been happening since I started driving which was about 45 years ago. I think car radios had transistors then.

2

It would be much more bizarre if this didn’t ever happen. Why would you expect it not to?

3

Dammit. I misread the title as “Is Macaroni haunting me,” which I found intriguing.

I think everyone has experienced this. All that is, except for a friend of mine who has an uncanny knack for making reference to a particular song or band and… presto! That’s the next song/band that comes on. Even some weird obscure stuff.

Beware Greeks bearing gifts of radio manipulation.

4

Oh that does happen, to those who incur the wrath of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

5

Figuring that your average song is maybe 3 minutes long, and “just ending” means the last 30 seconds, then it will happen to you 1/6th of every time you turn on the radio.

6

I guess I am not the center of the universe after all.

Well now I don’t feel as alone anymore, the math and logic did for me.

Case closed.

7

Well, do you keep hearing eerie mambo music? Especially in San Francisco? :wink:

Seriously, a Nobel Prize winner once stated, “The laws of probability not only permit coincidence to happen; they require it.”

8

Was that Feynman? It sounds like the sort of thing he’d say.

9

You want coincidences involving radio and music? Here’s a doozie…

This happened when I was driving up to Spokane. At some point I get close enough to the city to pick up Spokane radio stations. It’s not a big market and there’s only two stations that played rock/pop music. I’m listening to one of them and a song I didn’t care for came on, so I pushed the button for the other.

Huh!? No change … did I push the wrong button? Push the button again … still no change… push again. After several button pushes, I figure out that both stations were playing the same song and they’d started at the exact same time! After a bit more switching and careful listening, I find that it wasn’t exactly the same time, but within a quarter second or so. Still an amazing coincidence.

10

I’ve had this happen every now and then in Los Angeles, where playlists are so tight you couldn’t pull a needle out of their ass with a tractor.

A few other radio coincidences I’ve had:

Once the song “Jane Says” was playing, and right at the line “she walks up on St. Andrews” I passed the intersection of St. Andrews Place in Hollywood.

While “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” was playing, an old lady blew past me. On Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

11

Figure that most radio stations play the top 40. If they start their show on the hour and play the top 40 in ascending or descending order, you’re going to get synchronicity pretty easy.

12

You want coincidence?

I was driving my uncle from Savannah to NYC one time.
All the way from Savannah, he won’t let me listen to the radio. I’m 16, I need to concentrate on driving, he says.

Finally, somewhere in Pennsylvania, he falls asleep. I turn on the radio, and Billy Joel sings “Well, we’re living here in Allentown…” just as I pass the sign that reads “Welcome to Allentown”!

Eh, my 16yo self thought it was awsome!

13

I don’t think those stations did that. Even if they did, the next songs they played were not the same, so they weren’t doing that at the time.