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Back when I had XM, my favorite channel (one of the only ones I could actually listen to) was Fungus 53, the punk station. It was far from perfect, but it was the only channel that would play a band like the Adicts or X-Ray Spex. Of course, XM decided to replace Fungus with AC/DC Radio. Yes, AC/DC 24/7, until January 15, 2009. Even though Verizon doesn’t think AC/DC has made any worthwhile music. And if you want punk? Well, go to Fred (”Classic Alternative”) or Ethel (”New Alternative”). To its credit, Fred will at least play the Ramones or the Clash from time to time, but Ethel likes Fall Out Boy. Likewise, Sirius replaced its punk channel (”Punk“) with AC/DC Radio, and is referring listeners all over the place.
Granted, Fungus’s audience was probably pretty small. But the whole point of satellite radio is that it will have music for everyone. If it has to do with the company’s bottom line, is it really necessary to have both a gospel and a southern gospel station? 60’s and 70’s classic rock, 70’s and 80’s classic rock, and channels for the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s? Thanks, XM. If I hadn’t already cancelled you, I would now.
Preface: this is the first in, hopefully, a series of commentaries about music that has little or no bearing on current popular culture, and is mostly personal and inaccessibly sentimental. Nevertheless, indie is exhausting me now, and it could be either the onset of a milestone birthday (if you care to know which one, look up what age Bob Dylan once warned his acolytes above which a person cannot be trusted) or musical over-exposure, but it’s time to return to something atavistic that I can always rely on for good results.
These are ugly times, or at least it feels like it. Probably no worse at the root than days of yore, but occasionally there is an event that makes you long for what you thought was a kinder era. My moment of forced nostalgia came last Friday as I was riding home from work and saw a little old lady gingerly crossing the street at Dearborn and Walton - not fatally slow, but certainly not in leaps and bounds. Still, she was making good time and, as is the law in Chicago, had the right-of-way, which did not stop an adipose SUV driver from hurling towards the intersection with intent to proceed through at speed, until he slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting Nanna.
I could make out her mild but weathered voice admonishing him for not yielding to her as she stood frozen on the double yellow line. I don’t figure that she called his mother a whore, or insulted his heritage, but he fast became infuriated. With slack, unshaven jowls swaying to and fro like warm testicles, he turned to her, his skinny buddy riding shotgun looking on as he said, “Shut up, fuck you!” in that TV mobster tone where ‘fuck’ becomes ‘fwahck’. So not only is Grandma nearly bowled over by Lips Manlis and his crony, but is told to be fruitful and multiply herself. I begin to long for the past.
And the past manifests itself in curious ways. Scenes of ugliness like this make for the question, “Was there a better time in the world than this cruel modern epoch?” Whether or not it was externally better is too vast to quantify, but it seems so because hearing albums like Neil Diamond’s The Jazz Singer was once enough to feel right in the world. Read more »
