FM Radio

I drive a soon to be 26-year-old car. It still runs well (knock on wood), but, as would be expected, many things don’t work like they should. For example, I cannot unlock the driver’s door from the outside of the car. I have to unlock one of the other doors and reach around or across and unlock it from the inside. It’s a mild inconvenience in the scheme of things, but it is a daily reminder that I drive an old car.

The stereo system that came with the car was nice for the time. It has a six-disc CD changer, a cassette deck, and an AM/FM radio. Unfortunately, the only piece of the system that still works is the radio. Sadly, six CDs appear to be stuck in the changer forever. And they’re six really good CDs (Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, Derek and the Dominoes’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels, Steve Winwood’s Greatest Hits Live (2 discs), and Linda Ronstadt’s Live at Television City if you’re wondering). Anyway, being forced to listen to nothing but the radio in the car for the past few months has taught me a few things.

The first thing it’s taught me is that the radio stations in Connecticut suck. We have an NPR station, a sports talk station, a handful of pop stations, a couple of country stations, three classic rock stations, a “light” station, an alternative station, and The River which bills itself as “variety from the 70s, 80s, and 90s”. I’m looking for music, so I never listen to NPR or the sports station. The country and pop stations are unlistenable. And all the rest are essentially oldies stations.

The second thing it’s taught me is that either I don’t know what variety means or none of the radio stations know what it means. They play the same songs over and over and over and over again. And I don’t mean each station repeats its limited playlist endlessly (although they do). Even across stations it’s the same songs. I hear deeper cuts in the grocery store.

The third thing it’s taught me is that I’m not much into a lot of the “classic” bands. They play a ton of Journey and Fleetwood Mac and Queen and stuff like that, and I just don’t care for most of it. There are classic bands that I do enjoy like The Beatles and The Stones, but they don’t play much of them.

When I’m in the car, I generally spend most of my time flipping through the stations. I never settle on anything for very long. It makes every car ride feel longer. Maybe someday I’ll have the money to get the CD player or tape deck fixed. Until then, I’m stuck. Oh well.