[601] in Humor
HUMOR: A voice in the radio wilderness (Dave)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Sat Dec 10 22:38:43 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 22:34:59 EST
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 94 13:40:54 PST
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
A voice in the radio wilderness
-- by Dave Barry [08/24/92]
Recently I was chosen to serve as a musical consultant to the radio
industry.
Actually, it wasn't the entire industry; it was a woman named Marcy,
who called me up at random one morning while I was picking my teeth with
a business card as part of an ongoing effort to produce a column.
"I'm not selling anything," Marcy said.
Of course when callers say this, they usually mean that they ARE
selling something, so I was about to say "No thank you" in a polite
voice, then bang the receiver down with sufficient force to drive phone
shards deep into Marcy's brain, when she said she was doing a survey for
the radio industry about what songs should be played on the air.
That got my attention, because radio music is an issue I care deeply
about. I do a lot of singing in the car. You should hear Aretha Franklin
and me perform our version of "I Say a Little Prayer for You,"
especially when our voices swoop way up high for the ending part that
goes, "My darling BELIEVE me, for me there is nooo WAHHHHH-AAANNNN but
you ..." My technique is to grip the steering wheel with both hands and
lift myself halfway out of the seat so that I can give full vocal
expression to the emotion that Aretha and I are feeling, which is a
mixture of joyous hope and bittersweet longing and the horror of
realizing that the driver of the cement truck three feet away is staring
at me, at which point I pretend that I am having a coughing seizure
while Aretha finishes the song on her own.
I think they should play that song more often on the radio, along
with "Brown-Eyed Girl," "Sweet Home Alabama" and of course the Isley
Brothers' version of "Twist and Shout," which, if you turn it up loud
enough, can propel you beyond mere singing into the stage where you have
to get out of the car and dance with toll-booth attendants.
On the other hand, it would not trouble me if the radio totally
ceased playing ballad-style songs by Neil Diamond. I realize that many
of you are huge Neil Diamond fans, so let me stress that in matters of
musical taste, everybody is entitled to an opinion, and yours is wrong.
Consider the song "I Am, I Said," wherein Neil, with great emotion,
sings:
"I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair."
What kind of line is that? Is Neil telling us he's SURPRISED that the
chair didn't hear him? Maybe he expected the chair to say, "Whoa, I
heard THAT." My guess is that Neil was really desperate to come up with
something to rhyme with "there," and he had already rejected "So I
ate a pear," "Like Smokey the Bear," and "There were nits in my
hair."
So we could do without this song. I also believe that we should use
whatever means are necessary -- and I do not exclude tactical nuclear
weapons -- to prevent radio stations from ever playing "Honey," "My
Way," "I Write the Songs," "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,"
and "Watchin' Scotty Grow." I have holes in my car radio from stabbing
the station-changing button when these songs come on. Again, you may
disagree with me, but if you know so much, how come the radio industry
didn't randomly survey YOU?
The way the survey worked was, Marcy played two-second snippets from
about two dozen songs; after each snippet I was supposed to say whether
I liked the song or not. She'd play, for example, "Don't Worry, Baby"
by the Beach Boys and I'd shout, "YES! PLAY THE WHOLE THING!" and
she'd say, "OK, that's a `like.' Or she'd play "Don't You Care?" by
the Buckinghams, and I'd make a noise like a person barfing up four feet
of intestine, and Marcy would say, "OK, that's a `don't like."'
The problem was that I wasn't allowed to SUGGEST songs. I could only
react to the generally mediocre candidates that were presented. It was
just like the presidential elections. This is too bad, because there are
a lot of good songs that never get played. My wife and I are constantly
remarking on this. I'll say, "Do you remember a song called `Boys'?"
And Beth, instantly, will respond, "Bop shoo-bop, boppa boppa SHOO-bop.
" Then both of us, with a depth of emotion that we rarely exhibit when
discussing world events, will say, "They NEVER play that!"
I tried suggesting a couple of songs to Marcy. For example, after she
played the "Don't Worry Baby" snippet, I said, "You know there's a
great Beach Boys song that never gets played called "Custom Machine."
The chorus goes:
"Step on the gas, she goes WAA-AAA-AAHH
I'll let you look
But don't touch my custom machine!"
I did a good version of this, but Marcy just went "huh" and played
her next snippet, which was "I Go to Pieces" by a group that I believe
is called Two British Weenies. I don't care for that song, and I told
Marcy as much, but I still keep hearing it on the radio. Whereas I have
yet to hear "Custom Machine." It makes me wonder if the radio industry
really cares what I think, or if I'm just a lonely voice crying out, and
nobody hears me at all. Not even the chair.
