My listening habits in the car have become kind of psychotic of late. I’ll often sync things to my phone via Spotify, and then listen to a CD. Or sometimes, I’ll grab a couple of reviews CDs that I want to soak in, and then end up listening to the radio. And every so often, when nothing is working for me, I’ll open the storage compartment in the Subaru’s console — a compartment that houses the “Ugh.I’m.Supposed.To.Like.This.Stuff?” collection — and revisit a horror or two. (Current main offender is that last Red Hot Chili Peppers thing.)
As usual, I have no idea why something resonates on any given day. Well, that’s not quite right, because the more distracted I am, the less capable I am of listening to music. So on comes the radio, and by radio I’m generally talking about NPR. Of course, this selection has its own set of problems. Look, I’m already tired of the Gee-Guess-What-Mitt-Said follies, and that can be paired with the Obama-Hates-America vaudeville act. Let’s face it, the American media coverage of the campaign is so incredibly bad that I can’t be bothered to waste any of my time with it. As soon as I realize I’m listening to a story about any of these topics, I reach for a CD. I swear I’d take that Chili Peppers blandness over the campaign with clown shoes.
Yesterday, that strategy (if it can be called that) really paid off. The CD I’d picked just could not compete with the thoughts bouncing around in my head, so I pressed the FM button and came into the middle of New Hampshire public radio’s Word Of Mouth show. They were doing a short segment on the band The Dø. This is the kind of programming that’s really worth seeking out. Here we have an interview with a band talking about how they got their start, and how they construct their music. It felt quite genuine (when’s the last time you got that feeling from a politician?) and their music was this cool collision of pop and classical influences.
So has Mitt pissed off the Londoners? Does President Obama want to destroy all American business? I don’t care. Most of the questions being “answered” are built on false premises. Man, I’ll take some heartfelt music over shallow political reportage any day of the week.
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