When Did That Happen?

I've been working nights for a while, which means I'm on my way home somewhere around midnight or a little later. It means, primarily, that I can't listen to NPR, because the NPR station changes to incomprehensible jazz at some point in the evening. (I know it's un-American to not like jazz, but I don't. Four guys all playing four separate songs at the same time isn't "innovative", it's just plain irritating.)

So I've tried listening to the local FM radio stations, and I don't know when it happened, when the change came, but man, they suck!

I don't know who established the formula for modern FM rock radio stations, but whoever it was needs to be punished, and by that I mean in the Frank Castle fashion. KUPD establishes a new low, as its "DJs" just sit around and talk about bodily functions and sex acts. No, they don't. Talk implies an exchange of ideas and information; they might as well just sit there and read lists of "bad words" for all the communication that goes on. Feces. Anus. Coprophilia. Oh, what fun. What, do 15 year old mallcore aficionados listen to this nonsense and think that it makes them macho? Whatever the case, it isn't meant for me.

And the music! Good heavens. I never thought I'd live to see the day that they made "metal" music that was whiny and spineless, but there it is. I don't know what kind of metal it really is. I don't think it's metal at all, because it violates the Basic Precept of Metal, which is this: Metal Doesn't Whine. I think I'm going to refer to it as "mallcore". Take ye a metal tune. Dumb it down and take out the hard, technical stuff. It's best if you can somehow turn it into a single monotonous riff that goes on and on and sounds really heavy but is really just kind of dumb. Add to that some scratching from rap, and some electronic effects from God knows where. Make the lyrics whiny. Dwell on the hideousness of your 15 year old white middle class lifestyle. It isn't even real hideousness; it isn't real pain or loss or suffering. It's the bogus bullshit suffering of some clod who bought a t-shirt at Hot Topic and then had an emotional meltdown because he saw some clod wearing the same t-shirt. It's hard for me to take very seriously the suffering of a high school kid whose parents give him a car, a cell phone, and enough money to buy Slipknot t-shirts at the mall. But oh, how they suffer. Woe is me and my affluent lifestyle, I ran out of eyeliner and my brother Timmy ate the last of the Cap'n Crunch ::cries:: I'm sure that someone one or another of these hideous bands is writing a song extolling the virtues of self-mutilation as a means of dealing with the pain of second period PE.

It's like emo, only loud. And worse. At least I could tune emo out. Oh no, another Dashboard Confessional song; well, at least I can not listen to it and amuse myself by thinking about neutron stars. But not this stuff.

I have got to get a car that my iPod will plug into. That's all there is to it. Between the vile (not to mention screamingly unfunny) FM DJs and the whiny mallcore, I'm fixing to go clean off my feed. Better to just the radio off and listen to the wind.

(And I haven't even started on the stupid FM radio commercials.)

The only bright spot in any of this is the late-night show Alice Cooper does on KSLX. The music isn't much to write home about, but at least Alice can assemble words into intelligible, occasionally funny and sometimes even reasonably interesting sentences. Compared to the hooting simians on the other radio stations, whom I imagine are easily flummoxed by bananas hanging on strings just out of their reach, he's a breath of fresh air.