Because of my level of disgust, I vowed to not listen to my normal sports radio presets...especially since I'm stuck here in the South Bend area, which is the domain of the Chicago Bears. There is very little in life I dislike more than the Bears and their fans...although, unfortunately, considering where I'm currently living, one of the things that ranks higher is Notre Dame football and its fans.
However, not listening to sports radio kind of left me stuck with the rest of radio. I had forgotten what that's like. Turns out that there is a preponderance of both conservative talk and Christian radio around here. I tried hard to find something interesting in either format, but about the only way that I could be less their target audience would be if I were Muslim.
Then there's a lot of country music stations. I'm not averse to country music -- I actually quite like Lady Antebellum, and not just because the girl's hot -- however, country radio...how can I put this delicately... sucks the big one. They couldn't program any blander if they tried. In the last two days, I've heard Alan Jackson's "It's 5 o'clock Somewhere" and some annoying song by the Zac Brown Band more than anyone should ever have to.
Which has left me futilely flicking through the "scan" option bouncing through the handful of pop and classic rock stations. Two things that I've learned is that they're almost as bad as country radio and, oddly, two of the stations seem to be the exact same only with a five minute difference between them. I could probably figure that out more specifically, but I don't really care.
The other thing that I've learned is that I'm not going to hear three good songs in a row on any of them.
I can also tell that I'm getting old, because of some of the things that now qualify as "oldies" are by bands like REM and U2. I also heard the song "That Thing You Do," from the movie of the same name, being played on an oldies station...which I was amused by since it was written to sound like a '60's pop song and now it's old enough to actually be an oldie in its own right.
My taste in music tends towards the melodic. I'm geared towards the Beatles...probably too much so according to my family (they tired quickly of the reissues earlier this year). That also tends to steer me towards pop music, for good or bad. But from there I'm pretty open...if a song has a strong melody and a good hook, then I'm most likely on board no matter where it's coming from. That's led to consternation from some of my friends, who have in the past felt uncomfortable with me doing things like walking through a shopping mall singing Christina Aguilera songs (her I like...most of her peers are hacks though).
Being forced into listening to the radio has reminded me of some stuff though. As I was driving back from covering a high school basketball tournament, I heard Lou Reed's "Walk On the Wild Side" for probably the first time in 15 years. It caused me to remember back to my younger teen years when I was a proud music snob, sitting around discussing the importance of the Velvet Underground...all of us professing to love their music whether we actually did or not (a situation that I'm pretty sure played out the same way with another generation and The Pixies...don't get me wrong, I don't mind The Pixies, I just think that maybe there was a little too much worshiping).
Back when I would participate in conversations on the writings of Hunter S. Thompson...and perused magazines like Architectural Digest. When we'd get high and do things like listen to Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars"...or listen to Zeppelin's "Fool In the Rain," while it was freakin' raining...and deride the state of popular music coming from the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna, while complaining about the lack of mainstream support for the Psychedelic Furs or Aztec Camera or The Smiths.
Essentially, I was insufferable.
As it happens, I was actually a bit less insufferable in that way then I could've been. My 80's teen counterparts, the ones that John Hughes' tossed bouquets at in his movies, could be seriously obnoxious. I distinctly recall being at some event at Michigan State University with a cross section of "achievers" and being stuck in a discussion group that was made up entirely of some rich suburban kids that I didn't know...and them becoming agitated because I was smart enough to be able to mock them at their own level, without them having a whole lot of recourse. Well, I guess they all stopped talking to me at some point -- which made it less of a "discussion" group -- but I'm pretty sure that didn't actually stop my mocking.
Thankfully, I'm pretty sure that I've grown out of being insufferable. Still obnoxious, sure, but not insufferable. Or at least I don't think that I am, and I don't really care what anyone else thinks.
One quick note about the above reference to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson...to be honest, I usually found reading his work in book form to be a bit tedious. I just think it was too much to consume at one time. However, the man's work as a journalist -- particularly the Rolling Stone stuff -- taken in smaller doses was brilliant.
Also, I'm pretty sure that whatever your musical tastes are at 14, then that's pretty much your musical lot in life. When I was that age, I was the only person I knew that had multiple albums by Fee Waybill's band The Tubes. I heard one of their songs as well during my sojourn into music radio listening...and I still like them. Over the years, the newer bands/artists that I've liked have really just been variations on the bands/artists that I liked when I was 14. So, if you're currently the parent of a 14-year-old that's listening to Justin Bieber, you should probably feel even worse for them.
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