Doubleshot Thursday

I live and work in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. This sucks for a lot of reasons (Eagles fans, Phillies fans, Flyers fans, etc.). But it also sucks because of 93.3 WMMR. This is the standard rock radio station in the area. Some of you who live in NJ may recognize this station. It sometimes comes in clearly on your radio dial if you're driving anywhere south of Interstate 195. Like most radio stations, they just recycle the same 30-40 songs EVERY...SINGLE...DAY. And if there's a new song that's "hot", they will proceed to play it once every 15 minutes. It's torture.

But Tuesdays and Thursday's are especially grueling. This is because Tuesday is "Twofer Tuesday" and Thursday is "Double Shot Thursday". What this means is that they pick an artist (usually one they play all the time anyway) and play two songs back to back. Now this wouldn't be so bad if they played GOOD artists. And every once in a blue moon, I'll luck out and hear two good songs from someone like The Who ("Baba O'Riley", "Eminence Front") or The Clash ("London Calling", "Lost in the Supermarket") or Bruce Springsteen ("Tenth Avenue Freeze Out", "Rosalita"). But like I said, those are few and far between.

What I usually get is back-to-back Bon Jovi or Breaking Benjamin or Nickelback. Freakin awesome! I can't describe how much I loathe Nickelback. Every time I hear them, I want to scream and flip my desk over in a fit of pure anger. It's almost unhealthy how furious I get when their putrid music enters my ear canal and moves up to my head where my brain says, "Wait...what's this????? This SUCKS."

But what may even be worse than hearing crappy songs by crappy artists is when they actually play good artists but play one or two shitty songs. This past Tuesday they played Pearl Jam and I felt a sense of relief anticipating some decent music. But then they play "Last Kiss" which is far and away the WORST song Pearl Jam ever produced. I don't understand why they still play that song on the radio. It was made to be intentionally bad as an indictment of the sad state of the music industry. Yet they still play it. I've never met a single person who says, "I kinda like that song." And if I ever do, I'll totally fight them.

Would it really kill WMMR (or any rock station who does this same sort of thing) to play two cool songs by cool musical artists? I mean come on. They know tons of people listen to this stuff at work. Does anybody really get amped up for the workday by hearing "The Man Who Sold the World" and "About a Girl" back to back? No. But can you imagine getting into work, starting on your first cup of coffee and hearing "And now music fans, here's a doubleshot of Iron Maiden," and then hearing "Two Minutes to Midnight" and "The Trooper". Oh man. I think my head would explode from awesomeness overload.

Anyway, I tried to combat the crappy radio by bringing my iPod into work and plugging it into my computer, but of course it doesn't have a firewire port. Freakin sweet.