One of the novelties about owning a new (to me) car is a working radio. For more than four years, I motored about in my old set of wheels without a functioning sound system.
In general, this was barely an inconvenience, though there were times I would have liked to hear traffic reports so as to avoid getting stuck in tie-ups and jams. And on long drives – say, to North Carolina from my Michigan home – it might have been nice to have some tunes blaring, all the better to pass the time or, toward the end of the journey, stay awake, if not altogether alert.
Having a working radio, then, was something to look forward to. Three months into ownership of the new ride, I must say renewed radio capability has been a disappointment.
I had forgotten how frantically mundane most radio programming is. The morning drive-time shows all seem the same, with the male host or two and their female sidekick discussing sexual matters like naughty schoolchildren. The lunchtime programs are all brought to you by Local Restaurant Chain, and the afternoon deejays shout about playing music that will speed your drive home.
The too-frequent commercials are too frequently obnoxious. When you don’t listen to them for a few years, you forget how loud and dumbed down they are. Even the public radio stations seem to have a stultifying similarity to them; I quickly reached my limit of soft-voiced interviews with new book authors holding esoteric viewpoints on culture, politics, or history.
The news, of course, is just about un-listenable. Every outlet broadcasts the same headlines and repeats the same inaccuracies from competing sources on either side of the political fence.
My biggest beef with radio, though, is that it is exactly the same as when I left it. The playlists, from “classic rock” stations to “alternative” have not changed in the least. The same shallow set of songs that were playing more than four years ago are in daily rotation now. Has no one made any music worth listening to since then? It’s like being a sonic Rip Van Winkle, only waking up beardless to discover nothing has changed.
Radio is in this homogenized state because the overwhelming majority of stations are owned by very few corporations. The suits in the conference room make decisions, and the multitude of stations they control pour out the same stultifying signal over the airwaves.
I have learned, then, that my radio usage needs to be severely limited. Once that favorite oldie or two has finished playing, it is probably time to press the power button. Better to enjoy road noise than suffer another underwhelming number that I used to change the channel to years ago, or another ceaseless series of advertising screeds for products and services I care nothing about.
In the meantime, I can still get a traffic report “every 10 minutes on the eights,” for which I am regularly grateful. But my biggest thanks goes to the playlist in my head, featuring nothing but the greatest hits of my life filling the comparative silence of my vehicle with pleasant memories. Think I’ll turn up the volume.
Pat Grimes, a former South Bay resident, writes from Ypsilanti, Mich. He can be reached at grimespat19@gmail.com
