Wednesday, April 21
My father took Sunday morning off, which meant that instead of listening to NPR or CDs I was subjected to my brother's favorite radio station. He won't play it around Dad because it makes Dad foam at the mouth. It makes me foam at the mouth, too, but I'm a sibling and therefore a lower form of life.
I mean, really. The music itself is annoying enough - insepid, uninspired, and utterly without variation - and thinking about the audience always frustrates me. The music is nothing but sex, violence, and money, and yet the people who will happily listen to it and let their kids hear it are the same who will call up and scream for heads if a single cuss word makes it into a song unbleeped, because it's "obscene." These are the people who made all those calls about Janet Jackson's nipple, crying because their kid saw some female flesh... and yet it's not "obscene" to let their ten-year old daughter walk around dressed like a Las Vegas street hooker. Lyrics like Joni Mitchell's "Win your medals, fuck your strangers, don't it leave you on the empty side?" are "obscene", because SHE SAID THE F-WORD (horror!) but lyrics like "And then I wanna, uh, uh, oooh..." aren't, because they don't use the dirty words. Bah.
Don't even get me started on music videos.
At any rate, the music is bad enough, but this station, like most commercials stations nowadays, features a "morning show." This is, as far as I can tell, idiots being paid to make idiots of themselves and other people. This is intended to be amusing. Most of it is pop culture references that I don't get anyway (such as the talk of that morning, which was about American Idol, a show I've never watched and have no desire to watch).
The rest of the morning was devoted to an amateur "Sing the National Anthem" contest. Or maybe it wasn't a contest. I'm not sure, I spent most of the time with my hands over my ears.
We have a stupid anthem. First, there's the lyrics. This is a man who was singing to a flag. I mean, yes, very nice, very symbolic, but really I'd prefer to have a national anthem that actually sang about my country, like "America the Beautiful" does. I've got nothing in particular against our flag, but singing about majestic mountains means a lot more to me.
Then there's the melody.
Is there anyone that can actually sing our national anthem? It's all right for the first few lines, although there's way too many up-and-down bits - and then you get to "And the rocket's red glare -" and the whole song just falls to pieces. Women's voices squawk or fade out as they try to climb the register, and as for men, well, the only way your average guy can jump an octave that fast is if you kick him in the balls, which seems a fairly extreme song experience. And then it's down an octave and up and octave and down. By the time you reach the bit about "the land of the free", half the singers have given up, the other half are all over the scale, and dogs are howling all down the street. And doing a better job of keeping the tune, too.
Does it strike anyone as vaguely ironic that the national anthem of America - land of opportunity, equality, and good ordinary average joes - can only be performed by trained opera singers with really, really excellent natural range?
And this was an amateur singing contest. They had numerous groups of people doing this. Over and over. One right after the other.
Next time Dad takes the morning off I'm bringing earplugs to work.
I mean, really. The music itself is annoying enough - insepid, uninspired, and utterly without variation - and thinking about the audience always frustrates me. The music is nothing but sex, violence, and money, and yet the people who will happily listen to it and let their kids hear it are the same who will call up and scream for heads if a single cuss word makes it into a song unbleeped, because it's "obscene." These are the people who made all those calls about Janet Jackson's nipple, crying because their kid saw some female flesh... and yet it's not "obscene" to let their ten-year old daughter walk around dressed like a Las Vegas street hooker. Lyrics like Joni Mitchell's "Win your medals, fuck your strangers, don't it leave you on the empty side?" are "obscene", because SHE SAID THE F-WORD (horror!) but lyrics like "And then I wanna, uh, uh, oooh..." aren't, because they don't use the dirty words. Bah.
Don't even get me started on music videos.
At any rate, the music is bad enough, but this station, like most commercials stations nowadays, features a "morning show." This is, as far as I can tell, idiots being paid to make idiots of themselves and other people. This is intended to be amusing. Most of it is pop culture references that I don't get anyway (such as the talk of that morning, which was about American Idol, a show I've never watched and have no desire to watch).
The rest of the morning was devoted to an amateur "Sing the National Anthem" contest. Or maybe it wasn't a contest. I'm not sure, I spent most of the time with my hands over my ears.
We have a stupid anthem. First, there's the lyrics. This is a man who was singing to a flag. I mean, yes, very nice, very symbolic, but really I'd prefer to have a national anthem that actually sang about my country, like "America the Beautiful" does. I've got nothing in particular against our flag, but singing about majestic mountains means a lot more to me.
Then there's the melody.
Is there anyone that can actually sing our national anthem? It's all right for the first few lines, although there's way too many up-and-down bits - and then you get to "And the rocket's red glare -" and the whole song just falls to pieces. Women's voices squawk or fade out as they try to climb the register, and as for men, well, the only way your average guy can jump an octave that fast is if you kick him in the balls, which seems a fairly extreme song experience. And then it's down an octave and up and octave and down. By the time you reach the bit about "the land of the free", half the singers have given up, the other half are all over the scale, and dogs are howling all down the street. And doing a better job of keeping the tune, too.
Does it strike anyone as vaguely ironic that the national anthem of America - land of opportunity, equality, and good ordinary average joes - can only be performed by trained opera singers with really, really excellent natural range?
And this was an amateur singing contest. They had numerous groups of people doing this. Over and over. One right after the other.
Next time Dad takes the morning off I'm bringing earplugs to work.
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