Today’s strip brings home a very serious topic facing today’s music.
All-Christmas radio stations.
Just about every city with a Clear Channel-owned light music station goes all-Christmas around this time of year, and the one close to me is no different. Lite-FM featured a poll on their website asking when they should start playing Christmas music, and sadly, “Immediately” is winning. I’m a person who does Christmas, when it is actually December, and when I was a kid, I used to wait for the music to start hitting the radio stations–here and there, maybe a 24-hour run on Christmas eve…but this is ridiculous. I don’t care if the ratings are wonderful, something is wrong with a culture that needs to hear 1,740 hours of Christmas music in one sitting.
Last year I was unprepared for Mariah Carey telling me she wanted me for Christmas as I was sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, but this year…I’m ready.
I’ve gotten a bunch of cheap electronics together to create the ultimate portable satellite radio. When I manage to position the receiver for the remote control that can go through walls in such a place where it doesn’t change the television channel next door, I will be free to wander my home, listening to the radio stations given to me by the gods of Dish Network.
This is a drastic switch for me, btw. I’ve fought with people who have run away to satellite radio, while radio for poor people goes to hell (that’s what I was told by one nasty little person that needed to validate his need for a $400 radio and $120 subscription fees, that FM radio is now for lower class people only). But it all changed the other night, when I accidentally hit a 6 instead of a 9 and ended up on the ’80s music…and heard Olivia Newton-John singing Xanadu.
So while the rest of New York is being run over by Dominic, the Italian Christmas Donkey, I will be wallowing in my childhood music, until maybe the 20th of December or so…Provided I stay out of line with the furnace, for some reason that kills my transmitter.
(Oh yeah, kids, Band Aid was the British band. Not the one with Michael Jackson, that was USA For Africa and We Are The World isn’t really a Christmas song unless now we only care about others for the holidays. If anyone asks you if “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is a song about ignorant westerners being clueless about Africa, ask them what Christmas song isn’t. Thank you. Nobody messes with my memory of Band Aid, dammit.)
Tails From the Backyard 