Here’s Rod Stewart!
Posted on May 28, 2003 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
I’m driving back from dropping off Athena at preschool and listening to the radio, which is tuned into the local “80s” channel, for the reason that it actually plays music in the morning rather than turn over its airwaves to some braying jackass of the species morning DJ. As I’m going along, the DJ comes on and gives one of those station plugs, and it goes like this: “The Point 95.7! Now with even more musical variety! Here’s Rod Stewart!”
Is it just me, or do the phrases “Now with even more musical variety!” and “Here’s Rod Stewart!” utterly contradict each other? If this radio station really wanted to impress me, they’d have the DJ say “Now with even more musical variety! Here’s Gang of Four!” or “Now with even more musical variety! Here’s The Primitives!” or even possibly “Now with even more musical variety! Here’s Total Creole!” I mean, damn. Between Rod Stewart and Phil Collins, it’s amazing 80s stations have air time to wedge in “Come On Eileen” or “Who Can it Be Now?” I’m surprised Clear Channel hasn’t just entirely thrown in the towel and programmed an “All Phil and Rod” station somewhere in this great land of ours.
Maybe they have. And I suspect in that town, random, unexplained violence has tripled.
Off to write DVD reviews and hit the “reload” button on the Ticketmaster site so I can get Eddie Izzard tickets the very second they go on sale. I’ll be back later.
Update, 11:11am: Finished the reviews AND got the Eddie Izzard tickets! Man, I rock.
Congrats on the Eddie Izzard tickets, John! I got front row for the DC show on Oct. 27th. I’ve never been front row for anything in my life! What a very rockin’ time it will be.
Ooh, very nice, Jack. Ours are center orchestra, row Q, which is close enough. I love Eddie and all, but you want to be in the spittle-free zone.
Mine are stage right. But the two seats are stand-alone, so my companion and I won’t have to share our space with anyone else.
Yes, I’m that selfish.
I hadn’t thought about the spittle factor. I’ll have to bring Wet-Naps or something, just in case.
My brother was a true DJ in the 60s & 70s. He would play some music of obscure artists that he liked. I remember visiting him in the late 80s / early 90s at a station that had been taken over by a large corporation. He showed me the computer linked to the main office that dictated the songs that were to be played during the day, and the very few slots that were allocated for the DJ’s choice. He said it just wasn’t the same anymore. He didn’t like being told what to play.
Holy crap! Eddie Izzard is touring?
I’ve gotta go to the TicketBastard site right now…
AWESOME!
10th row center at The Wiltern in September. The best part? No service or convenience charges through TicketBastard. $60 face value, $60 paid. I don’t know why, but I love it.
Thanks for the tip.
No problem. I’m all about the service to my community.
The 80s station here seems to have a mandate that it must play a song by U2 every 90 minutes. It generally plays good 80s stuff, though I would like to hear some of those really good, more obscure songs from the 80s now and again. There was more to 80s music than Top 40, but they rarely seem to play anything but Top 40. My sweetie and I have decided that the station was formed when somebody bought the collected works of U2 and all the 80s compilations that Rhino Records has released.
What I’d really love to hear sometime is that song by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
John, are you going to the Cleveland Eddie show? We got tickets today too. Rog couldn’t get closer on the floor than row F WAY off to the side so we went with 2nd row balcony. We saw him in Boston during his last tour, can’t wait to see him again.
We’re going to see the one in Chicago, and use it as an excuse to have a weekend there and see some old friends (I went to college there). It’s only about three or four hours away, depending on how fast one drives.
My friend Rich Dansky did a screed for Grumble about comparable problems at his local ’80s station. I thought you might like it.
Er. Let’s try that again:
http://www.grumblemagazine.com/articles/elfpants/80s-station.html
Ha! I like the graphic!
Tenth row center at the Wiltern? We ordered in the first ten minutes and still got the first balcony. Was it because you picked a weekday? We’re going closing night.
Well at least this way I can see his fabulous sexie outfit better.