I am enamored of Classic Rock. In years past, there were two Classic Rock stations in this area, so if one was playing a little story about Jack and Diane, I could just switch over to the other one and hopefully they’d be playing some Boston. (Apologies to Mr. Mellencamp; I don’t care what kind of wild animal you’ve tamed for your middle name, if your song is overplayed, it’s overplayed. Maybe if it rocked a bit harder I wouldn’t mind listening to it more often. Carry on, my wayward son.)
Even though there’s only one Classic Rock station in Lincoln now, I still love listening to music on the radio. My favorite time of day to listen is when there are no commercials. There’s nothing worse than turning on your favorite station, hoping for some awesome tunes, and having to listen for the next five to ten minutes to an endless block of advertisements.
When we moved to Colorado after graduating from college, I was sad to leave my beloved radio station behind, but I was excited that I would never have to hear the advertisements they played ever again.
Some songs may be overplayed, but the advertisements definitely are. I was excited never to hear a Nebraska Diamond commercial again (“Nebraska Diamond sells more engagement and wedding rings than all the other area jewelry stores combined!”), happy to never hear Capitol Animal Clinic’s stupid jingle again (“The right... vets for your fa-mi-ly pets!”), and ecstatic to be leaving behind the terrible ads for O’Reilly Auto Parts (“Oh-Oh-Oh... O’Reilly!”).
One evening driving to my in-laws’ house with my husband, the radio station we were listening to began to play the obligatory advertisements. I was in the middle of a sentence, and suddenly heard a familiar jingle. Here is a picture of me when I recognized it.
(Well, it would be picture of me if I had recently accidentally fallen into a volcano.) It turns out that a local auto parts store, Checker, had decided to merge with O’Reilly’s, and so the much hated jingle was changed to “Che-cker... O’Reilly!”
I vowed never to listen to the radio again.
Amazon has a really great web cloud player. Anything digital music you buy doesn’t necessarily have to be downloaded; you can just listen to it online. The downside to this is that you have to buy the music first. And the obvious downside to listening to music on youtube is their ridiculous advertisements (which were extra-ridiculous several months ago, when you couldn’t access anything there without having to try to avoid a ten minute ad for Ron Paul).
Advertisements are the definite downside to listening to the radio. On the other hand, I can listen to the songs I love for free. I’m not going to stop listening just because of the ads. I’d rather have something to listen to in the car than nothing. So now that we’ve moved back to Lincoln, I’m going to have to get used to listening to The Eagle’s same old overplayed advertisements again: Nebraska Diamond’s bragging, Capitol Animal Clinic’s tips for my furry family member, and O’Reilly’s dreaded jingle.
And my complaining will be kept to a minimum... as long as they keep the song to commercial ratio high.
No comments:
Post a Comment