Cougar Opaque
Now Playing: The Durutti Column--"Otis"
I got into a conversation at Planned Parenthood Volunteer Night concerning the local Clear Channel station, 107.1 FM. "More music to pique your interest." 107.1 is actually the only radio station we reliably receive at work, presumably since its faceless parent corporation can shell out for superior broadcast capacity and crowd out the ability of almost anyone else to beam their signal into the priceless architectural treasures of downtown Ann Arbor. It may seem petty to go on about this, but WQKL (I think) forms an ominously large part of my life, as we listen to it all the time while working. While marginally better than the techno crap that one of the newbies plays, it's still a trial. The format's gone through at least one major tectonic shift since I've formed part of the captive audience. No more easy-listening late 60s through early 80s dreck; now, instead of hearing Edison Lighthouse once a day, we can hear a Dave Matthews song every fucking hour!! I wonder about WQKL; the responses of the "random listeners" who spout crap like "I love the variety," etc. sound suspiciously uniform and similar to the pronouncements of the station owners. "Say this," they'd say to random passersby at the mall, shoving a notecard in their face and receiving bovine obedience. Then there's that "pique your interest" line. One of the DJs started going on about some lame band one morning--the Fray, maybe--and said, "you know, that band really piqued my interest," simply parroting the station's idiotic catchphrase. Sundays aren't too bad, with all the specialty shows, but I don't work Sundays, and every other time it's pretty much a write-off. While baking Saturday at work, I tuned into WEMU, the local NPR station out of Ypsilanti. As it was pledge drive time, they played a lot of unusually entertaining stuff--Bob Edwards interviewing Peter Guralnick (for the new Sam Cooke biography; for another review go here) and George Clooney and David Strathairn (for Good Night and Good Luck); David Sedaris reading a fairy tale on This American Life; and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which I should really listen to more often. So grateful was I that I'm actually considering pledging.

Come back, radio.